POA board making huge investment in Village future with its new GM
For many of those of us who are willing to admit we’re among the older Villagers, Charles King’s employment package with the POA is unreal, something we never saw in our days in the workforce 20 or 30 years ago.
The package is also one major roll of the dice for our new board of directors. They’ve pushed all the chips out on the table and are betting King can deliver.
While the cash and perks aren’t like what most of us saw in our days as employees, they will be worth it if King can bring stability and growth to Hot Springs Village.
All of us who live or own property here are already invested in the Village. We put our hard-earned cash on the table when we chose to leave where we were and move to the next phase of our life. Everything we saw looked so good. That’s why we came here.
It’s why many of us were so disappointed and distressed by where the last four boards and former GM/CEOs led us. We saw our dreams jeopardized. We wondered if we made a mistake coming to the Village.
Now we’ve turned a new corner. And we’re hoping the new path is the right one.
It would be unfair to Charles King to expect miracles and an instant turnaround. It took four years to put us in this mess. I hope King is as good as the board obviously thinks he is, and I know we’ll have to give him time to scope out the challenges and opportunities.
Villager John Sowers sent along a copy of King’s offer of employment (click here to see it) and the new job description (click here to see it). You can look them over. Then you’ll know how much the board is betting on the next deal.
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Villager Scott McCord sent an interesting email asking how I would grade the Village’s financial condition in the near-term, mid-term, and long-term. Here was my speculative response:
Near-term (next 12 months) viability – Solid B, because of the $3.1-million federal grant.
Mid-term (year 2-5) viability – C-, and this will depend greatly on:
- A) What this board and new GM do in the next year.
- B) How successful the new marketing program is in bringing new residents to the Village and increasing amenity use.
- C) Whether the trend continues in which the Village is very appealing to folks in big cities who are scared of the pandemic and/or realize they can work from home anywhere they want to be.
- Long-term (year 6-10) – D, unless the Village moves toward incorporation and can impose a local property tax to replace the $4.7 million being lost every year because of 11,500 unproductive lots. Point to consider:
- • State law allows incorporated cities to have gated communities. So, what I’ve been suggesting for years is the Village provides the leadership to incorporate an area similar to the 71909 zip code, from south of Jessieville to north of Fountain Lake, from west of Highway 7 to east of Highway 5.
- • The new city then designates the area which is now the Village as a gated community within it. You end up with revenue from fuel taxes and property taxes, lower or eliminate assessments, expand the police and fire departments to serve the entire new city, ditto the water and sewer facilities (the infrastructure is in place to expand) … the possibilities and challenges are infinite, but, it’s the only solution.
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- With virtually every sport shut down or dramatically curtailed by the pandemic, I wondered what had happened to the gambling industry. If there are no games, what could gamblers bet on?
Silly me. Naive me. An organization specializing in mental health said:
“The modern gambler is unmoved by a global pandemic.
“Bookies may be closed, but phones provide instant access to roulette wheels, poker tables and some of the most bizarre sports imaginable.
“The fact is, people will always find something to gamble on. And with the advancements in technology, these unusual betting forms can be used and abused wherever and whenever – all at a finger’s length.
“People are currently vulnerable, and betting firms are fully aware of this. In the absence of football and horse racing – which make up 75 percent of the sports betting market – people are looking elsewhere.
“But the absence of sport means some of these alternatives are being created from deep and dark places. In Russia, some gambling sites are offering customers the chance to bet on coronavirus related issues. Dark and desperate.
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Another 990 new cases of coronavirus reported in Arkansas today.
By Former Board Director, Frank Leeming, 7-24-20
Click here to subscribe to Frank’s email list.
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Thank you for reading. Click here to visit Hot Springs Village Community Forums.
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Hazel Dillehay
07/25/2020 — 12:42 pm
How can our police force cover a new city while covering 26,000 acres? And what would be the name of this so called new City? Who would be responsible for utility Maintance outside the Village Gates? Sounds like a plan that might work, and would like to hear more feedback, from others.
Thanks
Tom Blakeman
07/25/2020 — 2:40 pm
Details are not clear but the general concept is totally legitimate and probably the only solution. Maybe we need to secede from Garland and Saline counties and form our own county rather than a city. The key here is repatriation of the millions of tax dollars we lose every year to those entities.
Congratulations to Frank for thinking outside the box.
Hazel Dillehay
07/25/2020 — 3:28 pm
Tom Blakeman why are you not on the Board?
Cfrost@aol.com
07/25/2020 — 10:44 pm
It’s great that we lost our Queen Karen, sorry I mean Nalley and we now employ King Charles. What could possibly go wrong! This resembles a Twiggs part Deux. We need to replace all subordinates that bowed down to Queen Nalley for they are part of the problem.
DAD
07/26/2020 — 8:42 pm
Congratulations! You have just won the daily sunshine award.
David L. Henderson
07/27/2020 — 3:59 pm
Sorry to disagree Frank, but I think the idea of incorporating the Village is totally without merit.
According to information from the Arkansas Municipal League, “Revenue to fund
municipal operations comes primarily from three (3) sources: Local Sales Tax, Utility Franchise Fees and State Turnback Funds”.
The first two options merely give us permission to tax ourselves.
As to State Turnback Funds, those from General Revenues have declined steadily – on a per capita basis – for years.
In 2016, the per capita distribution was estimated to be $15.60, which would have generated only about $200,000 for a community our size. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that we could receive any aid from Special Revenues (street turnback funds) until we take down our gates.
After seven years of management’s total obsession with population growth, perhaps it’s time to hit the pause button and ask Village residents how much growth they really want. How many traffic light changes are they willing to sit through while waiting to exit the West gate.
Perhaps it’s time to have a community conversation about how we can best fund our maintenance and operations without destroying what brought all of us to the Village.
David L. Henderson
Tom Blakeman
07/28/2020 — 7:47 am
Better idea: If cities like Portland and Minneapolis can ‘defund their police’ it is high time we “defund” our county governments who only take from us and do not support anything.
Dan Hitch
07/28/2020 — 3:05 pm
It has happened to all other CCI properties ,why not here?
anonymous
07/31/2020 — 4:36 pm
There is at least one other way for the Village to gain the advantages of incorporation while remaining a private community: The City of Fountain Lake shares a contiguous border with HSV along our southern border (in Garland County). It is normally a fairly simple legal process for an existing city to expand its limits by acquiring unincorporated contiguous land. Why would the City of Ftn. Lake want to annex HSV? Because we have the only dependable fire and police department, along with EMT services. Our water and sewer services might be of use to their residents at some future time, but right now their wells and septic fields appear to be satisfactory. They don’t even want paved roads.
What benefits would HSV receive? We could receive our share of County turn-Back funds from both Saline and Garland. These funds are distributed on the basis of population. This would maintain our existing streets long into the future. It would give us the benefits of settled municipal laws that have long been enjoyed by all Arkansas city residents. No need to have to file a lawsuit to find out jurisdiction every time we want to enforce a rule/regulation. Our police could issue real tickets, not just warnings. Our POA wouldn’t have to re-write our policies and procedures. We could collect property taxes to fund our parks and recreation facilities, instead of our monthly assessment. We would have proper elections to determine the millage rate for those facilities. We would also have a legal way to recall our elected officials when they let us down.
Folks, we are no longer a small, homogenous country club community, but we
are being governed by policies and procedures that were put in place 50 years ago. We need to act like a small city (pop. 14,500). I’ve heard that would make us the 6th largest city in Arkansas.
V. Louise Henderson
08/03/2020 — 11:16 am
Responding to anonymous – 7/31/2020-4:36 p.m. – Surely you jest! Are you a resident of Fountain Lake? The Village should stay as is – not turned into an incorporated city or anything else. It is great just as is!