(Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of podcasts and articles featuring the candidates running for Cleveland County Judge. The interview can be streamed on Apple Podcast, Spotify or over www.clevelandcountyherald.com)
RISON - Stephen McClellan of New Edinburg said his experience working in emergency management at the county and state level as given him insight into ways to find grant money to help improve Cleveland County.
McClellan is one of four candidates seeking the Republican nomination for Cleveland County Judge. The other three are Jim Houston of the Rye community, Rosemary Sinclair of the Staves community and Rickey Spencer of Kingsland.
Since there are no other candidates in the race, the winner of the Republican primary will be unopposed in the November general election. Early voting begins Feb. 17 with the primary election set for March 3.
McClellan said he is the 8th generation to call Cleveland County home. He is the son of Major and Connie McClellan. While his family farmed and had poultry houses, McClellan said his father worked for several years with the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department while his mother was a nurse.
A graduate of Rison High School, McClellan said he has had various jobs in his career, including a time when he was a supervisor for Millcreek Behavioral Health and worked as a sheriff's deputy. Much of his recent work history, however, has been with emergency management. He was previously the Cleveland County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) coordinator under the late County Judge Gary Spears, who was his uncle. He held the same position in neighboring Dallas County, and now works as a preparedness coordinator for the state.
McClellan said his job as a county OEM coordinator exposed him to many of the operations within county government.
"You wear multiple hats in a small county," he said. "I was the 911 coordinator. I was the fire services coordinator for Cleveland County. I dealt with all the (volunteer) fire departments' Act 833 money and things along those lines." Often times, he said his job was to find grant money to support those agencies. While serving as the Cleveland County OEM coordinator, McClellan said secured more than $5 million in funding to help bring fiber optic broad(see (continue from page 1) band to Kingsland and Rison, upgrade the 911 and public safety communications, secure extractors for every fire department in the county, and helped get mitigation money to address flooding issues along county roads.
Issues Facing County
McClellan said he believes there are "short-term" and "long -term" issues facing the county. He describes the short-term issues as things like roads and economic development. He says the long term issues are population loss and keeping more young people in the county. "In 2019, we went from an estimated 8,900 folks to an estimated 7,300 people for today," he said, noting that the average age in Cleveland County is now at 44. Economic developers said the counties with a median age between 32 and 38 are frequently associated with high growth and economic vibrancy.
"So that's an issue," McClellan said. "The main thing is trying to keep our children engaged with what we have here today to try to maintain our population.
"It's not just an issue of having babies - though that rate's down in the county - but it's an issue of being able to keep people, not just being a launching pad for people to go somewhere else," he added.
McClellan said one way to do that is to "keep the (local) spirit" alive by getting youth connected the area. "We need to involve our youth in our civic organizations here," he said. McClellan said he would favor putting something together similar to what the Arkansas Division of Emergency Services offers through its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. Under CERT, people are trained on ways they can take care of themselves in the aftermath of a major disaster when first responders are overwhelmed or unable to respond. McClellan said a similar type program can be set up through the local high schools to get youth engaged and learn more about their communities. By establishing that connection, he said he hopes it will persuade some of them to make Cleveland County their home, especially if the county is successful in creating some new jobs through economic development.
Roads
McClellan said he would like to go back to having a regular road report that as trademark under the late County Judge Gary Spears. The report appeared regularly in the Herald listing the roads and what kind of work had been done.
He said he wanted to be "open and transparent as far as where our county dollars are being spent." "We need to get every dollar of grant money we can get," he added. "I have a good track record of getting hazardous mitigation grants, and I've worked on unpaved road grants. Right now… we're missing grants cycles as it is already. If I'm county judge, that's one thing we're not going to do - we're not going to miss any grants periods, any submissions of intent, we're going to submit every one of them." McClellan said one of the last things he accomplished before leaving Cleveland County was to get a hazardous mitigation grant for the county roads.
"So my thing is, I want to use these grant programs in the future to try to help build out our roads," he said. McClellan said it currently costs about $300,000 or more to build about one mile of paved road.
McClellan said he would also like to find a more local source for gravel. He said some of the gravel being used now is from a pit in Dallas County near Tulip, close to the Hot Spring County line. He also said the gravel contains some large rocks that end up on top of the road.
McClellan said he has already spoken with property owners in Cleveland County that are interested in testing their gravel to see if it would be suitable for road use. By sourcing it inside the county, he said it would cut down on time and hauling cost.
McClellan said he also supported making sure county road workers are adequately trained to be able to do their job.
Investment Fund
McClellan said he prefers keeping the status quo when it comes to the county's $1.6 million investment fund.
"When Judge (Gary) Spears had put that money back to begin with was in case something was to happen, to make sure the county was solvent in case there was any kind of a disaster," he said.
For that reason, McClellan said he prefers to continue to leave the investment fund as it is with the interest supplementing the county general fund, which is the fund that supports all county departments outside the road department.
However, McClellan said he would like to see if there is a way to perhaps use some of the nearly $475,000 that has accumulated in the ambulance investment fund to find a ways to expedite response times for ambulance calls. He said one idea he looked into while in Dallas County was using a "half bus," essentially a scaled-down version of an ambulance, to spend time at various locations inside county on a rotational basis.
He said he would work with the county's ambulance contractor, EASI of Pine Blulff, to figure out a solution.
Economic Development
McClellan said there is only so much a county judge from a small county can do to help spur community and economic development.
He pointed out that he has served on the board of the Southeast Arkansas Economic Development District (SEAEDD) as well as the Central Delta Community Action Agency. Both of those agencies help bring funding to communities. McClellan said he helped bring the Central Delta headquarters to the former Bank of Rison building in downtown Rison when the organization was undergoing changes.
McClellan said the deployment of high-speed fiber optic internet service inside the county is a big plyus. "In this day, it is pivotal to have good broadband to get things done," he said. As county judge, McClellan said one of the roles he can play is to lobby businesses to come to Cleveland County. He said he is not opposed to having some short-term breaks on property taxes to help lure prospects to the county, though he is not a fan of long-term breaks for 20 to 30 years to life.
As for community development, McClellan said he likes the idea of pursuing more grants that help local fire departments and help build community centers.
Promoting Local Tourism
"We have a rich history here in Cleveland County as far as we have our Civil War history, our farming history, our timber, our history of everything," McClellan said about drawing visitors to the county. "But some of the biggest things we have going on in Cleveland County right now is what you guys are doing here Rison as far as Rison in the Fall goes," he said, McClellan also mentioned some of the activities being developed by there action groups in Kingsland, Rison, New Edinburg and Woodlawn that were formed under the Kickstart Cleveland County Community Development Initiative.
Campaign Pitch
"Cleveland County is my home. I've been here my whole life," he said. "I was born and raised here. I've worked here. I've tried to do a lot of things for the county while I was here before.
"There's a lot more things I want to do. There's a lot left undone and that's one of the main reasons of why I'm here today is because I want to see Cleveland County prosper. I want see us move forward. I want to see good things happen for the county," McClellan said.
"I have lasting results from some of the things I've worked on before here whether its 911 or roads or things like that. There's a lot of things I want to do," he added.
"I know the real world problems that go on here in Cleveland County, the issues we're going to have going forward whether that's PSAT consolidation or whether that's economic development or the road issues that we're having or will have the future. So that's the main thing.