Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Aug. 12, 2025 – A Craighead County committee on Monday voted to advance to the quorum court an ordinance that would authorize a study on combining the offices of County Treasurer and Collector.
The study would determine how effective consolidating the two offices would be.
Its findings would then go before the quorum court, which, if found to be effective, would result in the court proposing another ordinance to combine the offices. This would go before voters in the 2026 election.
Ultimately, if passed, the offices would be combined Jan. 1, 2030.
While presenting the ordinance to the Public Services Committee, Craighead County Judge Marvin Day said the idea was inspired by other counties with consolidated offices, such as Sebastian, Johnson, Lafayette, and Monroe counties.
He said he wanted to move forward with the idea after speaking with Sebastian County Judge Steve Hotz, formerly Sebastian County’s collector/treasurer, who said it was a cost-saver.
“There’s a lot of waste, and you can save the costs of an elected official. You’re not going to lose any employees in reality,” Day said. “You look at that salary and benefits, that round number is around $150,000 a year. And, that’s real money in my house, and in all of our offices.”
Day said this would not pit current elected officials against each other. With the ordinance not going into effect until 2030 if approved, Day said it would give people considering running “plenty of runway” to know the offices were being combined.
Justice of the Peace for District 13 Kevin Williams asked what checks and balances would be in place regarding signing off on checks. Currently, officials in both offices must sign off on checks.
“I’m bringing this up because we’ve been caught in this trap,” Williams said. “So, when you combine that, is there stuff going to be in place that more than one person has to sign off on them checks and things?”
Day replied that the study would examine situations such as that. He added that there was currently no estimate on study costs.
Craighead County tax collector Wes Eddington said the combination of offices could be done, citing similar structures in other counties. However, he was concerned about business personal taxes, saying they were difficult to collect.
“Business personal is very hard. There’s a lot of businesses that take care of business and pay their taxes, but the ones that don’t, it’s not fair for the ones that do pay and let the other people skate by, and I am a little concerned about that.”
Eddington is the current county tax collector, while the county treasurer position is held by Terry McNatt.
The next quorum court meeting is Aug. 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the Craighead County Courthouse Annex, located at 511 Union St. The meeting will be livestreamed on the county’s official Facebook and YouTube pages.
