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Mountain Home Mayor Hillrey Adams will serve four more years after no one filed to run against him.
Filing for the office closed Wednesday. Adams was the only candidate, settling the race before a single vote is cast in November.
He learned he was unopposed about two minutes after the deadline passed.
The timing handed Adams two milestones in two days. On Thursday morning, the family whose company built the Mountain Home Community Center surprised him with a bronze plaque bearing his likeness, honoring the project that has come to define his time in office.
Adams took office in January 2019. The new term begins in January 2027 and runs through 2030, and will be his third.
He announced his campaign in February at Hickory Park, standing beside the all-inclusive playground built after voters approved a parks sales tax in 2021.
“It’s truly been an honor to serve the people of Mountain Home the past seven years,” Adams said at the time. “I have enjoyed every single day.”
Voters approved the $36.2 million community center in March 2021 by 47 votes. The project is funded through a temporary half-cent sales tax for construction and a permanent quarter-cent tax for operations, and the temporary tax expires once the construction bonds are paid.
The city broke ground in December 2023 and opened the center earlier this year. It includes a 35,000-square-foot gymnasium with an indoor track, a natatorium with three pools, an outdoor aquatic center with a lazy river and splash pads, a 30,000-square-foot convention center and parking for 400 vehicles.
Use has run well past what the city projected. Parks and Recreation Director Daniel Baxley said Thursday the center has signed up 7,009 primary members, nearly three times the target for this point in the year.
Adams has consistently framed the parks work and the center as one effort aimed at young people.
“You have got to have things for kids to do and you have got to have opportunities,” Adams said during a construction tour last fall. “You have to take care of the kids.”
The parks push included a major overhaul of Hickory Park and moved through the rest of the city system. The community center at McCabe Park is the last major piece.
Adams was postmaster in Mountain Home before entering city politics. He lived in Jonesboro when he first ran for mayor, a point opponents raised at the time.
City Attorney Roger Morgan, who has worked with eight or nine mayors over 40 years, addressed that history in a video played at Thursday’s ceremony.
“I don’t think anyone, after all that the mayor has done for the city of Mountain Home, could ever question his loyalty or where his priorities lie,” Morgan said.
