IS it better for us to go to someone investing millions of dollars on a housing development (which they already want to be beautiful and full of nice things to help sell homes) and say now you have to deal with this extra city regulation, and pay this extra tax in order to make our city more beautiful? NO! The development's property and sales tax alone should help pay for parks already. Not to mention building permits and the years of sale and property taxes of the residents. And the income tax on the construction crew.

Add another comity and red tape to the process and the builders are likely to focus more of there time on developing van buren, roland, and barling. Less red tape/ less taxes = greater incentive to build, and generally the building itself will pay for a lot of parks over the years, and most of the time will be beneficial to the beautification(spelling?) of fort smith.

I am always against more government regulation, and more taxes. What about the cost of hiring someone or staffing the people to collect the money from the builders? Our city employs are already overworked.

This is a bad idea. Long term if this costs one average family home from being built it isn't worth it. And this could potentially cost an entire subdivision or commercial development.

Shayne Mckinney

I definitely agree with Shanye on the fact that an additional tax or restriction on development would cost the city more development than it would ever gain from an extra park. Fort Smith is currently facing the challenges of attracting new development for the simple fact that our taxes are high compared to other regional economic development competitors and ease of entry into our city just does not exist. 

I think the parks department should be more creative in their efforts by possibly undertaking a public relations campaign to work directly with new developers and the city to instill a sense of community responsibility to encourage the donation of land or dollars to contribute to the quality of place initiatives under taken by the parks department. While ordinances are necessary to create a cohesive city image in the face of design and architecture, I feel as though there are several ways to accomplish the parks dept.'s task without requiring developers to contribute. You would be surprised at how willing people are to contribute by developing a open relationship where both parties win than forcing people to act by additional uneffective ordinances. More out of the box thinking would be beneficial to achieveing success in our region as we already experience enough set backs by the current rules and regulations our community faces.

If we are really concerned about the image of our city, it would be nice for someone to explain the recent additions of several plastic, unattractive bus stop benches and the wonderful multiple car washes and metal building businesses lining Rogers Ave. It would be most beneficial for the urban planning commission to step in and really develop a cohesive development plan to contribute to our overall quality of place in conjunction with the many city departments and organizations in Fort Smith.