Mayor Bill Johnson

PAGE 1OC TIMES, CRITTENDEN COUNTY ARK., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2018

Mayor Bill Johnson

MEMORIES———————–­

Continued from PagelOC

“The biggest thing I got excited about, we borrowed money from sanitation to make payroll at the utility,” said Johnson. “We were broke, in terrible shape. But we earned respect from all over Arkansas with the turnaround because we had good people there.

It contributed a lot financially to the city itself. It is a great asset.

It would have been a terrible mistake to sell it.”

After thirteen years, Johnson was fired from his utility general manager position by new Mayor A1 Boals in 1995 for what Johnson labeled political reasons. The termination launched a frustrated Johnson on a path to his third career move into the mayor’s seat himself against an estranged friend.

“To put it bluntly I got fired,” said Johnson. “That gave me the motivation. I had enjoyed it at the utility. I was told that it had nothing to do with operating the utility and that tremendously offended me. I think he fired me the first half week in office. That fired me up… he was my best man at my wedding 60 years ago. It ended up, we talked and worked out a lot of our differences just before he died.”

Johnson won election in 1999 and worked as mayor ever since.

He beat challengers in five straight elections.

“One election 1 ran against two former mayors, A1 Boals and Leo Chitman,” said Johnson.

The mayor has known the younger Assistant Utility Manager Ward Wimbish his whole Life.

Wimbish ran three departments for the city including economic development director before landing at the utility. He said the mayor’s reputation for high business acumen was earned with key decisions.

“When I was Economic Development Director in 2008 when the market crashed, everything was doom and gloom,” said Wimbish. “I went to him and asked should we cut back on our expenditures, or advertising he said no, now is the time to remind everybody what a great deal we are. We moved from local marketing to regional marketing.”

The mayor moved the city into global marketing too. Wimbish had counted the great number of Chinese freight cars in local rail yards.

“He sat down with me and said go get us some business,” said Wimbish. “I started going to China a couple times a year and we had delegations come here and he was always there to welcome them. But it all started with being open to something we’d never done before. If you ever had an idea that made sense, he was ready to engage on it.”

During Johnson’s last term the city moved forward on the economic development front building up its Friday-Graham rail spur with a Tiger Grant to include an International River and Rail Logistics Park on the south side of the city and creating an 1800-acre shovel ready Mega industrial site on West Interstate 40.

See MEMORIES on Page 11C