Terry Benham is a decision maker. After 20 years of heading campaigns and working in consulting, Benham knows his way around the board room. Now he’s looking to take that experience to the Benton mayor’s office.
After a career of helping others gain public office and impacting public policy, Benham is looking to try his hand as an elected official. “I felt like, at this point in time, that if the voters would give me an opportunity to serve that I had an obligation to go home and try to serve my community,” Benham says. “I think that’s ultimately the essence of public services – to have the option of being able to walk away from what you’re doing and serve your community for a period of time.”
The first item on his list as mayor to tackle is economic development and job creation. Benham supports providing students with an education – whether that is at a traditional four year college or a technical education – that will enable them to find jobs and be part of the Benton work force. To this end, he is advocating for Issue 6, which calls for the creation of a Career Technical Education Center at Exit 114
Having an educated and skilled workforce, Benham says, is critical to attracting business to Benton. He plans to work with prospective companies to determine their needs, which will provide the businesses with a skilled labor market and Benton residents with jobs.“This opportunity lets us sit down across from a CEO and say, ‘Look, before we even start talking about a tax incentives and things like that, let’s talk about what you need with regard to workers and how we can utilize the tools that we have to build a curriculum that provides you a pipeline of workers that you need,’” Benham says.
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In order to bring more industry to Benton, Benham plans to work in tandem with local city mayors to attract companies. Rather than competing in an adversarial manner, Benham wants to collaborate with other local mayors to increase the number of companies in the general Central Arkansas region. “I’ll be doing what I can to forge a good relationship [with other mayors],” he says.
Encouraging local small businesses is also a priority for Benham, who wants to help these businesses grow and innovate. According to Benham, over 90 percent of Benton’s economy is fueled by small business, and he wants to support these businesses by creating an economic environment suitable for growth. He is pushing to develop a regional innovation hub in the downtown area, which will allow local business owners and entrepreneurs to collaborate and find new investors.
One of the pressing issues facing Benton, according to Benham, is its downtown infrastructure. Many of the buildings in the downtown region have outdated infrastructure, and this poses a problem for future development. Benham says it’s a problem that has to be faced sooner or later. He hopes to revitalize downtown to make it more attractive for Benton residents and visitors. “And you know, for me, the whole reason for me running is to deal with some of these tough issues and to lead on. And I think it’s going to take a lot replace that infrastructure. Downtown will be very costly, and we’re going to have to figure out a solution to that,” he says.
Benham sees this election as a turning point for the city of Benton. All of the issues on the ballot, especially the mayor’s race, will have a major impact on the city’s short- and long-term future.
“The decisions that we make in this election, in my opinion, will determine where we go from here. We can easily go backwards, which I don’t think is in the best interest of the business community. We could easily just maintain what we have, which is nothing wrong with,” Benham says. “But I think what a tremendous waste that would be. We could also use the last eight years as what it has been – and that is a path forward. It has given us an opportunity to take another step to a next level and actually become an economic power within central Arkansas.”
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