My Goals as Mayor:

I believe government should be your friend and facilitate the creativity of all our citizens to be creative, making it easy to get into business and do business here. You should feel that government listens to you and works for you.

I seek to lead city government in strategic preparation for deliberate growth. Thousands come through our doors but we must take care of our own people first, strengthening our community to be sustainable and able to grow our economic base, increasing not only tourism but diversifying.

Our Master City Plan is over 20 years old and must be updated. We must become strategic where we come together to unite in determining priorities and how we allocate existing resources. Let us choose deliberate growth that we’ve planned and prepared for. Let us embrace the technological tools that have come about in recent years to facilitate and accelerate what we can accomplish together.

We must create an environment that values our citizens first and engage all of our creativity for expanding our economic base. We must unify. We must come into full and complete transparency, create Digital City Hall, clarify roles and responsibilities, redefine policies and procedures, reexamine the budget, and bring a long-term perspective to our decisions with a focus on planning.

I am beholden to no special interest group nor established relationships of the past. I believe in operating for all of Eureka Springs, all of it, the entirety of the whole. I believe City Council meetings can change, and what values are there displayed. We must be future focused. We must come together. We must care about each other and each others’ children. We must care about the future and plan for it today in every area.

Let us decisively and deliberately move into a more Open Government, Government 2.0, government that’s extraordinary, and go forward to see Eureka Springs become increasingly renowned as a city of light, a center of creativity igniting creativity in those who come to us, a center of education, music, art, commerce, the healing arts, and all of us unified to create a model of highly responsive local government, functioning for the good of all of us equally.

Thank you.

Theodore Cottingham