The mayors of Jonesboro, with support from gleeful city councils, have highlighted public-private partnerships (PPPs) and grants as essential to getting what they want, to grow Jonesboro faster than naturally, in the Natural State.
In 2019, Mayor Harold Perrin emphasized PPPs in his speech to the Arkansas Municipal League (AML), upon his ascension to president. He displayed a slide of non- governmental organizations, such as The Rockefeller Foundation. He also mentioned local PPPs that, for example, mowed the “Welcome to Jonesboro” entrances on the roads. As Perrin emphasized repeatedly, he could not run the city without them. Rather than reduce niceties, he exhorted for more PPP.
Other PPPs were implicit in 2019 and the special election to increase the sales tax by 1%. Stalwarts of “Team Jonesboro” from ASU and local industries implored residents to diffuse the pain of higher taxes onto visitors, i.e., guests of the city. The fallacy of that argument is that 100% of Jonesboro residents felt the pain and that vote failed. As a result, in the state with the third highest sales tax rate in the nation, despite having the fourth lowest average income, Jonesboro residents enjoy the lowest combined city/county sales tax of the five largest cities in Arkansas. While 72404 is the only local zip code among the 25 wealthiest in Arkansas, the guests keep on coming for leisure, pleasure and business!
The pinnacle of the city’s marriage to PPPs is “Happy Trails.” The $24M grant that new Mayor Harold Copenhaver applied for brings a bike trail system here, trails systems that the state and Waltons, amongst others, provided to NWA, Central and SEA. Jonesboro, on the other hand, goes hat-in-hand to the federal government to do what Big PPP does for the rest of the state, i.e., trails and more funds for theaters, low-income housing, etc. Still, bypassing voters for “free money” not only handcuffs residents to pay for the $24.25M “Happy Trails” upkeep and maintenance into perpetuity, but also cattle-prods residents to pay for newly created needs. And, still, no plan is publicly available that lays out how this quickly growing city will meet fundamental needs after casually adding $4M to the wants.
Two fire stations await funding, as do the mounds of maintenance that residents mention routinely: deteriorating park benches and tables, derelict sidewalks, steel plates on the roads, flooding, poorly maintained culverts, other drainage issues, etc. While the mayor has found willing citizen volunteers to pick up trash in the neighborhoods, that 20+ mile loop is going to take some hard selling in this forever- COVID, mask-on, mask-off world. Stop “Happy Trails.” Howard L. Weinstock Jonesboro
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