The Bottom Line: I guess $33,500 is considered just a drop in the thimble to --"cough cough"--some folks

Congratulations, Fort Smith.

Your Board of Directors just spent up to $33,500 on a national search firm so they could solemnly “discover” the man who was already warming the seat. Jeff Dingman, the acting administrator, the institutional continuity candidate, the one who never really left.

After the internal posting flopped, the finalist's parade, the public meet-and-greet, the dramatic last-minute withdrawals, and the carefully staged executive sessions, the 4-3 vote landed exactly where anyone paying attention always knew it would.

Call it a thorough process if that helps the conscience. The rest of us will call it expensive theater. First they tried the free version--post it on the city website, let HR handle it, avoid the cost of an outside firm. When that didn’t produce a sufficiently controllable outsider, they wheeled in Colin Baenziger & Associates for a nationwide hunt that somehow still delivered the safe internal pick.

The contract “not to exceed $33,500.” A relative bargain, really--especially if you’re the kind of director who can casually green-light more than two million dollars for waterslides that are still sitting on the ground next to Parrott (Pirate?) Island like abandoned carnival props.

Drop in the bucket. Pocket change for the privilege of looking deliberative.

There was never going to be a stranger in that office. Not when the real power prefers people it already knows how to dial. Outsiders ask inconvenient questions. They rearrange org charts. They sometimes decide the old ways aren’t good enough.

Insiders keep the machinery humming in the same direction, protect the same relationships, and make sure the right people stay comfortable. Star Chamber logic 101: never risk a chief executive you can’t manage by phone after hours.

And the timing is almost artistic. Petitions to change the form of city government have been turned in with more than enough extra signatures to make the question difficult to quietly disappear. So install the administrator now. Give him a runway. Keep the current agenda moving and the cash flowing the preferred direction while the structural fight still simmers in the background.

Status quo doesn’t defend itself. It installs someone to do the defending while the mattress gets properly stuffed.

The city has its administrator. What it does not have is the slightest claim to integrity, transparency, or the trust of the people who actually fund this circus.

The process was never about finding the best possible leader for a city of nearly 90,000. It was about manufacturing consent for the outcome that had already been selected.

Business as usual in Fort Smith.

Did anyone with open eyes really expect anything else?