Sondra E. Smith
Courtesy
Fayetteville City Clerk Sondra Smith was recently elected as president of the Arkansas City Clerks, Recorders, and Treasurer’s Association, a statewide organization that works to improve the administration of local government.
Smith was previously vice president of the group, and has served as treasurer and secretary in years past. She has also served as chair of the group’s nominations and clerk of the year committees.
She replaces Dumas City Clerk Johnny Brigham.
Smith was first elected as Fayetteville City Clerk/Treasurer in 2003, and has since assisted in organizing the Arkansas Municipal Clerks Institute annual training, which has been held several times in Fayetteville.
From a city news release:
Sondra’s philosophy of transparent government makes her an essential part of the City of Fayetteville. She has a strong focus on and developed a records retention schedule and electronic archive of documents. During her tenure as City Clerk/Treasurer, Sondra and her team started maintaining a portion of the City’s website, installed a document imaging system for electronic archiving of records, updates and maintains the City of Fayetteville Policy and Procedure manual, maintains the Code of Ordinances for the City, coordinates elections, and developed and implemented record retention policies and procedures in accordance with State law. Her office maintains historical research of our city. She has embraced social media to communicate with the public. She has participated in our successful efforts of live broadcasts of meetings on the Fayetteville Government Channel, live web streaming of meetings on the Granicus system through the City’s website and in archiving these meetings for efficient retrieval in digital format to assure complete accuracy of both the procedures, the commentary from the public, and positions taken by the Mayor and City Council.
In addition, Sondra and her team have gone beyond the call of duty to make information available to the public. Every week they post advance copies of the agenda for the City Council Agenda Sessions and the twice-monthly meetings of the City Council. These are distributed both by e-mail to the press and the public and are posted on the City’s website, as well as video message boards in City Hall. Furthermore, these advance agendas include not only the items to be discussed at Council meetings, but also the complete files and documentation supporting each agenda item, assuring that our citizens have full access to the complete documentation for each item provided to the City Council for their review and decision-making. If anyone wishes to review a previous meeting of the Council, there are not only City Clerk minutes, but the City of Fayetteville has an active on-demand service in which the Clerk’s agendas are “live”, in that online review of any item on a City Council agenda will automatically pull-up the point in the video of the meeting in which that specific item is being discussed by the City Council.
