# Bart Castleberry Bart Castleberry is the Mayor of the City of Conway, Arkansas. He called the April 1, 2025 Special City Council Meeting to order at which the Project Stratus MOU was adopted 8-0 ([[Project Stratus MOU and April 1 Special Council Meeting]]); was absent from the April 22, 2025 regular Council meeting where the annexation and rezone ordinances were adopted ([[2025-04 Conway City Council Adopts O-25-37 O-25-38 and O-25-39]]); and on May 20, 2026 his Office issued the cover letter for the City's complete FOIA-2026-126 production (referencing "Proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures"). ## Role and affiliations - **Mayor of the City of Conway** — directly elected; serves as the executive of the City and chairs Council meetings. - Office of the Mayor at 1111 Main Street, Conway, AR 72032 (501.450.6110). - [[Felicia Rogers]] is his Chief of Staff. ## Appearances in the corpus - **April 1, 2025** — called the Special Council Meeting to order ([[Project Stratus MOU and April 1 Special Council Meeting]]). "Mayor Castleberry brought the matter back to the Council" after presenters finished. - **April 22, 2025** — absent ([[2025-04 Conway City Council Adopts O-25-37 O-25-38 and O-25-39]]); Councilman Andy Hawkins chaired. Castleberry's signature appears on the ordinances after the fact (executed by him as Mayor after Council adoption). - **May 20, 2026** — his Office's cover letter for FOIA-2026-126 ([[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter]]) is signed by "City of Conway / JustFOIA" but issued from the Office of the Mayor letterhead. The letter explicitly equates "Project Stratus" with "Forgelight Ventures." ## Notes The cover-letter routing through the Mayor's Office (rather than the City Clerk) for FOIA-2026-126 is unusual — most Arkansas FOIA responses are signed by the records-custodian agency (typically the City Clerk for municipal records). The Project Stratus response routing suggests Mayor's Office control over the project narrative. Castleberry's absence from the April 22, 2025 Council meeting at which the substantive land-use ordinances were adopted is conspicuous but not necessarily significant — Mayoral absence from regular Council meetings is procedurally normal, and Castleberry signed the executed ordinances after the fact. The April 1 special meeting (which he chaired) was the politically dispositive vote.