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CITY OF BARLING v. FORT CHAFFEE REDEVELOPMENT12/6/2001
In this appeal, arising from a dispute between the City of Barling and the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority, we are asked to resolve the question of who has the authority to designate the use of 7,390 acres that were formerly a part of Fort Chaffee, but which Barling annexed in a series of three elections in 1981, 1982, and 1991. Before proceeding to the legal issues presented by the appeal, a brief recitation of the facts of Fort Chaffee's history is necessary.
In 1941, the United States Department of the Army purchased over 76,000 acres in Sebastian County for the establishment of Camp Chaffee. During its history, Camp Chaffee became Fort Chaffee, and it has served a variety of functions during the past six decades. It was a training base during the Korean War, a relocation center for Vietnamese refugees at the close of the Vietnam War, a relocation center for Cuban refugees in the early 1980s, and a temporary location center for the Joint Readiness Training Center in the 1990s. In September of 1997, Fort Chaffee was closed by the United States government, and, pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 22-7-301 (Supp. 1999), the State of Arkansas accepted legislative jurisdiction over the Fort Chaffee property. The cities of Barling, Fort Smith, and Greenwood, as well as Sebastian County, formed the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority (the "FCRA"), an Arkansas Public Trust, to conduct a comprehensive study of all issues related to the closure and redevelopment of the base. Authorized representatives of Barling, Fort Smith, Greenwood, and Sebastian County signed and agreed to be bound by the terms of the Trust Indenture. In 1997, the Arkansas General Assembly "acknowledged" and "endorsed" the Trust as the entity to prepare and implement a comprehensive plan for the optimal use of the property. Act 1201 of 1997, § 14, codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 12-63-103(a) & (b) (Repl. 1999).
In June of 1999, the United States Department of Defense recognized the Trust as the entity to implement the redevelopment plan at Fort Chaffee. In August of 1999, the Trust completed a Comprehensive Reuse Plan for a 7,390 acre portion of the Fort Chaffee. On June 30, 2000, the Trust entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of the Army whereby it was agreed that a 5,235 acre portion of the 7,390 acres would be conveyed to the Trust with the remainder being conveyed at a subsequent time. The City of Barling had annexed 13,720 acres of
the Fort Chaffee property in three annexations, which occurred in the years 1981, 1982, and 1991, and the 7,390 acres covered in the Comprehensive Reuse Plan are located in these annexed areas. In 2000, Barling passed numerous zoning ordinances that affected the Fort Chaffee property, and which the Trust alleged severely conflicted with the amended Comprehensive Reuse Plan. The conflicts were essentially instances where Barling had zoned park/open space or residential areas that FCRA had designated for public facilities or industrial use.
The Trust filed suit against Barling on September 5, 2000, alleging that the 1981, 1982 and 1991 annexations were void ab initio for numerous reasons. It further sought a declaratory judgment that Barling's land use ordinances were ultra vires and void to the extent that the ordinances regulated Fort Chaffee property. The Trust also sought to enjoin Barling from exercising legislative jurisdiction over the Fort Chaffee property; enforcing or threatening to enforce Barling city ordinances within the boundaries of that property; collecting taxes, fees, or assessments from the FCRA; and annexing any portion of the Fort Chaffee property without prior approval of the FCRA.
Barling initially filed a motion for
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