Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has appointed David Stults, director of the Baxter County Office of Emergency Management, to the Arkansas 911 Board. Stults' term will run through July 24, 2027, filling a seat that had been vacant. His appointment was one of several announced by Sanders on Monday for positions on state boards and commissions.
The Arkansas 911 Board, established by Act 660 of 2019, is tasked with overseeing funding and standards for 911 dispatch services across the state. It consists of 12 members and replaced the former Arkansas Emergency Telephone Services Board. The legislation also introduced structural changes, including replacing the state’s 911 phone surcharge with a public safety fee, which funds a trust to assist localities in upgrading to Next Generation 911 (NG911) systems. Among the board’s responsibilities are reducing Arkansas’s public safety answering points to no more than 77 and implementing protocols to allow seamless call transfers between dispatch centers.
Stults brings experience to the role, having overseen a similar transition in Baxter County. In June 2025, he informed the county’s 911 Advisory Board that its dispatch center had successfully moved from the Solacom system to Intrado's statewide NG911 network. The upgrade enhanced operations by enabling dispatchers to transfer callers to locations anywhere in the country with ease.
"We no longer have to sit here and give the public a number and tell them to hang up and call this one. Instead, we can just type it in, hit the transfer button, and they’re on the phone with Ontario police department," Stults said at the time.
The updated system allows dispatchers to pinpoint a caller's location and even text them a link to activate the phone's camera for live visuals. "We could have seen what they’re looking at right there in dispatch," he explained.
Stults has also addressed Baxter County's aging tornado sirens. In June 2025, he presented the Quorum Court’s Budget Committee with bids ranging from $330,000 to $417,000 to replace the county’s emergency warning system, initially installed in 1994. At that time, only three of the county’s 13 sirens were operational. Stults recounted standing on his porch in May 2024 as an EF3 tornado approached and being unable to hear the siren that would normally reach his neighborhood.
“These were originally designed for letting you know back in World War II for bombings or raids,” Stults stated during the committee meeting. “They are designed for outdoor use.”
In addition to his local responsibilities, Stults has promoted regional preparedness. In October 2024, he accepted the National Weather Service’s StormReady designation on behalf of Baxter County, making it one of 38 Arkansas counties to achieve the recognition at that time. He expressed a goal of seeing all counties in the newly established North Central region earn the designation.
The Arkansas 911 Board holds its meetings at the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management headquarters at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in North Little Rock. By statute, the governor appoints four board members, comprising a local emergency management director, a sheriff, a fire chief, and an emergency medical services representative. The board chair is the director of the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management.