Share This Article
The Baxter County Budget Committee declined to fund a proposed playground on the courthouse lawn this past Thursday, ending a request from downtown merchants that drew a standing-room crowd of angry residents and raised pointed questions about how the project had been quietly planned for more than a year without public knowledge.
The Baker District Merchants Association, led by co-founder Russell Tucker, asked the committee to contribute $56,000 toward a $106,000 playground that would have sat on the corner of the Baxter County Courthouse grounds — directly across from Rapp’s Barren Brewery, which Tucker co-owns. The Baker District had already secured $50,000 in commitments at County Judge Kevin Litty’s direction before bringing the request to the committee.
Tucker arrived with one rendered drawing, one schematic, an itemized cost breakdown and a contract – though the price of a surrounding fence had been omitted from the figures.
The setting matters
The Baxter County Courthouse square is one of the busiest intersections in Mountain Home. Highway 62, one of the region’s primary east-west arteries, runs directly alongside it. Traffic circulates around the square in one direction, passing through two three-way stops. Angled parking spaces line the perimeter, with trucks and passenger vehicles backing in and out throughout the day. On weekends and evenings, when the Baker District’s open-container entertainment zone is active, foot traffic swells and alcohol is a regular feature of the scene. Tucker was not wrong that crossing Highway 62 on foot is dangerous — it is, and most locals know it. But opponents argued that the same traffic environment that makes the intersection treacherous for adults makes a playground on the courthouse lawn exponentially more hazardous when children are added to the equation.
The meeting, which Litty moved from the county’s third-floor conference room to the second-floor courtroom, turned contentious almost immediately.
Litty opened by taking aim at the Mountain Home Observer, accusing the media outlet of spreading misinformation. The Observer’s pre-meeting coverage consisted of a single social media post noting the time and location of the meeting and describing the topic as giving the Baker District $60,000 in tax dollars to assist in building a playground. The Baker District was, in fact, asking the Budget Committee to approve $56,000 in county funding — a vote that, if passed, would have gone to the full Quorum Court for final approval. Litty argued he had only asked whether the committee would accept the project if Tucker raised the donations, not that the county was writing a check outright.
Litty then attempted to explain how the idea originated, describing it as little more than an informal conversation he had with Tucker roughly 18 months earlier.
“He brought it up to me,” Litty said. “I said, I think if you can get a donation, a contribution to this project, you may make it happen. He said, will $50,000 make that happen? I said, if you can get that, I’ll take it. I’ll call them and see what they say. So he takes it out of my hands at that point.”
Litty also told the committee that playgrounds on courthouse grounds were not unheard of elsewhere in Arkansas.
“It’s not uncommon around the state of Arkansas for courthouses to have these types of playgrounds,” Litty said.
It was a claim that would not go unchallenged. Kevin Bodenhamer, speaking on behalf of the Baxter County Historical Society, whose family has lived in Baxter County since 1871, later told the committee that Gary Clements, an architect who has visited roughly 50 of the state’s 75 county courthouses, had never seen a single one with a playground on its grounds.
Bodenhamer asked him a simple question: had he ever seen a playground on courthouse grounds?
“Not one,” Bodenhamer said. “He’s been to two-thirds of the courthouses in this state and he has never seen a single one with a playground on it.”
Litty told the committee he would let the matter either die or survive on its merits and did not advocate further for the project.
The explanation did not hold up well against what was sitting on the table in front of the committee. Tucker had not arrived with a vague idea. He had also raised $50,000 in private commitments — exactly the threshold Litty said he had set during that informal conversation.
Before public comment opened, at least one committee member raised a question that cut to the heart of the proposal: the Baker District, by design and by reputation, was an adult-oriented entertainment zone. Was a children’s playground really the right fit for it? The same member also noted that a new all-inclusive playground had recently been built nearby, one that could reasonably be considered within the Baker District’s own footprint.
One resident stood and asked directly how the public was supposed to stay informed about decisions being made between the county judge and outside groups, and whether the Baker District held public meetings that residents could attend.
“Can you tell us, the public, how do we find out what’s coming, whether it be the historical district, the economic development side? So we don’t show up at the last minute,” the resident said.
The answer was no. The Baker District Merchants Association is a private membership organization. Its meetings are not open to the public.
Litty also floated a proposed funding mechanism, suggesting the county could temporarily draw from its general fund with a future payment from Baxter Regional Medical Center to the county health department covering the cost. What Litty did not address was that the general fund is built primarily from property tax revenue, meaning the money would, in fact, be coming from county residents’ tax dollars, not from sales tax generated by the Baker District.
Tucker, who addressed the committee after Litty, acknowledged the packed courtroom had not been part of the plan.
“I was hoping that we were going to be having a conversation around the table, and it would be a little bit more conversational,” Tucker said.
He pressed forward anyway, framing the Baker District’s merchants as the engine behind downtown Mountain Home’s revival and the county’s economic health.
“We are the boots on the ground,” Tucker said. “We’re the ones interacting with the vast majority of consumers in downtown, both locals and tourists alike. Out of the top three things we hear requested, a place for children to be able to play is one of them. It continues to make our downtown more inclusive to the widest demographic possible.”
Tucker told the committee he had spoken with four business owners before the meeting and found that, collectively, those four businesses alone had collected more than $360,000 in county taxes over the past five years.
“I only bring up those tax revenue dollars to highlight the important fact that the people that want this are contributing a significant amount of money to the tax base of this county,” Tucker said.
He argued the playground —designed for children ages 2 to 11 and measuring roughly 40 by 32 feet— would extend the time families spend in the district by two to three times, increasing sales and, by extension, tax revenue. He cited national research suggesting that for every dollar invested in a park, four dollars in economic activity returned.
Tucker also addressed the district’s role in preserving the historic buildings that line the square, and was direct about what made that preservation possible.
“That only happens if business is there,” Tucker said. “That doesn’t happen just out of the goodness of your heart. The ability to continue to reinvest, to maintain these buildings, to remodel and refurbish and preserve them, that only happens from revenue that’s generated from businesses.”
He acknowledged the courthouse lawn was not ideal but said merchants had little choice.
“The location’s not ideal, but we’re limited with what we have in downtown,” Tucker said. “This is all that we have to really work with to be able to create a space for children to play.”
Tucker also pushed back on safety concerns about traffic, noting the intersection along Highway 62 was already a hazard with or without a playground.
“I don’t know if anybody’s ever tried to cross Highway 62 here, but it’s sketchy at best as an adult, and it’s scary as I’ll get out with your kids,” Tucker said. “Kids are already playing down here on the courthouse, climbing on the steps — there’s a 15-foot drop to concrete below. What we’re trying to do is provide a safe avenue with equipment that has specifically been engineered for those children’s safety.”
Tucker added that the Baker District had secured commitments covering the fencing, which had not appeared in the original cost breakdown.
“We have commitments for the remainder of the balance of the whole play area, including the fencing, over $50,000 plus whatever the fencing costs,” Tucker said.
When asked directly whether any members of the Baker District opposed the playground, Tucker acknowledged some did but declined to elaborate.
“Does that answer your question?” Tucker said. “Hey, there’s some that are not in favor.”
Kyle Swallow, a co-owner of Rapp’s Barren, told the committee the playground was built around how families actually use the district, arguing that a designated space would make children safer, not less safe.
“Every park is on a street somewhere, that’s how we get to them,” Swallow said. “If we’ve got kids running around the square already, we give them a place to concentrate in a safe area. They’re a lot less likely to be running in amongst the cars.”
Duncan Clayton, co-owner of Nature’s Way, which has operated on the Downtown Square since 1978, made the same case about family behavior in the district.
“One shops, one sits with the kids,” Clayton said. “Rarely are you going to see a two, four or six-year-old on a playground by themselves.”
He also argued that the tourist revenue generated since 2019 was more than enough to justify the county’s contribution, and insisted no county resident’s tax dollars would actually be touched.
“The tourist tax revenue alone, from the people that have come here because of the improvements the city and businesses have made, that is more than enough in six years’ time to cover the cost of this,” Clayton said. “Not a penny from anybody that lives in the county that has spent money down here.”
Clayton also dismissed concerns about sex offenders as fear-mongering, arguing the safety risks raised by opponents were being exaggerated to kill a proposal that had clear community benefits.
Budget Committee Chairman Dennis Frank pushed back on Clayton’s tax argument. He told the committee that the county receives only 57 percent of the 1 percent sales tax collected within city limits, with 43 percent returned to the city, meaning the county’s actual share of those downtown sales tax dollars was considerably smaller than the merchants’ presentation implied. What none of the merchants had addressed was that those sales tax dollars existed only because customers— including local county residents— were spending money at their businesses in the first place.
Klay Killian, co-owner of Mountain Mystery Escapes and a lifelong Baxter County resident, said the need for a family-friendly space in the district was something he heard about constantly.
“I’m born and raised here. I live my business right up on Fifth Street. I’m a part of the Baker District community,” Killian said. “Every single day, people talk about how we don’t have things for kids, we don’t have things for people to do. Here’s a perfect opportunity.”
Killian also argued that the courthouse grounds already posed hazards that drew no similar scrutiny.
“My kids have been out here, and there’s a hole over there that they’ve almost fallen into, you’ve got just as much liability in that as in a playground with a soft, padded floor,” Killian said. “These businesses are people in this town and this county that have invested time, money, blood, sweat and tears in these buildings and these business ideas to provide more for everyone to do. I think some of your concerns, while they are valid, you’re also missing the point.”
Killian also took aim at the Baxter County Historical Society’s standing to question the use of county funds, pointing to the county’s ongoing financial support of the Randolph D. Casey House, the oldest remaining home in Mountain Home, which is maintained by the county and the Historical Society.
“Depending on what things have been spent on in the past, that’s in the past, it’s done,” Killian said. “We’re talking about preserving the area. How much does the Casey House bring back to the taxpayer? It’s a building that just sits there. I’ve seen it my whole life. It doesn’t benefit me, and I don’t think it benefits most people either.”
The public was not persuaded.
Justice of the Peace Dirk Waldrop, attending as a member of the public, addressed the committee and challenged the fundamental premise of the request.
“Why is it on the taxpayers to do this, to support private entities in this regard?” Waldrop said. “If you can raise the money, you can get $50,000 in commitments, then get $50,000 or more and raise it yourself.”
Waldrop said he had heard from constituents across the county in the days before the meeting and the response was nearly unanimous against the proposal.
“There are no metrics for this right now,” Waldrop said. “How much money is this going to generate, which will in turn generate sales tax revenues for the county? Nobody knows that.”
He added that residents who had made county roads a central issue during the recent election cycle were watching closely.
“The question was, why would we spend $60,000 on a playground when that money could be better spent fixing roads?” Waldrop said. “I understand that money won’t go to the Road and Bridge Department, and a lot of people don’t understand that, but those concerns are very real.”
Mountain Home Police Chief Eddie Griffin, who serves as a JP on the Budget Committee, told the committee he had a deep appreciation for what downtown merchants had accomplished, the Police Department, he said, was grateful for the transformation of the district. But he came at the proposal from a public safety standpoint, and what he saw gave him pause.
Griffin noted that multiple parks already existed within a quarter mile of the courthouse square. He also raised concerns about the county setting a precedent by directing funds toward one corner of Baxter County at the expense of others.
“It’s not anything against the downtown district,” Griffin said. “I’m hugely appreciative of what merchants have done down there. But if we spend money here, somebody might say there are a lot of kids out in Midway, why don’t we put a park out there?”
Griffin said he would be considerably more open to the idea if the Baker District raised all of the money itself rather than asking the county to cover the remaining balance.
John Crain, a retired attorney who addressed the committee on behalf of the Baxter County Historical Society, raised a foundational objection: the downtown district, he said, was never designed with children in mind.
“When the Baker District was formed, it was for adult entertainment, the consumption of alcohol,” Crain said. “That’s what it was designed for. That’s a merchants association, not a playground for kids.”
Tucker corrected him on one point: the Baker District is a private merchants association, not the Entertainment District, which is overseen by the City of Mountain Home. But Crain’s broader argument stood regardless of which entity held the designation, the framework that made the district what it is today was built around adult commerce, and the Entertainment District that drew visitors downtown was a city-administered zone explicitly designed for the consumption of alcohol in public.
That framing carried historical weight. Mountain Home was the first city in Arkansas to establish a downtown entertainment district, having pushed for the enabling legislation in the state legislature before the ordinance passed in 2019. The Mountain Home Commercial Historic District, which predated the entertainment zone and was a prerequisite for it, was itself created in part to allow downtown business owners to apply for state and federal preservation grants to help maintain their buildings. The entertainment district, by design, was built on top of a framework rooted in adult commerce.
Crain also pressed the committee on liability, warning that placing a playground near a heavily trafficked highway intersection and expecting parents to supervise children while they shopped was a scenario that invited lawsuits. He challenged Litty directly on the immunity argument, telling the committee that nothing in Arkansas code extended park immunity to county governments and that the county appeared to be applying a protection designed for cities to itself without legal foundation.
Bodenhamer told the committee his uncle was the county judge when the courthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. To the Historical Society, the courthouse grounds are not simply a patch of grass, they are hallowed ground, the site of more than 80 years of civic life, public gatherings, veterans’ memorials and community history that cannot be rebuilt once it is disrupted.
“You’re surrounded by the history of this county,” Bodenhamer said. “All the elections that used to be held here, people would gather on the grounds outside and listen to the results. When the third floor was the jail, inmates would holler at their family members from the windows. There’s history everywhere around us.”
Bodenhamer rejected Killian’s shot at the Casey House, arguing that historical preservation was not a passive drain on public funds. Historical tourism was on the rise, he said, and the courthouse grounds and the broader historic district were a draw for visitors precisely because they had been protected. The Mountain Home Commercial Historic District, he noted, was the foundation that made the Baker District possible in the first place, the merchants’ own entertainment zone could not have been created without it. Bodenhamer also told the committee that some members of the Baker District itself were opposed to the playground, a detail Tucker had sidestepped when asked directly.
Bodenhamer pressed Litty on whether the county was prepared to become a park-funding entity.
“How many parks does the county have?” Bodenhamer asked. “Are we really getting into the park business here?”
Bodenhamer stopped short of opposing a playground entirely but said the courthouse lawn was the wrong location. He and others floated alternative sites during the meeting, including the lot where the old First Baptist Church once stood, which offered more space and fewer complications. The question of whether any alternative location had been seriously explored by Litty or the Baker District before the courthouse lawn proposal was presented was never answered.
Opponents also raised the question of who would be responsible for maintaining the playground once it was built. Because the courthouse sits on county property, the burden of ongoing upkeep, and the annual budget line that came with it, would fall to the county, not the Baker District.
“I just don’t think it needs to be located on the grounds around this courthouse,” Bodenhamer said. “Maintain some green space. It shouldn’t be cluttered.”
Jennifer Baker, a Mountain Home City Council member who attended in her capacity as a Baxter County Historical Society board member, also opposed the location while acknowledging the district’s accomplishments.
“My concern is not so much the playground,” Baker said. “It’s the location, because it is hallowed ground. It’s on the historic register.”
Regina McMillan, a lifelong Baxter County resident and nurse, challenged the county’s role in the project from the start.
“Why is it falling on the county when it’s in the city?” McMillan said. “The city has a budget of $2.7 million. We didn’t get to vote on the Aquatic Center. Why should we be doing anything in the city?”
McMillan then turned to child safety, raising concerns about the district’s proximity to known sex offenders.
“As a nurse, the liability of having these children on the playground and the number of sex offenders we have in this county is astronomical,” McMillan said. “They’re going to be sitting in their cars, and they’re going to be watching these children because mama’s in the store picking out shoes. These children are going to be left unattended.”
She continued on:
“These kids can be snatched up and gone before you even breathe out,” McMillan said. “Parks are made for parents sitting in the park, glancing up every once in a while, not shopping. It’s still taxpayer money. It should go to a vote before the taxpayers.”
One woman in the crowd made a point the merchants had no clean answer for: not every parent in Mountain Home is attentive, and the assurance that every child at the playground would have a watchful adult nearby was wishful thinking. Children are left unsupervised in far safer environments across the city every day.
The merchants’ repeated insistence that parents would always be present also glossed over a more basic geographical reality. Three playgrounds already exist within roughly three blocks of the courthouse square: the original Hickory Park playground, the newer all-inclusive playground on the upper level of Hickory Park, and a playground behind the rectory of St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church, which sits directly across the street from Hickory Park. Families looking for a place for their children to play downtown are not without options.
JP Maryanne Edge, who holds a seat on both the Budget Committee and the Quorum Court, said she had been completely in the dark about the project until the meeting notice landed roughly 36 hours before the meeting was called to order. She also explained why the request could not have been routed through the county’s economic development committee as an alternative path to funding, the project did not meet that committee’s requirements, which center on revenue generation and job creation.
“I’m going to say 95 percent of what I’ve heard from the public is they do not want tax dollars spent on this,” Edge said.
“For a year and a half, I heard nothing about it until we got the notice to set this meeting,” she continued. “And I don’t live under a rock. I’m out there quite a bit.”
Edge also held up the packet Tucker had distributed—the renderings, the schematics, the itemized cost breakdown, the contract—and told the room it was not the product of a casual conversation.
JP Cameron Davis is not a member who typically lets proposals die in committee. By his own account, he prefers to see matters go before the full Quorum Court, where they can receive a broader airing. Thursday was an exception.
Davis warned the committee that placing a playground near a busy highway intersection created a specific legal liability known as an “attractive nuisance”— a doctrine under which a property owner can be held responsible when a hazardous condition draws children into danger. He told the committee he had a case that illustrated the risk, one that unfolded in Mountain Home in the summer of 1995, outside a Walmart store. It was, Davis said, among the worst things he had witnessed in his time on the court.
Baxter County Coroner Samuel Seamans was among the first to respond to that scene.
“There was a carousel out in front of Walmart, and a guy’s accelerator got stuck, he must have hit the gas instead of the brake,” Seamans said. “There was a baby sitting in a baby seat in front of the carousel. The car ran over the baby, just killed him. And then the little boy that was on the carousel, the car hit him and snapped his leg.”
The child was transported to a children’s hospital that night, where his leg was amputated.
“I’ll never forget, there were 150 Coke cans on the road,” Seamans said. “I thought, what in the world. Then I saw the car against the wall, and it was just… oh my God. It was terrible.”
Griffin returned to the issue near the end of the meeting, warning the committee that approving the request would open a door the county could not easily close.
“Once we do this, what happens when the other cities in this county start asking us to help build a park?” Griffin said. “This is just getting the county into the park game. The county has never been in that. That’s a city thing.”
The committee voted unanimously against funding the request.
