FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In July 2023, the Fayetteville City Council appointed former city council member Mark Kinion to the Walton Arts Center council, but the seat has not yet been filled months later.
"I'm sure that the Walton Arts Council will recognize that Mark is a very responsible and honorable person,” Kit Williams, Fayetteville City Attorney said. “He served on the city council for many years, and I can tell you, he was always very reasonable, logical and friendly with his conversation. I think he’d be a very good board member for the Walton Art Center Council."
In a memo dated February 21, 2024, Williams wrote that he believed “any attempt to not seat the city council’s appointments to the Walton Arts Center Council Board is an attack on the city council’s authority and discretion.”
Kinion told 5NEWS that because the city helped pay for the Walton Arts Center expansion, the residents deserve to be represented on its board.
The council is made up of members appointed by the city, the University of Arkansas, and the Walton Family Foundation to represent the constituents it serves — and according to Williams, most appointments are accepted very quickly.
"Normally, someone that the city council appoints to a board or committee gets seated immediately,” Williams said.
Walton Arts Center officials and the City Attorney largely attribute the delay to scheduling conflicts in setting a committee review hearing.
“We've reached out to him twice and invited him to attend two different nominating committee meetings, and he did not attend those,” Jennifer Wilson, Director of Public Relations for the Walton Arts Center, said. “We've told him that for the next one that's coming up, we've asked him to attend that next nominating committee meeting."
Since August 2023, according to Wilson, six other appointees have met with the nominating committee and have been added to the council. Three from the city and three from the University of Arkansas.
The Walton Arts Center also believes it has the right to review board members who are appointed.
"The issue here really is whether an independent 501(c)(3), which is what Walton Art Center is, has the authority to review, ratify, and maybe even remove board members who are appointed to the organization,” Wilson said. “Based on our governance documents that we have, and on our guidance from our legal counsel, we believe that we do.”
The City Attorney's memo, however, disagrees with the Walton Art Center’s claim that they have the power to reject a person appointed by the city council to fill a city’s representative board position.
And while the issue is still ongoing, the City Attorney believes that Kinion should be seated without further delay, and that this process should be resolved soon.
“There is still some hesitation it seems like,” Williams said. “But I think that that can be resolved and that's what I expect. I expect Mark to be interviewed fairly quickly, and then of course take a seat on the board.