Lifetime appointments are hard to come by. Unless you’re the Pope. Or a Supreme Court justice. Or maybe a member of the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission.

I’m being a little facetious, I hope. But maybe only a little.

By law, of course, CAPC commissioners are appointed for only four years, with the exception of two city council members who are appointed to the CAPC by the council and serve at the will of the council. But most of the current group of commissioners seem to view such limits as no more than annoying suggestions, and they seem to have come up with a way to get around all that.

It’s really a simple scheme. The CAPC essentially appoints its own members from a pool of applicants, with the Eureka Springs City Council rubber-stamping those appointments. But in order for an applicant to be appointed, that applicant has to be nominated by a commissioner and approved by a majority vote of the commission. If a sitting commissioner’s term expires but no one is nominated and approved to fill the commissioner’s seat, that commissioner simply remains in the seat. Ostensibly, forever.

So, by refusing to nominate or vote in favor of any of the applicants, the sitting commissioners — most of them, anyway — serve their own purpose of remaining in place to wield the authority that they seem to so desperately cling to.

In one sense, it’s not exactly Machiavellian. There’s not a lot of sophistication going on here. But there is certainly a power play happening and someone needs to intercede and do something about it.

That someone won’t be Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry. If I had a nickel for every time Berry says “it’s up to the commission,” I’d probably spend it on his city’s tourism tax that funds the CAPC to the tune of $1.5 million or more a year. Eureka Springs’ city commissions are, for the most part, a laughingstock. But to hear Berry tell it, that doesn’t have anything to do with the mayor’s office. The commissions are “autonomous,” he says, at least in public.

It likely won’t be the Eureka Springs City Council that stops the madness that is the CAPC, either. There are certainly some capable council members at the table, but not enough. And there are a couple of dug-in CAPC apologists — Harry Meyer, whose primary contribution to council business seems to be cackling like a deranged hyena any time one of his colleagues says something he disagrees with; and Melissa Greene, who admits to gossiping about CAPC staff and who once complained that something was “leaked” to the press when she herself brought it up in open session.

I’ve long been critical of the CAPC. As I’ve said before, I believe it is comically inept at best, intentionally corrupt at worst. And the main culprits are commission chair Jeff Carter and his predecessor Carol Wright, who remains on the commission even though her appointed term expired last week. Wright holds the at-large seat, which is filled by mayoral appointment. Don’t hold your breath waiting on Berry to do the right thing and get Wright as far away as possible from city government. Then there’s commissioner James DeVito, whose seat also expired last week. The commission itself is responsible for nominating and approving someone to replace DeVito, but he isn’t in any hurry to go. One way to avoid being replaced is to refuse to pick your own replacement.

All this might be legal, although I’m not so sure. But it sure isn’t right and it isn’t in the best interests of the citizens of Eureka Springs. That should matter, but the sad truth is it doesn’t. The sadder truth is, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. • • •