Fuel surcharge coming, McKinney tells council

Carroll County Solid Waste Authority customers in Berryville, Eureka Springs and Green Forest will soon see slight increases in their bills, thanks to rising fuel prices.

Berryville Mayor Tim McKinney, who also serves as chairman of the Solid Waste Authority board, delivered the news to the city council during its regular meeting on May 17. The council gave McKinney permission to explore possible contract changes during its May 3 meeting.

The increase will come from a fuel surcharge that will be figured on a percentage basis of a customer’s bill and could fluctuate as fuel prices change.

“The surcharge that we talked about, the did approve that and we’re going to move forward with it,” McKinney said. “It’s about like we told you. We did decide to go, instead of just a flat surcharge for everybody, we’re going to look at the percentage. What that will do, it’ll make it lesser for Granny with her one or two bags of trash, than for Tyson’s, with a rolloff every day.”

McKinney stressed that the change is not a rate increase, and while customers could see increases some months, they could see a credit in other months.

“In the month that we looked at it, if we do this instead of over a dollar per person for your average customer, it’d be 61 cents,” McKinney said. “We just thought that was a lot fairer way to do it, but it’s the same principle. All the cities have agreed to sign it.

“It’s just to avoid a rate increase and hopefully the fuel go down at some point.”

McKinney also outlined the process for determining the surcharge amount.

“It’s based on a formula that looks at our budgeted amount,” McKinney said. “We take the total revenue and divide that by the amount we go over on fuel. Like, we went $10,000 over on fuel, we divide that out and it gives you, like, 2.3 percent. Then we use that percentage and it will be applied across the board.”

McKinney said customers in Holiday Island wouldn’t see the additional surcharge for some time, thanks to a new contract city officials signed that already included higher fuel prices as of Jan. 1. As for the rest of the county, McKinney said things could change a bit each month.

“When Carroll County solid waste adopts a new budget, whatever they budget for fuel, that will be the benchmark for the whole year,” McKinney said. “If it goes up, there’ll be a fuel adjustment. If it goes down, we’ll actually be able to give people credit if it goes to below our budgeted amount. The only alternative we had is to come in here for a rate increase.

“Rate increases do not go away.”

The board also heard a presentation from Dr. Jonathan Fausett of Mercy Health and Dr. Ronald Brimberry, director of the family medicine residency program at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, regarding plans to start a rural residency program in Carroll County.

The idea behind the program, Fausett said, is to recruit new doctors for Carroll County.

“One thing that’s been an evolving problem, even in the short time that I’ve been here, is the loss of medical providers to the area,” said Fausett, who’s lived in Berryville for three years. “In the last three years in, we’ve lost eight physicians and they’ve been replaced with myself and [Dr. Charles Horton’s] daughter. That’s it. He’s got Charlie coming in the pipeline, but after that, Dr. Horton doesn’t have any more children.”

The program’s stated mission is “to strengthen the physician workforce for rural underserved communities, to support trainees who have a passion for rural practice, to design a curriculum in rural settings to prepare for rural practice,” and “to spend less than 50 percent of the threeyear residency training in rural training sites.”

Fausett said the program — funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant — would include Mercy Hospital and Mercy Family Medicine in Berryville and Washington Regional Family Clinic in Eureka Springs. The first two residencies will be offered beginning next year.

“The overall goal is to have two resident physicians in Carroll County, one based, clinic-wise, here in Berryville and one based through the Washington Regional clinic in Eureka Springs and then both of them serving in the Berryville hospital,” Fausett said. “The first year they’d spend in Fayetteville, taking care of a lot of the number-crunching things that they have to do in order to qualify for graduation … but after that, we get our hooks into them and we get to hold on to them for those next two years.”

Fausett said having a program like this increases the odds that, once those doctors complete their residency requirements, they’d stay in the area.

“If we’re making and creating doctors in our community who are used to our community, who know the dynamics and who establish their own patient populations, we’re fairly likely to hold on to some of those guys and gals,” Fausett said. “And we really need that.”

The reason for the presentation, Fausett said, was to make people aware of the program and to hopefully generate community support, including everything from inviting the residents to community events to speaking at schools and even helping them find housing.

“Lots of these programs have been attempted in rural areas and lots of them have failed in rural areas because they didn’t have adequate community support,” Fausett said.

In other business, the council heard from Berryville Police Chief Robert Bartos, who delivered his department’s monthly report.

According to Bartos, city police issued 136 citations in April, up from 121 a year ago, and investigated 63 offenses, down from last year’s monthly total of 75. The department’s clearance rate for the month, Bartos said, was 81 percent.

The department took in $770 in fines and bonds in April and responded to 17 traffic accidents, up from 15 in April 2021.

The council also reviewed the monthly financial report showing sales tax collected in the city during the month of April. According to the report, the city received $143,772.86 from the city’s 1 percent sales tax — up from the $124,731.57 received in March 2021, but down from last month’s total of $148,954.89 — and $71,886.43 from the city’s half-cent sales tax for the community center.

Of the tax money received from April sales, $102,686.01 was added to the city’s general fund, $17,000 to the sewer bond fund and $12,677.29 to the street fund. The remainder was divided between the Saunders Museum and the parks commission funds, which received $3,803.19 each, and the tourism and cemetery funds, which received $1,901.59 each.

The board also voted to approve a request from the Kiwanis Club of Berryville to host its annual Youth Fishing Derby on June 11 at George Pond and gave final approval to an ordinance vacating a short, undeveloped portion of Fancher Avenue at the request of the surrounding property owner.

In addition, the board voted to approve a number of changes to the city’s operating budget in a housekeeping measure, with most of the changes reflecting the additional money added to the general fund after the city voted May 3 to appropriate more than $1 million of the funds the city received under the American Rescue Plan to offset personnel expenses for the city’s police and fire department personnel.

The council’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 7, at Berryville City Hall.