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Sitting outside her Eureka Springs home, activist Carolyn Green holds up an official request-for-information form that she has filled out.

Vigilant Eureka Springs resident uses FOIA to make city better place

Elizabeth Caldwell, FOIArkansas Project

Carolyn Green, a Eureka Springs bed and breakfast owner, doesn’t remember how she first heard about the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

But the business owner-turned-local activist, who is a newly appointed city planning commissioner, remembers why she needed it.

About 10 years ago, before she had turned her own home on the upper historic loop into a bed and breakfast called the Garden of Eve, Green’s neighbor operated a bed and breakfast.

The neighbor had obtained a conditional use permit that allowed him to operate the hostelry — the same kind of permit Green uses to operate her Garden of Eve. When the neighbor got ready to sell his home, he tried to get the neighborhood rezoned into a commercial district.

Green and another neighbor fought it for a year and a half, and won. During the battle, Green found the city attorney would not give her information she sought, telling her he worked for the city, not the citizens, she recalled.

In searching for help, she called the attorney general’s office and talked with Robert Fisher, ombudsman.

“As a result of that, I did discover I had the right to go to any city official and get information. I didn’t know that before,” Green said.

Green, 67, a west Texas native who 18 years ago moved to the unique tourist town in the Ozark Mountains, describes herself as an environmentalist and preservationist. She believes tourism should be balanced with residents’ rights.

Green has used the FOI law many times in the last 10 years. In 1995, Green formed a citizens’ watch group to monitor police after allegations of “heavy-handed” tactics in shutting down a boisterous blues concert in Basin Park in 1994.

During that struggle, she found out she was entitled to see police arrest reports and used the law to discover that a person apparently received preferential treatment during an arrest.

Police Chief Paula Stitz was fired for general misconduct about a year later; Stitz has sued the city, alleging sex discrimination.

About four years ago, Green sued the city under the FOI law after discovering a group of businessmen was meeting with officials from the state Highway and Transportation Department over traffic situations in the city.

Green said the mayor wouldn’t reveal the businessmen’s names. Green felt the names should be revealed if the men were helping form policy that would affect the city.

Green said a judge ruled against her, saying she hadn’t proved her point.

In November, jewelry designer Beau Satori was elected mayor, in effect ousting the powers that had ruled the city for decades, she said.

Now, Green said, city hall “will move heaven and earth” to get information requested of it.

“That’s how it should be. If it’s not archived or in active use, they’re supposed to give it to me.

“It’s just terribly important. How can a community be run when there’s secret information. Then it’s a government elite,” Green said.

In July, Satori appointed Green to the city planning commission.

“He felt that I agreed with a good portion of where he was headed in making changes in the community,” Green said.

She would like to see the city develop a master plan.

“I believe in neighborhoods. I believe in rights of residents in a tourist town,” she said.

Green said the only problem she has run into, so far, is that the planning commission scheduled a special meeting at the same time another city commission was meeting.

The city has only one set of broadcast equipment, so citizens who usually tune into planning commission meetings were left out, she said.

“Even though it is not illegal, the mayor has assured me it will not happen again,” Green said.

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