Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry said he believes that Jacob Coburn, the city’s building inspector and code enforcement officer, doesn’t need another employee to help him with his workload.

Coburn apparently disagrees, and the topic was discussed at the Eureka Springs City Council’s regular meeting Monday, Nov. 13, at The Auditorium.

The discussion was added to the meeting’s agenda at the request of council member David Avanzino, who said there is “an enormous amount of work” that Coburn, who apparently wasn’t at the meeting, is responsible for and he wanted to discuss the option of bringing on a full-time or part-time employee to assist.

“Jacob’s fielding like 275 phone calls a week,” Avanzino said. “He’s averaging 35 to 40 inspections a week. Everything from fuel and gas, plumbing, electrical, commercial, pre-renovation, so forth and so on. The list is endless, 10 to 15 inspections a week for code enforcement violations. He’s averaging 10 to 11 hours a day, which is 55 to 60 hours per week. The number of permits since he’s come on board is 297 with a revenue of approximately $42,000. The inspections on existing buildings are not quick inspections. Most of the time, they’re change of occupancy, change of uses as well as increase of occupancy.

“This is just it’s a lot of work for one person and I think he’s doing a great job. I do think that we need to give him some assistance. I don’t think that when we brought in the new building inspector that we realized the amount of work that was being done or that needed to be done. And here we are with all this work on one person.”

Council member Steve Holifield added: “You didn’t even mention the tree approvals.”

Berry told council members that he wants to wait until the city has its budget meeting to discuss the issue. He also said that Coburn has come to him regarding adding another position, but he didn’t feel it was warranted at this time. Further, the mayor reminded council members that the police department is assisting with code enforcement, and Coburn has missed “approximately a month of work,” since he’s been employed attending classes.

“Those classes aren’t going to be continuous,” Berry said. “… Those are a requirement that I set on him so he can become licensed, so he’s going to have those courses taken off him and he’ll have another 160 hours, a month, to do work. We’ve talked about this, [finance director] Michael [Akins] and I, because [Coburn] came to me and I told him that we were going to wait on it. He didn’t like my answer so all of a sudden he comes to city council to get another answer. He went to [Akins] … too.

“That’s the reason why I would like to wait until we get into our budget to discuss this. I’m not convinced. The city of Berryville, which has two times the population and has twice the building permits that we have, only has one person doing their work. … [Coburn]’s doing a lot of work and has done some good work, but I’m still not convinced that we’re at that point yet.”

Council member Melissa Greene said she agreed with Berry that the issue should be discussed during the budget meeting but she reminded council members that Eureka Springs is unique with the tourism factor that keeps things on Coburn’s plate.

“A lot of his code enforcement has to do with tourism, CUPs, things that Berryville does not have,” Greene said. “And I agree, I worked with the building inspector over in Berryville and he gets around pretty good, but he doesn’t have the same issues that we have.”

Berry replied: “When we’re talking about inspections, we have the fire marshal who is supposed to be doing a lot of these inspections with us.”

Akins then told council members his thoughts on the situation, saying he has had more than one discussion about the topic with Coburn.

“He’s came to me a couple of times and talked to me about it, and I’ve asked him repeatedly to give us stats, give us information on actually what he’s doing,” Akins told council members. “He never provides that to me. I said, ‘show us, last year we did this many and this year we’re doing this many,’ and he’s never provided us with any information.

“Like listening to the stats tonight, that’s the first we’ve heard of any stats because he’s not given us any stats.”

Akins told council members that Coburn “has a tendency to go down rabbit holes that take him a long way out that aren’t really the focus of what he’s supposed to be doing.”

“And when you combine that with all of the classes that he’s taken,” Akins said. “I don’t know if you’ve been in his office but he has his wall of fame that has all of his certificates on it that he’s done.

“And whenever I talk to him about it, it’s really more heartburn that other people have assistants, that other departments have assistants, and he doesn’t. He feels he deserves it. I have seen nothing from him that has shown me that to justify that.”

Akins went on to say that Coburn recently requested spending $5,000 to $7,000 a year on modules on a new city website that will assist him with his work.

“I went to him and I said ‘look, you’re talking about needing an assistant … Are these modules going to help you to where a lot of this is going to go online and you won’t need these assistants?” Akins said. “He said ‘yes, yes, yes, oh definitely, if we can just get these modules, this is going to take my workload off. This is going to make it so much better because so much of this stuff is going to be able to be done online.’

“So we agreed to that, we brought it to council, we got the modules approved and immediately he wanted an assistant again.”

Akins said he agreed Coburn’s work has led to an increase in revenue for the city.

“There has been an increase in revenue that he’s brought in … that is legitimate,” Akins said. “…I tried to explain to him, show us like how many of this you’re doing, how long it takes, what’s your day full of, and he’s never presented us with anything like that.

“…He’s come to me three times in the last three months, four months, wanting to talk about an assistant. Whatever his conversation with the mayor, that’s between them, but he just came to me wanting me to go to the mayor and force the mayor to give him an assistant and I told him no, that was a conversation between he and the mayor because the mayor is the CEO of the city and he’s the one that makes the hiring and firing decisions and he’s the one that decides whether or not we need assistance or whether we need more people in our departments.

“So, I directed him back to the mayor. He didn’t like that answer. So, that’s why he’s coming around to you guys and asking for stuff.”

Council member Harry Meyer said he felt it was time for Coburn to give monthly reports about his activity at council meetings.

“I think at this point we need to get a report from him every month, have him come in and give us a report on what he’s done,” Meyer said. “And, by the end of the year, give us a yearend report on the whole works so we can tell during budget time.”

Akins questioned what the workload will look like once a current backlog of projects is complete.

“We know there were years that things didn’t get done, so [Coburn] got that backlog and he’s trying to get over that hump,” Akins said. “But, once he gets over that hump, where are we at? What is his job going to consist of? We don’t have that many new subdivisions coming in like a lot of cities. We don’t have that many new construction or commercial facilities coming in, strip malls, things like that that are going to require a lot of extra work. Once he gets over that backlog, where are we at?

“… How many inspections are we going to have? Once he kind of gets caught up, what’s it going to be? And that’s not anything I can get from him whenever I’ve ask him for those kind of numbers. He won’t provide me with those. So, it’s kind of I’ve pushed back as much as I can.

“I can say ‘put this report together, submit this to the mayor, show this to the mayor. Maybe you can sit down and explain to him where you’re at.’ But he doesn’t want to do it that way. He wants to go on the fringes and go on the outside and try to just convince everybody that he needs an assistant.”

Berry responded: “The report that you just read, Mr. Avanzino, is the first time I’ve seen that and we’ve been asking for that report for a long time.”

The council ended up unanimously voting to require Coburn to provide monthly reports at council meeting.

In council member comments, Greene said she looks forward to revisiting the issue during budget meetings, but said she appreciated the hard work that Coburn has done.

“I don’t know that I’m going to vote to give Jacob an assistant, but I do want to say that in many, many years in city government, the biggest, biggest complaint I’ve gotten for years is code enforcement, bad building,” Greene said. “And now, people are stopping me and saying ‘oh, thank you for hiring this guy.’

“We finally have someone that they feel like likes doing the job so I do want to have a good rapport and I do want to keep up the good work.”