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Residents express concerns over Cave Springs and Rogers 'land swap'

Both the Rogers City Council and Cave Springs City Council are in talks to trade some pieces of land.

ROGERS, Ark. — The City of Rogers and the City of Cave Springs are aiming to trade some land. If approved, Cave Springs would get some land west of Highway 112, specifically, a neighborhood called Scissortail. 

"For some reason now they don't want us anymore. And we don't know why" said Carolyn Akin, who lives in the neighborhood. "We all look out for each other. We are great friends." 

The Scissortail neighborhood is technically a Bentonville address, but residents live in Rogers and pay property taxes there. Tuesday's Rogers City Council meeting was filled with concerned neighbors who aren't interested in becoming Cave Springs residents. 

"It's a community that now has been told 'you don't belong.' And we don't know how to respond to that," said Hugh Jackson, a Scissortail resident. "Many of us are leaving, feeling very proud to still live in our region. But perplexed and disappointed in our community."

Around 300 homes would be impacted. Residents voiced their concerns over potentially losing Roger's emergency services and the affordability of the neighborhood, with property taxes and insurance, as well as water and sewer services. 

"It terrifies me to think that we would be reduced to having such a small community service us," Akin said. 

"You're impacting a lot of families, you're actually potentially displacing a lot of families by this, and I probably may be one of them," said Karen Schaefer, who lives in Scissortail. "The personal property taxes, the household, homeowners' insurance, even our auto insurance could go up." 

Mayor Greg Hines for the City of Rogers and Mayor Randall Noblett for the City of Cave Springs said they hear concerned residents, and they want to minimize impacts. They said property taxes could potentially go down and the two cities would help each other when it comes to responding to emergency calls. 

"As far as water and sewer services, we're not going to cut these folks off from utilities. They will continue to receive utilities, such as sanitary water and wastewater, for as long as need be until Cave Springs is able to connect and provide those services," Hines said. 

"I think that with the development in the area, the property tax increases that come with that, that there's some things that that may be a little bit of negative in this regard, but then it's overweighed by the positive in the property values, the lower taxes in that regard," Noblett said. 

Final decisions have not been made yet. Both cities will be taking public comment set for some time in May.

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