BENTONVILLE (KFSM) — The race for Bentonville mayor was a five-way race that went into a runoff with Stephanie Orman winning the office back in December 2018 after defeating Jim Webb.
From roads, to an animal shelter, to a call center for the police department and a new city hall, Bentonville Mayor Stephanie Orman is already hard at work after taking office at the start of the new year.
She has a lot of projects she wants to work on to make her city an even better place to call home.
Orman said the city already has a 10-year road plan, but that it needs to be revisited. They will look at their large road projects like eighth street to see how they will fund them. She said they will also be looking at a new drainage study.
“We had one done in May of 2017 I believe, and we now need to start to implement that and relook at that plan. We've had lots of growth," said Orman. "That's the thing about Bentonville is we grow so fast, sometimes we have a plan and by the time we implement it, it's very hard to do that.”
As far as building projects, Orman said they are ready to move forward on an animal shelter.
“We've had a lot of public interest in and there has been a task force that's been forming and now I think we are ready to start putting our city employees together with our task force and actually make sure that we start to develop that and get it built,” said Orman.
Orman said they will also form a committee to determine where the best location would be for a new city hall. Based on maintenance issues and cost she said they have decided to sell the current city hall because they want to be effective and efficient where they have their buildings and employees.
“There are some areas that we would like to put departments together so that they can work easier with. So we'll be trying to look at those options to make sure what`s the best for our employees, but also for our consumers, our residents because we offer our utility building below us right now and how that will be relocated,” she said.
Orman said they will also be focusing on communicating with the public through things like neighborhood meetings to make sure they are always engaging with the public.
“As we start to implement these projects and things come in, we have lots of things going on in Bentonville and people want to know where things are going and where they're coming," said Orman. "So we are going to try and do a better job, not only with just public meetings but with some communication and technology pieces to make sure we are reaching people.”
They plan on laying out the projects they will be working on online, so residents will be able to track the progress. Orman said she hopes at the end of 2019 to be able to show residents these projects they've been working on.