VAN BUREN — The Crawford County 2025 operating budget is up for a vote Monday by the Quorum Court, and it comes in the wake of a couple of financially tumultuous years.
Justices of the Peace are set to vote on the annual operating budget in a meeting that starts at 7 p.m. Monday in the upstairs courtroom at the Crawford County Courthouse, 300 Main St., Van Buren.
Prior to that session, the Quorum Court’s personnel committee meets at 6:30 p.m. and the budget committee meets at 6:45 p.m.
The budget panel agenda includes a request from county Judge Chris Keith to add $6,000 to the county general fund “for retaining legal fees on 1st Amendment lawsuit.”
Multiple issues have had big impacts on the county’s financial situation in the last couple of years. They include:
A financial payout to the District 6 Rural Fire Department due to a 2019 lawsuit decided in 2023.
Two lawsuits sparked by the county’s change (now reversed) in how its library system handles LGBTQ-related books.
A paperwork fumble that meant the county lost out on about $3 million in sales tax revenue last year.
Going into 2025, costs from the pair of library-related lawsuits are ongoing and likely will require more taxpayer dollars.
FIRE DISTRICT SUIT
The county’s District 6 Rural Fire Department board voted in April 2019 for the squad to become a fire protection district.
According to changes in Arkansas law that year, after the board submitted the notice to the Quorum Court, the county then had 60 days to approve it.
That never happened.
In November 2019, District 6 filed a lawsuit in Crawford County Circuit Court alleging that Crawford County, its Quorum Court and then-county Judge Dennis Gilstrap failed to approve the request.
District No. 6, located at 1022 Pleasant Valley Road in Van Buren, initially asked for $160,000, according to court filings.
Court documents in the case indicate that the fire squad was “entitled as a matter of law to conversion into a statutory fire protection district effective no later than June 23, 2019.”
The lawsuit alleged that the county “must grant the petition.”
Becoming a fire protection district allowed the rural squad to collect property taxes to support its operations.
In a summary judgment decision in September 2023, Judge Marc McCune ruled in favor of the fire district and ordered the county to pay $221,273 plus interest as provided for by law, according to court records.
Crawford County appealed the case but did not prevail. Court documents show the county paid the damages by June 25 this year.
LIBRARY LAWSUITS
Before the end of 2024, Crawford County will have spent at least $400,000 fighting a pair of lawsuits over its late 2022 and early 2023 change in how the Crawford County Library System catalogues LGBTQ-related library books.
Litigation already has resulted in the county rescinding the new policies but its sparring in federal court is not over.
Pressure on the Quorum Court at the end of 2022 from residents who spoke out about displays of LGBTQ-themed books in the system libraries led to the creation of a “social section” of books in early 2023.
Those volumes that were related to gay issues were marked with green stickers and collected into a certain portion of shelves.
As a result, two lawsuits related to the issue were filed in 2023 in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Arkansas.
The first is Virden v. Crawford County, with three local mothers as plaintiffs who alleged the county’s treatment of LGBTQ-related books violated their First Amendment rights.
After a summary judgment in their favor Sept. 30 this year by Judge P.K. Holmes III, the Virden plaintiffs filed in court to have Crawford County, as defendants, pay their legal costs.
In civil rights cases such as this one, plaintiffs who prevail can seek “a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs,” according to 42 U.S. Code 1988.
Federal Judge Timothy L. Brooks must decide whether the county will pay the plaintiffs’ more than $121,500 legal bill.
The county is fighting the amount of the plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs.
The second lawsuit regarding the library books involves the Fayetteville library, other libraries and book sellers in Arkansas. Defendants are Crawford County and county Judge Chris Keith and the prosecuting attorneys in Arkansas’ 28 judicial districts.
It centers on two sections of Act 372, the new Arkansas law on school and library materials.
The last action on that case was Brooks’s cancellation Oct. 29 of all future hearings on the matter. What action is next — and the kind of wild card that will mean for Crawford County’s budget — remains to be seen.
The county’s cost figures thus far between the two library-related cases include:
$40,678.50: Severance for ousted library director.
$240,735.05: Legal defense fees, so far, in the Virden v. Crawford County case lost by the county.
$121,558.31: Plaintiffs’ fees so far in the Virden case (if Brooks orders the county to pay the costs).
$118,300: Legal defense fees, as of Nov. 15, in the Fayetteville Public Library et al v. Crawford County, Arkansas et al, Act 372 case.
That adds up to a potential of more than $525,000 that the library book controversy may cost county taxpayers.
SALES TAX REVENUE
The upcoming new chapter on Crawford County’s financial health comes on the heels of the county’s loss of about $3 million after it was unable to collect sales tax for three months last year.
Local officials failed to file the necessary paperwork with the state, said Scott Hardin, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.
In May 2022, Crawford County residents voted to continue a 1% county sales tax from Sept. 30, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2031.
Last year, according to Hardin, officials in Crawford County needed to file paperwork notifying his department of a change in its sales tax rate by July 3, 90 days before it was to take effect.
Because that was not done, Hardin said, the county could not collect any revenue from the sales tax from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2023.
Keith said revenue from the tax is divided between the county and the nine municipalities in the county based on population.
The county received more than $4.3 million from its side of the tax in 2022, according to Keith.
