Little Rock, North Little Rock, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Consolidation??

[Ice_Queen88]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow73

I assure you, people in North Little Rock do NOT consider themselves an extension or suburb of Little Rock. And BTW, NLR DOES have a downtown/city center. It may not have big buildings but it does have a professional baseball park and an arena.

It really sounds like you're viewing such an undertaking more akin to an annexation which it most assuredly would not be. And people in NLR would NEVER vote to annex into LR!!

A real merger/consolidation which removes 2 administrative systems and replaces them with 1 new system is an entirely different beast because now these populations will be within the boundaries of a NEW incorporated city with a new name (be it Little Rock, New Little Rock, Pulaski City or anything else you can dream up). As I understand, it works just in precisely the same manner as two merging S-corps where both corporations are replaced by a single new corporation. Whereas a buyout would be the business analog of an annex.

This merger is far from an easy task because you must reconcile school systems, tax rates, and every other detail of city operations instead of replacing the annexed city's government, tax rates, budget, etc, with the annexing city's.

This whole concept sounds fantastic on paper and in our minds regarding the end result but it would be a total nightmare during the implementation. I know Nashville pulled off a consolidation with it's outlying county but I imagine that wound up working more like an invisible annexation since Nashville dominated the landscape there. I just recently went through a "merger" that would be an analog to this situation where a very large company came in bought the company I worked for but in order to retain the identity and by extension the accomplish of the company I was with, chose to merge the two companies. This formed a new corporation with it's own stock which was wholly owned by a holding company (the company which initiated the purchase agreement). In the example of Nashville, Nashville would be the holding company and the new county wide "city" would be the newly formed corporation wholly "owned" by Nashville.

Now...I could much more easily fathom NLR making a grab to annex Sherwood...

Also don't forget about Louisville, Jacksonville(Florida) and of course New York City.

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by Sam I Am

I guess it all goes back to your original post...is this true about a merger? No, it is not. Not even being discussed. Not gonna happen. And NWA isn't going to merge into Walty-town either. Whatever the pros might be for merger, and I honestly do not see them other than issues with names, it's simply not in the works.

The biggest thing I think we could gain would be wholly a perception change. IIRC the manner in which MSAs are calculated by the census, a merger of LR, Pulaski County, and the other outliers would bring Conway and the rest of Faulkner into the MSA because the "dominant city" would move it's geographic center much further north. Thusly we'd have an MSA of around a half million. An NWA merger wouldn't increase the size of that MSA because there is no single "dominant city" whose movement would bring in new towns not already included. That merger would only eliminate the current confusion of that "Tower of Municipal Babel".

[Stormcrow73]

An interesting and enlightening read:

http://www.citymayors.com/government/louisville.html

Possibly even more enlightening is this one:

http://www.citymayors.com/government...rs_locgov.html

[North Pulaski Player]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow73

The biggest thing I think we could gain would be wholly a perception change. IIRC the manner in which MSAs are calculated by the census, a merger of LR, Pulaski County, and the other outliers would bring Conway and the rest of Faulkner into the MSA because the "dominant city" would move it's geographic center much further north. Thusly we'd have an MSA of around a half million.

Conway and Faulkner County are already in the Little Rock-North Little Rock MSA, and the LR-NLR MSA is already over 660,000. Pine Bluff and Jefferson County on the other hand are not in the LR-NLR MSA, but could be happening very soon along with White County (Searcy).

[bchris02]

I am not so sure Pine Bluff should be added to Little Rock's MSA. Both are two completely separate entities with vast rural undeveloped areas between them. If Pine Bluff was like Conway where a large portion of the population commutes to Little Rock then I could see it, but I don't think this is the case with Pine Bluff. How much commuting even is there from Jefferson to Pulaski county?

[Stormcrow73]

Originally Posted by North Pulaski Player

Conway and Faulkner County are already in the Little Rock-North Little Rock MSA, and the LR-NLR MSA is already over 660,000. Pine Bluff and Jefferson County on the other hand are not in the LR-NLR MSA, but could be happening very soon along with White County (Searcy).

Are you positive?? I distinctly recall seeing Conway split out as a Micropolitan Statistical Area for the last census data. I tried to find that data again a few weeks ago but couldn't so it's entirely possible I'm imagining something again.