Okay, how about Northwest Arkansas?? (Little Rock, Fort Smith: budget, job, health)

[Ice_Queen88]

I'm talking about a merger of Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville into one city. I think this is a better idea than Little Rock as you have four cities growing rapidly and racing to bigger than the other one. You can't really tell what city is truly the main city and what is the suburbs. Wikipedia has Rogers listed a suburb and Springdale as a bedroom town of Fayetteville, yet isn't Springdale now bigger than Fayetteville?? Also, you have Fort Smith to the south. It's all a confusing mess and would be helped by a merger which would create a pretty big city, maybe we can call it Arkansas City or Northwest City or something, not trying to be corny, just being creative. Look at the benefits, no more cities trying to do it their own way, one government over one town, a crackdown on crime and illegals and more job growth.

[Capt. Dan]

Northwest Arkansas will do whatever Walmart tells it to do!

[Ice_Queen88]

Originally Posted by Lt. Dan

Northwest Arkansas will do whatever Walmart tells it to do!

Yey, maybe Walty(as in Wal-Mart and Tyson)would be a better name.

[DC at the Ridge]

While the growth in Northwest Arkansas has made it seem like one continuous metropolitan area, each of the cities has their own distinct personality. The cities cooperate with one another on various projects, but besides city governments there are county governments to take into consideration. Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County and Bentonville is the seat of Benton County. Just getting all the different utilities on the same page would be a logistical nightmare.

DC

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge

While the growth in Northwest Arkansas has made it seem like one continuous metropolitan area, each of the cities has their own distinct personality. The cities cooperate with one another on various projects, but besides city governments there are county governments to take into consideration. Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County and Bentonville is the seat of Benton County. Just getting all the different utilities on the same page would be a logistical nightmare.

DC

DC, take a read through some of the links I posted in a similar thread regarding LR. I had posted something about such a thing being a total nightmare myself. However, after doing some more research, I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't full of hot air at least when it comes to federated consolidations.

[DC at the Ridge]

I'll take some time to do some research, especially on federated consolidations, but I'm thinking that even Cox offers cable to all of the cities involved as well as the outlying areas, but the line-ups and offerings are different in each town. Then you have at least three different electric utility companies, two different natural gas companies, multiple phone companies (and calling everywhere is long-distance; Rogers calls to Springdale are long distance, Pea Ridge calls to Bentonville are long-distance. These phone companies have exclusive contracts as well, SW Bell can't just come in to Centel's area and offer service), multiple water companies, multiple trash disposal companies. The sewage and incineration issues have been big in Fayetteville in past years. More than that, the consolidation we're discussing is going to be a weird-shaped beast. Are you going to incorporate all the smaller cities in between? Lowell is between Springdale and Rogers, it's been extending it's city limits further and further east and west for the past few years now. Avoca is a separate town from Rogers, but its utilities and services are almost all provided by Rogers. Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove have federal land, are there special steps that need to be taken there? And even when you're done with the merger, there are going to be gaps, there is still a lot of land that's not incorporated, that doesn't belong to any city, but suddenly they'll be surrounded by a huge city. Bella Vista just recently incorporated and discovered that parts of old Bella Vista had never been part of the Bella Vista POA, so those pockets aren't part of the legal town. And those residents don't want to be part of the town, so there are a host of issues there.
Maybe I'm too focused on the complexities involved, because mostly I just can't see people wanting to merge. As long as the cities can find common ground to work cooperatively on specific projects, the competition between them to attract new business and new residents seems healthy and beneficial.

DC

[Stormcrow73]

I don't think it's a slam dunk by any means but from what little I can gather on how it's been done elsewhere, all of those utilities stay in place as is and in many cases, the municipalites still focus on their own immediate concerns. In fact, while some may say that consolidating municipal function creates savings, in Indianapolis budgets actually went up by consolidating functions into a single municipality. So leaving the municipal functions in place, each local area maintains a lot of self governance and duplication really is not as bad as one may think.

So...what you may ask, is this really all about??? Well, I'm still not entirely clear myself and it appears that it can really be a pretty wide open affair as to what can be decided upon. It may be possible to simply share all of the revenue streams generated by the metro by a predecided schedule or formula. In fact, I think each municipality within the consolidated metro area could conceivable maintain it's current tax structure!!

I still have a lot of researching to do myself...

[DC at the Ridge]

How could that work with two county seats being merged into a single municipality? I mean St Paul and Minneapolis are two county seats separated by the river, while they cooperate on projects and functionally form a single metropolitan area, they are not merged. Of course one is the political capital of the state, the other the economic capital, so balance would be the name of the game, there.

DC

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge

How could that work with two county seats being merged into a single municipality? I mean St Paul and Minneapolis are two county seats separated by the river, while they cooperate on projects and functionally form a single metropolitan area, they are not merged. Of course one is the political capital of the state, the other the economic capital, so balance would be the name of the game, there.

DC

I don't think that the fact that county seats are there would be any concern. The county seat is only IN a city and not a property of the city itself. County administration is free to move or operate anywhere it chooses so long as the constituents do not object so Fayetteville being the county seat really has no bearing. It is totally conceivable that the city of Fayetteville can retain it's identity as a borough or other semi-autonomous entity and the county seat still be located there. Again, that's only my semi-educated take on this... Heck the Quad City region is talking about this and it's separated by a state line so there MUST be some way to work through county seats! I don't know how serious QC is, might be little more than what we're doing right here.

http://www.qconline.com/progress2000/getalong.shtml

[GetmeoutofAR]

I say merge Fayetteville and Springdale as Fayetteville (just call Springdale Fayetteville North) and Merge Rogers and Bentonville as Rogers (with bentonville being called West Rogers) then you'd at least have only two called it Fayetteville-Rogers just like Raleigh/Durham, DFW, Minniapolis/St, Paul, Scranton/Wilkes Barre etc etc