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The Baxter County Quorum Court will move Tuesday to formally accept the county’s $180,000 share of an Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District recycling grant, money that will pay for new vehicles and equipment at the Baxter Day Service Center.
The emergency ordinance on the June 2 agenda would establish a new Recycling Grant Fund on the county’s books and split the $180,000 across three line items: $79,000 for a vehicle, $90,000 for machinery and equipment and $11,000 for small equipment.
Justices are scheduled to convene at 5:30 p.m. in the second-floor courtroom of the Baxter County Courthouse, with County Judge Kevin Litty presiding. Litty sits on the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District board alongside Mountain Home Mayor Hillrey Adams.
The vote follows months of work by Adams, who told community leaders at a May 14 roundtable that he started working on the distribution after discovering grant funds had accumulated in district accounts over five or six years without being disbursed.
“That money had accumulated in there,” Adams said. “About five or six years, and so we reached out to all the counties in the district and told them, tell us what you need on recycling.”
Adams worked through the request process with Litty and former Marion County Judge Jeff Langston. The district ultimately distributed a little over $500,000 across its member counties, which include Baxter, Boone, Carroll, Marion, Newton and Searcy.
Day center board member Kris Steelman told roundtable attendees the $180,000 will buy two vans, a refurbished forklift, a refurbished baler and cardboard trailers. All the equipment is refurbished except the trailers, which the center is still trying to source new.
The grant operates as a pass-through. The money flows to the county, which then pays vendors as day center leadership identifies the equipment to purchase.
The funding arrives at a critical moment for the nonprofit.
The Baxter Day Service Center has provided employment and developmental services for adults with disabilities since 1971. It processes about 2.5 million pounds of recyclable material a year from the Twin Lakes area and serves roughly 40 clients.
Executive Director Paul Neal laid out the financial picture for the Mountain Home City Council last fall when he requested $70,000 in annual city funding. The center reported five-year losses of $460,000, depleted cash reserves, $150,000 in SBA loans and $75,000 drawn against a $125,000 line of credit.
“Recycling is never going to be profitable in a market this size,” Neal told council members. “We’re just too small.”
Recycling generated $187,000 in revenue the previous year, but labor costs alone exceeded that by $40,000 to $50,000. Cardboard, which makes up about 80% of the volume the center handles, has been subject to volatile market prices.
Medicaid enrollment at the center has also declined, and Neal said reimbursement rates have not increased in more than 10 years. Those two revenue streams, recycling sales and Medicaid, have historically funded the center’s operations.
The center ended its curbside recycling pickup with Methvin Sanitation in 2025, citing contamination and staffing problems. It began charging commercial customers $40 to $200 a month for cardboard pickup, a change Neal said should generate about $50,000 a year. Roughly 150 of the center’s 200-plus commercial customers committed to the new fees.
“We hated to do it,” Neal said of the commercial charges. “We’ve kicked that around for years.”
Adams has urged the day center to focus on long-term sustainability, pointing to the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas as a model. The food bank stabilized its operations after bringing on a full-time development manager.
The county currently provides $52,000 in annual funding to the center, an amount that grew from less than $40,000 over Neal’s 20 years with the organization. Baxter County increased its contribution by nearly $20,000 two years ago.
Steelman and his wife Kristi previously established an endowment for the day center through the Twin Lakes Community Foundation.
Tuesday’s ordinance carries an emergency clause, meaning it takes effect immediately upon passage. The Quorum Court finds the new fund “is in the best interest of Baxter County” and necessary to properly track grant expenditures.
The fund will operate under standard county budgeting and audit regulations laid out in Title 14 of the Arkansas Code Annotated and the county’s Financial Management System, implemented under ACA § 14-21-101.
The day center is located at 1700 Rossi Road in Mountain Home.
