Barnhart v. City of Fayetteville

Tom Glaze, Justice.

This class-action suit was commenced by Katherine Barnhart and others on August 29, 1989. Barnhart alleged that a Fayetteville ordinance levying a sanitation charge on city residents to pay a bonded indebtedness owed by the Northwest Resource Recovery Authority (Authority) was an illegal tax and exaction. While the trial court ruled the charge was valid as a fee, we disagreed and held the surcharge was an illegal tax. See Barnhart v. City of Fayetteville, Ark., 321 Ark. 197, 900 S.W.2d 539 (1995) (Barnhart I). We further held that, in a waste-disposal agreement,…