Inside Fort Smith has learned from two separate sources that a meeting will be held next week of the Fort Smith Civil Service Commission at which police chief Nathaniel Clark will withdraw his Section 12 proposal to bypass the CCS when hiring supervisory personnel for the FSPD.
The controversial proposal is the key component behind several equally controversial moves by a faction of the Fort Smith City board of directors which has led to an announced recall effort against at least one city director.
The move comes on the heels of criticism of the methods used by a faction of the BOD in an effort to usurp and mitigate the CSCS which has served the city for decades in administering promotional test and being the final arbitror in disciplinary actions for the local police and fire department personnel.
The recent short time hiring and resignation of a Detroit police captain, who has been involved in the past in a business relationship with Clark and is now facing charges of having on duty officer build a deck at his home, has put Clark’s proposal under further scrutiny by the public.
The department recently announced the promotion of seven sergeants to the rank of lieutenant after a recent round of testing.
Those promotions are part of a plan by Clark to modify and streamline the department into what he called more of a “paramilitary” order when he announced he plan in May.
At the same time, Clark put forth the proposal to be able to have full control in selecting supervisory personnel for the department which has been the fuel behind several controversial moves over the last few months and created general turmoil among the rank and file members of the FSPD.
The first indication that the proposal was not a popular one came when the CSC rejected the idea without a single member of the then five-person panel even making a motion on the proposal.
The rebuke led to three city directors — Keith Lau, Mike Lorenz and Andre’ Good — getting caught up in a series of email that Sebastian County prosecutor Daniel Shue eventually said broke the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act laws on public meeting.
After that email exchange, the trio then put forth a non-binding resolution to inform the members of the CSC that the BOD supported the proposal by Clark.
Somewhere along the way director Tracy Pennartz threw her lot in with the three and they were able to push the meaningless “resolution” through by a 4-3 vote.
The three directors that opposed the effort to bully the members of the CSC into acquiescing to the plan — George Catsavis, Kevin Settle and Pastor Don Hutchings — would find themselves on the short side of that 4-3 stand off in the weeks to come.
Hutchings actually complained to city administrator Carl Geffken in an email after Geffken released information saying the board had voted to support Clark’s proposal without enumerating or acknowledging the 4-3 vote that he wanted it “on the record” that he and two other directors had not gone along with the “resolution”.
Since the resolution failed to move any of the commission members off their original sentiments in the matter, the next calculate move was to try and remove commission chairman Chip Sexton from the panel.
The voting bloc tried to manipulate Sexton’s role on the CSC by claiming he had a conflict of interest since his “partner” Joey McCutchen was suing he city.
Ironically, the lawsuit McCutchen had filed stemmed from information he learned about the illegal emails in an FOIA for a lawsuit being considered surrounding the firing of he city’ sanitation director amidst the recycling scandal that plague the board earlier in the year.
Sexton recused himself from any decision or votes arising while the McCutchen lawsuit was being decided, but the renegade directors pushed on with their effort to remove Sexton from he commission., That plot failed when the bloc realized the scheme could only muster the usual 4-3 vote and a 5-2 count was required for removing Sexton from his post and they backed off in July.
Having fallen short with that gambit, the next effort went into tying to dismantle the commission completely.
That effort went nowhere so the next step was to increase the number of commission members from five to seven in what Hutchings called an effort to “stack the court” in Clark’s favor.
In an early September meeting, Hutchings called out the four other directors on their collusion making the following statement in an open meeting:
“I appreciate this healthy discussion, but I’m a little bit confused,” Hutchings said. “If we could, stop for just a moment and look at what is happening right now.
“I was at the Civil Service Commission May 22 and it was a very contentious meeting about hiring outside supervisors for the PD, and not one commissioner made a motion to change our policy. But this board wouldn’t accept that, so the discussion then was doing away with the Civil Service Commission, and that didn’t work.
“So, this board passed a resolution — a non-bonding resolution — to get the Civil Service Commission to change their mind, and that didn’t work. So next was the targeting of the commissioner, to remove Chip Sexton, and that didn’t work.
“So now we’re stacking the court and adding two new commissioners and it’s blatantly obvious what’s going on here, and it’s pretty disturbing. This board is struggling with credibility … we’ve got a lot of issues that we need to speak to our people about and resolutions like this — I think — pushes our citizens farther way from trusting us. So I urge my good friends on this board to vote no on this ordinance.”
Lau “respectfully” disagreed with Hutchings, saying his intention was not to “stack the deck” and voiced concerned he CSC had not met to vote on Clark’s proposal.
“My mission or desire to increase the membership is to have a more diverse group to the commission that bring other talents or better talent to that commission,” said Lau. “The commission as it is now is struggling to go to the interviews. They’re having to split up and got in to two groups just to do the interviews and we would be better served to have more members on that board. So, this is not an end run to get around …”.
Lau also addressed he time frame it would make to add any new members to the board.
Lorenz and Good made similar proclamations.
The same 4-3 vote then pushed the proposal through to add the two members. However, eleven other of the cities boards and commissions have five members and there has been no dedicated effort to “bring other talents or better talent” to those commissions.
In addition, Inside Fort Smith was told that the two incoming “new members” of the board had been assured of place on the commission before the vote to even increase the membership to seven was taken. The names of Fort Smith citizens Carlton Matt Garner and Jason Green were provided to Inside Fort Smith as the citizens selected to round out the commission
Garner has been a strong proponent of the actions of the 4-3 voting bloc on various Facebook posts within the past four to five weeks.
In response to all of the moves by Lorenz, Lau and Good to “guide” the city into accepting Clark’s original proposal an announcement was made earlier this month that the Fraternal Order of Police and the local Firefighters union will mount petition drives to get enough signatures to force a recall election for the three directors. According to one source, Pennartz will not be targeted because she is expected to leave the BOD and make a run at a state office.
Clark gave a proposal last week to the BOD asking for approval of $744,000 in transferred revenue
from the departments personnel budget to fund much need equipment and training upgrades for the FSPD. A study session this week resulted in some minor changes in the proposal which will be considered this Tuesday night at a regular board meeting.
Moving the finds from personnel to the operational budget seems to be an unprecedented move, although an already shortage of officers on the force and a large number of separations in the last ten months has left a surplus of funds in that ledger.
