By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Perhaps nothing will better signify the resurrection of the Sherwood Sports Complex than the sound of bats hitting balls this weekend.
The Cal Ripken 7-8 year-old state tournament gets under way this Friday, just three months after storms ripped through the complex and left it in a shambles.
The April 3 storms tore up fencing and lighting all through the park, causing thousands of dollars of damage, and completely destroying the high school/American Legion field. That field still remains unplayable.
Little League and softball action returned to the fields on May 29, but this weekend’s state tourney will be the first major event since the storms.
Preparation for the 7-8 year-old pitching-machine tournament was still ongoing early this week. Finishing touches were being put on the new fencing around various fields, and more than 25 volunteers worked over the weekend checking for debris, picking up trash and filling up holes on six fields that will be used.
Normally, only four fields are used for Cal Ripken play, but the tournament will also use two T-ball fields for the 48-team event will help move play along, particularly in the 16-game first round that begins on Friday at 9 a.m.
Former Sylvan Hills/Sherwood Optimist Club president Mike Sanders, who is still working closely with current president Troy Hayes, said that even with all the progress that has been made, thereis still much more work to be done.
“It’s been a major task,” Sanders said. “From new fencing, to replacing most of the backstops, to roofs on the dugouts and resetting and re-aiming the lights, there’s been a lot to repair or replace.”
The progress on the park cleanup has been steady, especially considering park employees and volunteers lost a lot of time immediately following the storm while insurance adjusters evaluated the damage and safety crews made the area safe for cleanup.
“There’s still a lot more to be done,” Sanders said. “On the boys side, we have a couple of tournaments coming up at the end of July. That’s a work in progress, but we have three good weeks to get ready.”
Although the storm damage was a significant setback for the park, the long-term results will be an improved and upgraded facility. The old wooden light poles will be replaced with more modern lights using a concrete foundation. Two softball fields will be converted to youth baseball diamonds.
While work continues to revamp the youth fields, one of the biggest undertakings by the parks and recreation department will be the rebuilding of Kevin McReynold’s Field, the home of both the Sylvan Hills High School and American Legion teams.
Current Optimist president Hayes said the field will have a new look altogether once it is completed.
“It will most likely be turned,” Hayes said. “They haven’t determined if it will actually be opposite of how it set before or what, but there were visibility problems before that made it tough to play sometimes, so we think having the field face a different direction will resolve some of that.”
Sanders said that meeting the spring deadline to have the field in shape in time for the defending 6A state champion Bears to open their season next March will be tough, especially with all the changes in store, but he added that it is doable.
“It takes a long time to get everything cut out and measured,” Sanders said. “They are getting an engineering company to come in and get things lined out, and I’m sure we will be involved in some aspects. Everything will have to be redone, even getting grass to grow where there wasn’t any before.
“There is a lot of talk, not from the city, but by this person or that person wondering if it will really be done in time, but I think we’ll get it done.”
Assistant director Darren Austin said that as of this time, no exact cost figures are available for the park repairs. He added he hopes the new lights will be completed in the next few months.
There are a number of local teams that will be on hand for the six-day tournament. Cabot Nicholson will kick off the tourney Friday morning with a 9 a.m. first-round game against Pine Bluff Seabrook. Sylvan Hills Gilbert will also play a Friday morning game against Maumelle select, Sylvan Hills Bash will play at 10:45 Friday against Magnolia Belt, and Jacksonville Bobo will take on Monticello Preston on field 7. Lonoke will take on Dumas Hill in the round of 12:30 p.m. games, while Jacksonville Lovercheck and SH Eddleman will sit out the first round with byes.
Jacksonville Lovercheck will play the winner between Monticello Griffin and Lakewood Renshaw at 2:15 p.m. Friday, and Eddleman will play either England or Star City Maynard at 5:45 p.m.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
SPORTS>>Jacksonville opener grand for Rhinos
By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Defense and three Garrett Morgan field goals helped lift the Arkansas Rhinos to a 22-0 win over the Memphis Blast on Saturday night at Red Devil Field.
It was the second North America Football League win over the Blast in three weeks to start the 2008 season, but this one didn’t come quite as easy, at least early on.
Both teams struggled through a scoreless first half on the damp field. The Rhinos had difficulty with the Memphis blitz, and both teams found holding on to the ball to be a difficult task as well. The Rhinos fumbled the ball away three times in the first half, but the momentum shifted toward the Rhinos at the 2:41 mark of the second quarter when linebacker Daniel Brown snagged the second of the Rhinos’ five interceptions in the game.
The Rhinos failed to cash that in, but a Marcus Yarbrough interception two minutes into the second half led to Morgan’s 34-yard kick with 13:12 left in the third quarter for the first points of the game.
“It was tough,” Rhinos coach Oscar Malone said. “It seemed like we hadn’t practiced all week, and we looked bad, especially in the first quarter. But the third quarter, we came in and we made some adjustments and picked up their blitzing.
“After we figured out who to block, which we should have already known who to block, we got it done.”
From there, Rhinos free safety and crowd favorite Lawrance Coupling grabbed two more interceptions to kill a potential Memphis comeback.
The Rhinos added to their lead with Morgan’s second field goal, this one from 45 yards that put Arkansas up 6-0 with 7:21 in the third, then made it 13-0 less than three minutes later when fullback William Lamar bulled over from two yards out.
Lamar set the score up one play earlier when he rumbled 38 yards up the middle to the Memphis’ 2-yard line.
Jacksonville capped the scoring with 8:51 left to play when former Red Devil Marcus Tate went around the right side for a 6-yard touchdown and a 22-0 lead. The extra point was missed, but it was the result of a bobbled snap.
“We could have had a little more than that,” Malone said. “(Morgan) got his confidenceshook a little bit, but once we got him going, and get our kicking going, he’s fine. He was our MVP on offense last game.”
Lamar led the Rhinos in rushing with five carries for 67 yards. Wesson had eight rushes for 41 and a touchdown, and Tate had three carries for 25 yards and a touchdown.
Malone said he was also proud of the effort from the defense.
“Overall, our defense was outstanding,” he said. “That’s what kept us in the game. Every time we had our backs against the wall, they came back and made great plays.”
Linebacker Enrico Wilkins didn’t join in in the interception extravaganza, but his efforts everywhere else kept the Blast’s offense off balance. Wilkins led the Rhinos for the second straight game with 11 tackles — eight solo.
Memphis’ big-time playmaker Kevin Veal was still out of commission after missing the opener two weeks ago, and Williams and the Rhinos ‘D’ took advantage by stopping halfback Antonio Wells in his tracks. Wells, at 5-6, 165 lbs., was no match for Arkansas.
Wells carried a total of eight times for only three yards, forcing the Blast to resort to the air.
A Rhinos fumble with 6:19 left in the second quarter gave Memphis the ball at its own 27-yard line, but Ken Thomas got it back quickly for Arkansas, intercepting a first-down pass that bounced off of Memphis receiver Carlos Alexander’s chest and right into Thomas’ arms.
The Rhinos coughed it up again on their first play. A 60-yard pass play put the Blast in their best position to score all night at the Rhinos’ 12-yard line, but Brown’s pick near the goal line ended the threat.
Memphis got in position to try a field goal in the closing moments of the first half, but kicker James Lawton shanked it badly, sending the ball into the back of his line defenders.
Morgan was a little shaky in the first half himself for the Rhinos, missing tries of 42 yards and 40 yards. Both were wide right, but he went 3 for 3 in the second half.
Quarterbacks Josh Dixon and Jeremiah Crouch combined for 151 yards through the air, completing 11 of 22 pass attempts.
The Rhinos had 306 total yards of offense.
The Rhinos are now 2-0, and will play at Clarksville against the Knights on July 12.
They will not play at home again until Aug. 2.
Leader sportswriter
Defense and three Garrett Morgan field goals helped lift the Arkansas Rhinos to a 22-0 win over the Memphis Blast on Saturday night at Red Devil Field.
It was the second North America Football League win over the Blast in three weeks to start the 2008 season, but this one didn’t come quite as easy, at least early on.
Both teams struggled through a scoreless first half on the damp field. The Rhinos had difficulty with the Memphis blitz, and both teams found holding on to the ball to be a difficult task as well. The Rhinos fumbled the ball away three times in the first half, but the momentum shifted toward the Rhinos at the 2:41 mark of the second quarter when linebacker Daniel Brown snagged the second of the Rhinos’ five interceptions in the game.
The Rhinos failed to cash that in, but a Marcus Yarbrough interception two minutes into the second half led to Morgan’s 34-yard kick with 13:12 left in the third quarter for the first points of the game.
“It was tough,” Rhinos coach Oscar Malone said. “It seemed like we hadn’t practiced all week, and we looked bad, especially in the first quarter. But the third quarter, we came in and we made some adjustments and picked up their blitzing.
“After we figured out who to block, which we should have already known who to block, we got it done.”
From there, Rhinos free safety and crowd favorite Lawrance Coupling grabbed two more interceptions to kill a potential Memphis comeback.
The Rhinos added to their lead with Morgan’s second field goal, this one from 45 yards that put Arkansas up 6-0 with 7:21 in the third, then made it 13-0 less than three minutes later when fullback William Lamar bulled over from two yards out.
Lamar set the score up one play earlier when he rumbled 38 yards up the middle to the Memphis’ 2-yard line.
Jacksonville capped the scoring with 8:51 left to play when former Red Devil Marcus Tate went around the right side for a 6-yard touchdown and a 22-0 lead. The extra point was missed, but it was the result of a bobbled snap.
“We could have had a little more than that,” Malone said. “(Morgan) got his confidenceshook a little bit, but once we got him going, and get our kicking going, he’s fine. He was our MVP on offense last game.”
Lamar led the Rhinos in rushing with five carries for 67 yards. Wesson had eight rushes for 41 and a touchdown, and Tate had three carries for 25 yards and a touchdown.
Malone said he was also proud of the effort from the defense.
“Overall, our defense was outstanding,” he said. “That’s what kept us in the game. Every time we had our backs against the wall, they came back and made great plays.”
Linebacker Enrico Wilkins didn’t join in in the interception extravaganza, but his efforts everywhere else kept the Blast’s offense off balance. Wilkins led the Rhinos for the second straight game with 11 tackles — eight solo.
Memphis’ big-time playmaker Kevin Veal was still out of commission after missing the opener two weeks ago, and Williams and the Rhinos ‘D’ took advantage by stopping halfback Antonio Wells in his tracks. Wells, at 5-6, 165 lbs., was no match for Arkansas.
Wells carried a total of eight times for only three yards, forcing the Blast to resort to the air.
A Rhinos fumble with 6:19 left in the second quarter gave Memphis the ball at its own 27-yard line, but Ken Thomas got it back quickly for Arkansas, intercepting a first-down pass that bounced off of Memphis receiver Carlos Alexander’s chest and right into Thomas’ arms.
The Rhinos coughed it up again on their first play. A 60-yard pass play put the Blast in their best position to score all night at the Rhinos’ 12-yard line, but Brown’s pick near the goal line ended the threat.
Memphis got in position to try a field goal in the closing moments of the first half, but kicker James Lawton shanked it badly, sending the ball into the back of his line defenders.
Morgan was a little shaky in the first half himself for the Rhinos, missing tries of 42 yards and 40 yards. Both were wide right, but he went 3 for 3 in the second half.
Quarterbacks Josh Dixon and Jeremiah Crouch combined for 151 yards through the air, completing 11 of 22 pass attempts.
The Rhinos had 306 total yards of offense.
The Rhinos are now 2-0, and will play at Clarksville against the Knights on July 12.
They will not play at home again until Aug. 2.
SPORTS>>Cabot brings the lumber
By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
A season that had begun in fits and starts received a big injection of confidence Sunday when the Cabot Community Bank senior American Legion team captured the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament.
Cabot, which barely survived its final pool play game to win its division, held off Sylvan Hills, 1-0, in the semis, before beating Bryant’s junior team, 4-2, in the title game.
Community Bank went 4-1 over the weekend to improve its record to 8-7 overall.
“Our kids do realize they have the talent to win,” said Community Bank coach Jay Darr. “This high school season, we struggled and we’ve struggled early (in Legion). But I’ve been trying to convey to them they’ve got the talent to put it all together.
“We beat some great teams in this tournament.”
Offense is typically stymied in the annual tournament in which only wood bats are used, putting a premium on pitching and defense. Cabot received both on Sunday and throughout the weekend. Colin Fuller tossed a 3-hitter and struck out 14 in Community Bank’s 3-0 win over Russellville on Saturday, andJosh Brown, normally a relief pitcher, was masterful in shutting out Sylvan Hills in the semis.
In the championship game, Andrew Reynolds and C.J. Jacoby combined to limit Bryant to just six hits.
“In a wood bat tournament, you have to make the routine plays and pitching is going to dominate,” Darr said. “I’ve got six or seven great pitchers and four or five who would be starters in most teams in the state in high school.”
But it was a heads up play by catcher Ben Wainright and centerfielder Jeremy Wilson that helped preserve the win against Bryant. Trailing 3-2 in the sixth inning, Bryant placed its first two batters on base with a walk and a single.
When Austin Quick wandered too far off second after a pitch to Brennan Bullock, Wainright ran toward the mound, freezing Quick between second and third. Wainright’s throw to second sailed into center field as Quick took off for third base.
But Wilson was backing up the play, caught Wainright’s errant throw and delivered a perfect strike to third baseman Ty Steele, who put the tag on Quick, and Bryant failed to score in the inning.
“We’ve been working on things like that,” Darr said. “We haven’t been swinging the bats that well, so we’ve had to try to keep runs from scoring. Ben has been making plays and picking people off. He’s got a great arm and a quick release.
“And Wilson was right there to back up the play. It’s a team ballgame. Wilson did his part.”
Cabot then got an insurance run in the seventh on Steele’s leadoff single, a sacrifice by Tyler Erickson and an error on the Bryant shortstop.
Austin Benning led off the Bryant seventh with a single but was doubled off when second baseman Sam Bates turned Sergio Arias’ soft liner into a double play at first. Shayne Burgan finished things off by making a spectacular game-ending catch in right field after running a long way to reach out and haul in Brady Butler’s fly ball down the line.
Burgan had got things started for Community Bank in the first when he singled. Powell Bryant forced Burgan at second, then scored on Bates’ line single to center to make it 1-0.
After Erickson and Wilson singled with one out in the second, Burgan bounced a 2-1 pitch through the box for a 2-run single to make it 3-0.
Reynolds pitched around a leadoff walk in the first and a two-on, nobody-out jam in the second. He struck out the side in the third, pitching around an error.
But Bryant busted through in the fourth. A walk, two singles and another walk forced in a run, ending Reynold’s day. Jacoby came in to record a strikeout, but Benning beat out an infield hit to make it 3-2.
Reynolds got the win, allowing three hits over 3 1/3 innings, striking out seven. He walked four. Jacoby saved it with 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Jacoby allowed three hits and a walk and struck out three.
Community Bank’s 7-hit attack was led by Burgan’s two hits and two RBI. Drew Burks was unavailable for Cabot on Sunday as he was attending the Xtra Innings Classic in Jonesboro.
COMMUNITY BANK 1, SYLVAN HILLS BRUINS 0
Over a 4-batter span in the sixth and seventh innings on Sunday afternoon, Blain Sims lost a perfect game, a no-hitter, a shutout and the game.
“He threw one heck of a ball- game,” said Sylvan Hills coach Mike Bromley. “He’s had several outstanding outings like that.
Almost every time he shows up, he has a good outing.”
Community Bank’s Josh Brown matched the Sylvan Hills hurler nearly pitch for pitch and eventually got all the run support he would need when Cabot broke through in the seventh inning of the semifinal battle.
Sims retired the first 17 batters he faced before Jeremy Wilson dropped a 1-1 pitch in front of a diving Ryan Dillon in left for Community Bank’s first base runner of the game.
Catcher Cody Cormier threw out Wilson trying to steal, but Sims issued a leadoff walk to Matt Evans to start Community Bank’s seventh-inning rally. One out later, Powell Bryant executed a perfect hit-and-run when he slapped a single through the hole at second. Evans easily reached third on the play, then alertly raced home when right fielder Ross Bogart held on to the ball too long.
That run held up as Brown finished off his gem by pitching around a one-out single to Sims in the bottom of the seventh. After Sims singled, third baseman Ty Steele made a nifty short-hop backhand scoop of Cormier’s sharp grounder and got a force out at second. Brown closed it out with a strikeout, his third of the game.
“This is wooden bat and (a pitcher) can sometimes sit there and get away with a lot of things when you’re using a wooden bat,” Bromley said.
Brown allowed only five hits and four walks. Sims surrendered two hits and a walk, while striking out six. He was unhittable through the first 5 2/3 innings, striking out the side in the third, and the final two of the fifth.
The Bruins put two base runners on three innings in a row. Clint Thornton singled to begin the fourth, but Wainright picked him off and Thornton was out after a lengthy rundown between first and second.
Wainright also came up big in the sixth, throwing out the fleet Hunter Miller trying to steal second when his throw was right on the bag for Bates to apply the tag.
Miller had two of the Bruins’ five hits to lead Sylvan Hills.
Leader sports editor
A season that had begun in fits and starts received a big injection of confidence Sunday when the Cabot Community Bank senior American Legion team captured the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament.
Cabot, which barely survived its final pool play game to win its division, held off Sylvan Hills, 1-0, in the semis, before beating Bryant’s junior team, 4-2, in the title game.
Community Bank went 4-1 over the weekend to improve its record to 8-7 overall.
“Our kids do realize they have the talent to win,” said Community Bank coach Jay Darr. “This high school season, we struggled and we’ve struggled early (in Legion). But I’ve been trying to convey to them they’ve got the talent to put it all together.
“We beat some great teams in this tournament.”
Offense is typically stymied in the annual tournament in which only wood bats are used, putting a premium on pitching and defense. Cabot received both on Sunday and throughout the weekend. Colin Fuller tossed a 3-hitter and struck out 14 in Community Bank’s 3-0 win over Russellville on Saturday, andJosh Brown, normally a relief pitcher, was masterful in shutting out Sylvan Hills in the semis.
In the championship game, Andrew Reynolds and C.J. Jacoby combined to limit Bryant to just six hits.
“In a wood bat tournament, you have to make the routine plays and pitching is going to dominate,” Darr said. “I’ve got six or seven great pitchers and four or five who would be starters in most teams in the state in high school.”
But it was a heads up play by catcher Ben Wainright and centerfielder Jeremy Wilson that helped preserve the win against Bryant. Trailing 3-2 in the sixth inning, Bryant placed its first two batters on base with a walk and a single.
When Austin Quick wandered too far off second after a pitch to Brennan Bullock, Wainright ran toward the mound, freezing Quick between second and third. Wainright’s throw to second sailed into center field as Quick took off for third base.
But Wilson was backing up the play, caught Wainright’s errant throw and delivered a perfect strike to third baseman Ty Steele, who put the tag on Quick, and Bryant failed to score in the inning.
“We’ve been working on things like that,” Darr said. “We haven’t been swinging the bats that well, so we’ve had to try to keep runs from scoring. Ben has been making plays and picking people off. He’s got a great arm and a quick release.
“And Wilson was right there to back up the play. It’s a team ballgame. Wilson did his part.”
Cabot then got an insurance run in the seventh on Steele’s leadoff single, a sacrifice by Tyler Erickson and an error on the Bryant shortstop.
Austin Benning led off the Bryant seventh with a single but was doubled off when second baseman Sam Bates turned Sergio Arias’ soft liner into a double play at first. Shayne Burgan finished things off by making a spectacular game-ending catch in right field after running a long way to reach out and haul in Brady Butler’s fly ball down the line.
Burgan had got things started for Community Bank in the first when he singled. Powell Bryant forced Burgan at second, then scored on Bates’ line single to center to make it 1-0.
After Erickson and Wilson singled with one out in the second, Burgan bounced a 2-1 pitch through the box for a 2-run single to make it 3-0.
Reynolds pitched around a leadoff walk in the first and a two-on, nobody-out jam in the second. He struck out the side in the third, pitching around an error.
But Bryant busted through in the fourth. A walk, two singles and another walk forced in a run, ending Reynold’s day. Jacoby came in to record a strikeout, but Benning beat out an infield hit to make it 3-2.
Reynolds got the win, allowing three hits over 3 1/3 innings, striking out seven. He walked four. Jacoby saved it with 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Jacoby allowed three hits and a walk and struck out three.
Community Bank’s 7-hit attack was led by Burgan’s two hits and two RBI. Drew Burks was unavailable for Cabot on Sunday as he was attending the Xtra Innings Classic in Jonesboro.
COMMUNITY BANK 1, SYLVAN HILLS BRUINS 0
Over a 4-batter span in the sixth and seventh innings on Sunday afternoon, Blain Sims lost a perfect game, a no-hitter, a shutout and the game.
“He threw one heck of a ball- game,” said Sylvan Hills coach Mike Bromley. “He’s had several outstanding outings like that.
Almost every time he shows up, he has a good outing.”
Community Bank’s Josh Brown matched the Sylvan Hills hurler nearly pitch for pitch and eventually got all the run support he would need when Cabot broke through in the seventh inning of the semifinal battle.
Sims retired the first 17 batters he faced before Jeremy Wilson dropped a 1-1 pitch in front of a diving Ryan Dillon in left for Community Bank’s first base runner of the game.
Catcher Cody Cormier threw out Wilson trying to steal, but Sims issued a leadoff walk to Matt Evans to start Community Bank’s seventh-inning rally. One out later, Powell Bryant executed a perfect hit-and-run when he slapped a single through the hole at second. Evans easily reached third on the play, then alertly raced home when right fielder Ross Bogart held on to the ball too long.
That run held up as Brown finished off his gem by pitching around a one-out single to Sims in the bottom of the seventh. After Sims singled, third baseman Ty Steele made a nifty short-hop backhand scoop of Cormier’s sharp grounder and got a force out at second. Brown closed it out with a strikeout, his third of the game.
“This is wooden bat and (a pitcher) can sometimes sit there and get away with a lot of things when you’re using a wooden bat,” Bromley said.
Brown allowed only five hits and four walks. Sims surrendered two hits and a walk, while striking out six. He was unhittable through the first 5 2/3 innings, striking out the side in the third, and the final two of the fifth.
The Bruins put two base runners on three innings in a row. Clint Thornton singled to begin the fourth, but Wainright picked him off and Thornton was out after a lengthy rundown between first and second.
Wainright also came up big in the sixth, throwing out the fleet Hunter Miller trying to steal second when his throw was right on the bag for Bates to apply the tag.
Miller had two of the Bruins’ five hits to lead Sylvan Hills.
Friday, June 27, 2008
TOP STORY > >High gas prices force look at other options
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
With rising gas prices cutting into the household incomes of commuters, Metroplan staff will investigate implementing a computerized ride-sharing database to encourage carpooling.
Increasingly in recent years, the Metroplan Board of Directors—mostly mayors, county judges or their designees—has warmed to the idea of mass transit, but the area doesn’t have the population density or money to maintain and sustain it.
That’s still true for major mass transit, such as light rail, but at the June Metroplan meeting Wednesday, the board members expressed interest in exploring a variety of relatively low-cost, easy-to-implement ways to reduce traveling costs and congestion.
Work on the Web-based ridesharing program could begin by August 15, according to John Hoffpauer, a Metroplan planner.
While relatively inexpensive, “The program is not in our budget,” said Jim McKenzie Metroplan executive director.
“We would be derelict not to move forward and expedite this,” said North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays.
“The future of our economy dictates that we deal with these problems,” said Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines. “We have to have a transit system that is successful in many different areas.”
In addition to authorizing the staff to move toward operating a ride-sharing database, members discussed adding to the existing CATA bus service, purchasing vans to help groups of people get to work from outlying areas, getting area employers involved in promoting ride sharing or vans and continuing to identify and support bicycle paths or routes to work.
JACKSONVILLE EXPRESS
“I was ready to write a $75,000 check to add another Jacksonville Express Bus,” said Villines. Then he discovered that CATA didn’t have a bus to put on the route.
Betty Wineland, director of CATA, has said the bus company will have four new buses by the end of the year and that one of the older buses could be converted to use as a third Jacksonville to Little Rock express bus.
She said reluctance to ride the bus was waning in the face of increasing gasoline prices.
“We need real comprehensive education,” said Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams. He suggested that mass transit could be outfitted with wireless Internet, allowing commuters to work on the way to and from work. If it took 30 minutes to commute each way, that would be one hour of the workday.
Villines noted that someone commuting to work in Little Rock from an outlying area in a gas-guzzling vehicle could be paying $4,000 to $5,000 a year for gas.
Even for a $40,000 a year job—and that’s pretty good pay in this area—that’s 10 percent or more of the gross pay that’s going to gas.
People have several ways to respond to higher gas prices, although not all options are available to everyone, according to Hoffpaur.
REVENUE DECLINE
As the amount of money residents spend on gas increases, the amount available for other purchases decreases, and so does the local revenue derived from local, county and state taxes, said Villines. “It will have little impact this year but a big impact next year,” he added.
Some may switch modes of transportation, say from car to bus or bicycle. Others may trade for or use a more gas-efficient vehicle. Some departments of the state and other employers are cutting back to four-day workweeks. Pulaski County Special School District does that in the summer.
Others can telecommute—work from home using telephones, fax machines and computers. People can move closer to work or change to a job closer to their residence. Of course sharing a ride with a coworker who lives nearby could also be an option he said.
Vans or vanpools could be implemented in the three or four month time period, while buying additional buses or trolleys could take months and it would be years before any sort of dedicated rail mass transit could be constructed.
Employers could help by providing preferential parking for those who carpool. One person suggested that employment cen-ters, like the Capitol complex or the Medical Center, could send vans to meet their employees at the Travel Center, which is where the express buses unload.
PROJECTS CONFIRMED
In other business, the board submitted at the request of the state Highway and Transportation Department a list of improvements approved in September 2005 for consideration over the next five years.
Several were in the Cabot and Jacksonville areas.
Those include the $32 million major widening of 2.2 miles of Hwy. 67/167 between Redmond Road and Vandenberg Road and also $300,000 traffic signal and interchange improvement at Hwy. 107 and Arnold Drive.
In Cabot, the plan calls for improvement and reconstruction of the Hwy. 67/167 at Hwy. 5 and also Hwy. 89. Each is expected to cost $10.5 million. Also in Cabot, the plan calls for a $3.5 million widening, access management and signal coordination on Hwy. 89 from Hwy. 67 to 5th Street.
Also on the list—but without funding identified—is the $200 million completion of the North Belt Freeway. Also unfunded but desired is a minor widening of Military Road from Redmond Road to Hwy. 440, and a signal upgrade in Sherwood at the intersection of Hwy. 107 and Brockington Road.
Leader senior staff writer
With rising gas prices cutting into the household incomes of commuters, Metroplan staff will investigate implementing a computerized ride-sharing database to encourage carpooling.
Increasingly in recent years, the Metroplan Board of Directors—mostly mayors, county judges or their designees—has warmed to the idea of mass transit, but the area doesn’t have the population density or money to maintain and sustain it.
That’s still true for major mass transit, such as light rail, but at the June Metroplan meeting Wednesday, the board members expressed interest in exploring a variety of relatively low-cost, easy-to-implement ways to reduce traveling costs and congestion.
Work on the Web-based ridesharing program could begin by August 15, according to John Hoffpauer, a Metroplan planner.
While relatively inexpensive, “The program is not in our budget,” said Jim McKenzie Metroplan executive director.
“We would be derelict not to move forward and expedite this,” said North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays.
“The future of our economy dictates that we deal with these problems,” said Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines. “We have to have a transit system that is successful in many different areas.”
In addition to authorizing the staff to move toward operating a ride-sharing database, members discussed adding to the existing CATA bus service, purchasing vans to help groups of people get to work from outlying areas, getting area employers involved in promoting ride sharing or vans and continuing to identify and support bicycle paths or routes to work.
JACKSONVILLE EXPRESS
“I was ready to write a $75,000 check to add another Jacksonville Express Bus,” said Villines. Then he discovered that CATA didn’t have a bus to put on the route.
Betty Wineland, director of CATA, has said the bus company will have four new buses by the end of the year and that one of the older buses could be converted to use as a third Jacksonville to Little Rock express bus.
She said reluctance to ride the bus was waning in the face of increasing gasoline prices.
“We need real comprehensive education,” said Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams. He suggested that mass transit could be outfitted with wireless Internet, allowing commuters to work on the way to and from work. If it took 30 minutes to commute each way, that would be one hour of the workday.
Villines noted that someone commuting to work in Little Rock from an outlying area in a gas-guzzling vehicle could be paying $4,000 to $5,000 a year for gas.
Even for a $40,000 a year job—and that’s pretty good pay in this area—that’s 10 percent or more of the gross pay that’s going to gas.
People have several ways to respond to higher gas prices, although not all options are available to everyone, according to Hoffpaur.
REVENUE DECLINE
As the amount of money residents spend on gas increases, the amount available for other purchases decreases, and so does the local revenue derived from local, county and state taxes, said Villines. “It will have little impact this year but a big impact next year,” he added.
Some may switch modes of transportation, say from car to bus or bicycle. Others may trade for or use a more gas-efficient vehicle. Some departments of the state and other employers are cutting back to four-day workweeks. Pulaski County Special School District does that in the summer.
Others can telecommute—work from home using telephones, fax machines and computers. People can move closer to work or change to a job closer to their residence. Of course sharing a ride with a coworker who lives nearby could also be an option he said.
Vans or vanpools could be implemented in the three or four month time period, while buying additional buses or trolleys could take months and it would be years before any sort of dedicated rail mass transit could be constructed.
Employers could help by providing preferential parking for those who carpool. One person suggested that employment cen-ters, like the Capitol complex or the Medical Center, could send vans to meet their employees at the Travel Center, which is where the express buses unload.
PROJECTS CONFIRMED
In other business, the board submitted at the request of the state Highway and Transportation Department a list of improvements approved in September 2005 for consideration over the next five years.
Several were in the Cabot and Jacksonville areas.
Those include the $32 million major widening of 2.2 miles of Hwy. 67/167 between Redmond Road and Vandenberg Road and also $300,000 traffic signal and interchange improvement at Hwy. 107 and Arnold Drive.
In Cabot, the plan calls for improvement and reconstruction of the Hwy. 67/167 at Hwy. 5 and also Hwy. 89. Each is expected to cost $10.5 million. Also in Cabot, the plan calls for a $3.5 million widening, access management and signal coordination on Hwy. 89 from Hwy. 67 to 5th Street.
Also on the list—but without funding identified—is the $200 million completion of the North Belt Freeway. Also unfunded but desired is a minor widening of Military Road from Redmond Road to Hwy. 440, and a signal upgrade in Sherwood at the intersection of Hwy. 107 and Brockington Road.
TOP STORY > >High gas prices force look at other options
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader staff writer
With rising gas prices cutting into the household incomes of commuters, Metroplan staff will investigate implementing a computerized ride-sharing database to encourage carpooling.
Increasingly in recent years, the Metroplan Board of Directors—mostly mayors, county judges or their designees—has warmed to the idea of mass transit, but the area doesn’t have the population density or money to maintain and sustain it.
That’s still true for major mass transit, such as light rail, but at the June Metroplan meeting Wednesday, the board members expressed interest in exploring a variety of relatively low-cost, easy-to-implement ways to reduce traveling costs and congestion.
Work on the Web-based ridesharing program could begin by August 15, according to John Hoffpauer, a Metroplan planner.
While relatively inexpensive, “The program is not in our budget,” said Jim McKenzie Metroplan executive director.
“We would be derelict not to move forward and expedite this,” said North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays.
“The future of our economy dictates that we deal with these problems,” said Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines. “We have to have a transit system that is successful in many different areas.”
In addition to authorizing the staff to move toward operating a ride-sharing database, members discussed adding to the existing CATA bus service, purchasing vans to help groups of people get to work from outlying areas, getting area employers involved in promoting ride sharing or vans and continuing to identify and support bicycle paths or routes to work.
JACKSONVILLE EXPRESS
“I was ready to write a $75,000 check to add another Jacksonville Express Bus,” said Villines. Then he discovered that CATA didn’t have a bus to put on the route.
Betty Wineland, director of CATA, has said the bus company will have four new buses by the end of the year and that one of the older buses could be converted to use as a third Jacksonville to Little Rock express bus.
She said reluctance to ride the bus was waning in the face of increasing gasoline prices.
“We need real comprehensive education,” said Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams. He suggested that mass transit could be outfitted with wireless Internet, allowing commuters to work on the way to and from work. If it took 30 minutes to commute each way, that would be one hour of the workday.
Villines noted that someone commuting to work in Little Rock from an outlying area in a gas-guzzling vehicle could be paying $4,000 to $5,000 a year for gas.
Even for a $40,000 a year job—and that’s pretty good pay in this area—that’s 10 percent or more of the gross pay that’s going to gas.
People have several ways to respond to higher gas prices, although not all options are available to everyone, according to Hoffpaur.
REVENUE DECLINE
As the amount of money residents spend on gas increases, the amount available for other purchases decreases, and so does the local revenue derived from local, county and state taxes, said Villines. “It will have little impact this year but a big impact next year,” he added.
Some may switch modes of transportation, say from car to bus or bicycle. Others may trade for or use a more gas-efficient vehicle. Some departments of the state and other employers are cutting back to four-day workweeks. Pulaski County Special School District does that in the summer.
Others can telecommute—work from home using telephones, fax machines and computers. People can move closer to work or change to a job closer to their residence. Of course sharing a ride with a coworker who lives nearby could also be an option he said.
Vans or vanpools could be implemented in the three or four month time period, while buying additional buses or trolleys could take months and it would be years before any sort of dedicated rail mass transit could be constructed.
Employers could help by providing preferential parking for those who carpool. One person suggested that employment cen-ters, like the Capitol complex or the Medical Center, could send vans to meet their employees at the Travel Center, which is where the express buses unload.
PROJECTS CONFIRMED
In other business, the board submitted at the request of the state Highway and Transportation Department a list of improvements approved in September 2005 for consideration over the next five years.
Several were in the Cabot and Jacksonville areas.
Those include the $32 million major widening of 2.2 miles of Hwy. 67/167 between Redmond Road and Vandenberg Road and also $300,000 traffic signal and interchange improvement at Hwy. 107 and Arnold Drive.
In Cabot, the plan calls for improvement and reconstruction of the Hwy. 67/167 at Hwy. 5 and also Hwy. 89. Each is expected to cost $10.5 million. Also in Cabot, the plan calls for a $3.5 million widening, access management and signal coordination on Hwy. 89 from Hwy. 67 to 5th Street.
Also on the list—but without funding identified—is the $200 million completion of the North Belt Freeway. Also unfunded but desired is a minor widening of Military Road from Redmond Road to Hwy. 440, and a signal upgrade in Sherwood at the intersection of Hwy. 107 and Brockington Road.
Leader staff writer
With rising gas prices cutting into the household incomes of commuters, Metroplan staff will investigate implementing a computerized ride-sharing database to encourage carpooling.
Increasingly in recent years, the Metroplan Board of Directors—mostly mayors, county judges or their designees—has warmed to the idea of mass transit, but the area doesn’t have the population density or money to maintain and sustain it.
That’s still true for major mass transit, such as light rail, but at the June Metroplan meeting Wednesday, the board members expressed interest in exploring a variety of relatively low-cost, easy-to-implement ways to reduce traveling costs and congestion.
Work on the Web-based ridesharing program could begin by August 15, according to John Hoffpauer, a Metroplan planner.
While relatively inexpensive, “The program is not in our budget,” said Jim McKenzie Metroplan executive director.
“We would be derelict not to move forward and expedite this,” said North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays.
“The future of our economy dictates that we deal with these problems,” said Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines. “We have to have a transit system that is successful in many different areas.”
In addition to authorizing the staff to move toward operating a ride-sharing database, members discussed adding to the existing CATA bus service, purchasing vans to help groups of people get to work from outlying areas, getting area employers involved in promoting ride sharing or vans and continuing to identify and support bicycle paths or routes to work.
JACKSONVILLE EXPRESS
“I was ready to write a $75,000 check to add another Jacksonville Express Bus,” said Villines. Then he discovered that CATA didn’t have a bus to put on the route.
Betty Wineland, director of CATA, has said the bus company will have four new buses by the end of the year and that one of the older buses could be converted to use as a third Jacksonville to Little Rock express bus.
She said reluctance to ride the bus was waning in the face of increasing gasoline prices.
“We need real comprehensive education,” said Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams. He suggested that mass transit could be outfitted with wireless Internet, allowing commuters to work on the way to and from work. If it took 30 minutes to commute each way, that would be one hour of the workday.
Villines noted that someone commuting to work in Little Rock from an outlying area in a gas-guzzling vehicle could be paying $4,000 to $5,000 a year for gas.
Even for a $40,000 a year job—and that’s pretty good pay in this area—that’s 10 percent or more of the gross pay that’s going to gas.
People have several ways to respond to higher gas prices, although not all options are available to everyone, according to Hoffpaur.
REVENUE DECLINE
As the amount of money residents spend on gas increases, the amount available for other purchases decreases, and so does the local revenue derived from local, county and state taxes, said Villines. “It will have little impact this year but a big impact next year,” he added.
Some may switch modes of transportation, say from car to bus or bicycle. Others may trade for or use a more gas-efficient vehicle. Some departments of the state and other employers are cutting back to four-day workweeks. Pulaski County Special School District does that in the summer.
Others can telecommute—work from home using telephones, fax machines and computers. People can move closer to work or change to a job closer to their residence. Of course sharing a ride with a coworker who lives nearby could also be an option he said.
Vans or vanpools could be implemented in the three or four month time period, while buying additional buses or trolleys could take months and it would be years before any sort of dedicated rail mass transit could be constructed.
Employers could help by providing preferential parking for those who carpool. One person suggested that employment cen-ters, like the Capitol complex or the Medical Center, could send vans to meet their employees at the Travel Center, which is where the express buses unload.
PROJECTS CONFIRMED
In other business, the board submitted at the request of the state Highway and Transportation Department a list of improvements approved in September 2005 for consideration over the next five years.
Several were in the Cabot and Jacksonville areas.
Those include the $32 million major widening of 2.2 miles of Hwy. 67/167 between Redmond Road and Vandenberg Road and also $300,000 traffic signal and interchange improvement at Hwy. 107 and Arnold Drive.
In Cabot, the plan calls for improvement and reconstruction of the Hwy. 67/167 at Hwy. 5 and also Hwy. 89. Each is expected to cost $10.5 million. Also in Cabot, the plan calls for a $3.5 million widening, access management and signal coordination on Hwy. 89 from Hwy. 67 to 5th Street.
Also on the list—but without funding identified—is the $200 million completion of the North Belt Freeway. Also unfunded but desired is a minor widening of Military Road from Redmond Road to Hwy. 440, and a signal upgrade in Sherwood at the intersection of Hwy. 107 and Brockington Road.
TOP STORY > >Many residents forget to claim stimulus check
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
More than 70,000 retirees and disabled veterans in Arkansas—including several thousand locally—are eligible for the government’s stimulus check but won’t get the money unless they file an income tax return.
Most of these people aren’t normally required to file an income tax return.
“We’re sure trying our best to ensure that no eligible person misses out on getting an economic stimulus payment,” said IRS spokesman David Stell. “The money is there for the asking, but people do have to ask,” Stell said, “by simply filing a 2007 federal income tax return. Many potential recipients need only file a simplified version of that tax return to get the stimulus payments on the way to them.”
Stell said the IRS figures about 8,069 Pulaski County residents, 1,237 in Lonoke County and 1,737 in White County, receiving either Social Security checks or veterans benefits, are eligible but have not filed a tax return for 2007.
Breaking it down further, the IRS believes there are 680 potential recipients in Jacksonville, another 680 in Searcy, 439 in Sherwood, 435 in Cabot, 272 in Lonoke, 251 in Beebe, 135 in Ward, 76 in Austin and 70 in McRae.
Doug Shulman, the IRS commissioner, said, “Many retirees and veterans do not normally file a tax return because their benefits are not taxable.
“This year, they must file in order to receive an economic stimulus payment,” Shulman said.
Stell explained that veteran’s disability payments are not taxable, and in many cases neither is Social Security.
“Generally speaking if half a person’s Social Security benefits plus their other income is more than $25,000, they have to file a return,” he said.
“To get a stimulus check, these people who normally don’t file need to by Oct. 15,” Stell said.
Shulman added that receiving the economic stimulus check should have no impact on other federal benefits being received by
retirees.
“The stimulus payment is not taxable,” Shulman said.
The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 generally provides payments of $600 ($1,200 for married couples filing joint returns or the amount equal to the 2007 net income tax liability, whichever is less) plus $300 for each qualifying child.
Payments also begin to phase out for individuals with adjusted gross incomes greater than $75,000 ($150,000 for married couples filing jointly).
For people who have no tax liability or no tax-filing requirement, there is a minimum payment of $300 ($600 for married couples), plus $300 for each qualifying child.
To be eligible for the minimum payment, individuals must have earned at least $3,000 in qualifying income.
Through mid-June, the IRS had issued more than 76 million checks worth $63.8 million.
The agency expects to issue a total of 124 million checks by the end of the year.
Area residents who have questions as to whether or not they are eligible for the stimulus check can call a special rebate hotline set up by the IRS.
There is no charge for the call and the number is 1-866-234-2942.
Leader staff writer
More than 70,000 retirees and disabled veterans in Arkansas—including several thousand locally—are eligible for the government’s stimulus check but won’t get the money unless they file an income tax return.
Most of these people aren’t normally required to file an income tax return.
“We’re sure trying our best to ensure that no eligible person misses out on getting an economic stimulus payment,” said IRS spokesman David Stell. “The money is there for the asking, but people do have to ask,” Stell said, “by simply filing a 2007 federal income tax return. Many potential recipients need only file a simplified version of that tax return to get the stimulus payments on the way to them.”
Stell said the IRS figures about 8,069 Pulaski County residents, 1,237 in Lonoke County and 1,737 in White County, receiving either Social Security checks or veterans benefits, are eligible but have not filed a tax return for 2007.
Breaking it down further, the IRS believes there are 680 potential recipients in Jacksonville, another 680 in Searcy, 439 in Sherwood, 435 in Cabot, 272 in Lonoke, 251 in Beebe, 135 in Ward, 76 in Austin and 70 in McRae.
Doug Shulman, the IRS commissioner, said, “Many retirees and veterans do not normally file a tax return because their benefits are not taxable.
“This year, they must file in order to receive an economic stimulus payment,” Shulman said.
Stell explained that veteran’s disability payments are not taxable, and in many cases neither is Social Security.
“Generally speaking if half a person’s Social Security benefits plus their other income is more than $25,000, they have to file a return,” he said.
“To get a stimulus check, these people who normally don’t file need to by Oct. 15,” Stell said.
Shulman added that receiving the economic stimulus check should have no impact on other federal benefits being received by
retirees.
“The stimulus payment is not taxable,” Shulman said.
The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 generally provides payments of $600 ($1,200 for married couples filing joint returns or the amount equal to the 2007 net income tax liability, whichever is less) plus $300 for each qualifying child.
Payments also begin to phase out for individuals with adjusted gross incomes greater than $75,000 ($150,000 for married couples filing jointly).
For people who have no tax liability or no tax-filing requirement, there is a minimum payment of $300 ($600 for married couples), plus $300 for each qualifying child.
To be eligible for the minimum payment, individuals must have earned at least $3,000 in qualifying income.
Through mid-June, the IRS had issued more than 76 million checks worth $63.8 million.
The agency expects to issue a total of 124 million checks by the end of the year.
Area residents who have questions as to whether or not they are eligible for the stimulus check can call a special rebate hotline set up by the IRS.
There is no charge for the call and the number is 1-866-234-2942.
TOP STORY > >Myers scaling back after lifelong devotion to volunteerism
By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer
Billie Ann Myers of Jacksonville is in her eighth decade of volunteerism. She thinks it is about time to scale back her community endeavors.
“At least no more multi-year projects – no more bridges, arenas, or state operations,” vows Myers, who is looking forward to more time for family and perhaps painting and drawing, a lifelong interest.
In the next year, Myers will step down as president of the state American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and as chair of the county board charged with construction and management of the newly opened Junction Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycle crossing between Little Rock and North Little Rock. Both of these demanding leadership positions are entirely voluntary, as have been so many of the other service roles Myers has played in her lifetime.
These endeavors follow on the heels of Myers’ stint on another county board that oversaw an earlier high-profile construction project – the Alltel Arena, in North Little Rock. Myers, at the invitation of County Judge F.G. “Buddy” Villines, joined that board in 1995; the arena opened in 1999. Myers’ term ended in 2001.
At that point, Myers said she intended to “take a breather,” but that same year she was invited to serve on the state AARP executive council, and has served as council chair since 2004.
In 2002, Myers joined the Pulaski County Bridges Facilities Board, again at the invitation of Villines. Soon after coming on the board, Myers was unanimously elected chair by the other four members, who are all men.
According to Villines, he and the other board members saw in Myers the requisite leadership skills for a challenging project.
The idea of converting the 100-year-old-plus railroad bridge to a foot and bike crossing had languished since the mid 1990s.
By 2002, the price of steel had skyrocketed, making the original design out of reach. Community stakeholders on the north and south shores had different ideas about how to spend limited funds. An impartial party was needed to bring both sides together.
“She was the ideal person,” Villines said. “She is inclusive, patient, able to work with other people – not just the board, but professional folks – architects, engineers. The public facilities board is a group of strong men, but they had confidence in her, not because she is a woman, but because she is Billie Ann.”
Myers’ handling of a crisis on opening day of the arena proved that she had the mettle and aplomb for the complex and unexpected. Just hours before the inaugural sports event, an engineer discovered a crack in a beam in the balcony. The game was called off, the arena board chair wound up in the hospital from stress and high blood pressure, and Myers suddenly was facing reporters and TV news cameras to explain what had happened.
She says her work as a TV camera operator in her early years of teaching junior high and later as a division chief in state government prepared her for the crisis. It helped too that most reporters covering the story were about the age of her grandchildren. “They were so sweet – how could they not be nice to someone who reminded them of their grandmother?” she laughed.
“It seemed like an eternity, but actually only lasted a week,” Myers said of the episode.
Myers traces her lifetime of volunteerism to the example set by her grandparents and parents, who instilled her with “a sense of obligation to others – that you did what you could to make life better for everybody.” Myers’ first act of volunteerism was at age 8. She sold U.S. savings stamps for the war effort. Both her parents were “doers.” Her mother was creative – “someone who would rather make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than buy one,” she recalls.
Myers’ father worked as an agricultural engineer during the New Deal era, mapping soil types across south Arkansas. Short stays in one town then another taught Myers early in life to adapt to new situations and be comfortable with strangers.
“I had to make friends quickly because I might not see them again,” Myers said. “I never got attached to any place – except maybe my grandmother’s house, so I tend to be part of any place I am.”
Over the years, that positive attitude towards new circumstances and challenges has been the open door to many successes for Myers.
After marrying and starting a family, she put her college education on hold until both daughters were in elementary school. It was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her love of art and earn a degree. One summer while a student at Arkansas State, she and a fellow student taught art classes to Paragould youth.
In the process, she caught the attention of the school superintendent, who asked Myers to establish an art program in the schools after she graduated. In her years with Paragould schools, Myers helped establish art departments on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels and participated in a federally funded pilot project that tested the viability of television as a teaching method for art, Spanish and music. As part of a creative team, Myers proved herself as a “jack of all trades” – puppeteer, graphics designer and camera operator. She taught eighth graders how to run a TV school news program.
In 1973, Dub Myers’ career in the National Guard took the couple to Camp Robinson. With one daughter now in college and the other newly married, and her husband busy with new responsibilities, Myers found herself at loose ends. With her characteristic practicality, she chose to confront her lack of purpose head on.
“I could sit there and be depressed or go to the Art Center and have lunch,” said Myers. She wasn’t sitting at the Vineyard restaurant long before a waitress approached her to ask if she’d be interested in volunteering to wait tables. At the time, the café’s wait staff was all volunteers. Myers happily accepted. “I was looking to reinvent myself.” That opportunity soon led to a series of enjoyable service activities – as a museum docent, director of volunteers, and board chair of the Arts Center’s Fine Arts Club.
By the late 70s, Myers was ready to explore new horizons in the realm of public service. She stepped into party politics for the first time as a volunteer on Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign. In 1979, she joined Clinton’s staff as a non-paid aide to his scheduling director a couple of days a week. Unlike many political campaign helpers, Myers had no career ambitions – only a desire to be of service and in the process keep her life interesting. She found it “great fun to be right in the middle of things volunteering in the governor’s inner sanctum.”
Her knack for problem-solving and communication led to more responsibilities and an offer of a secretarial job in the state Office of Volunteerism, then housed in the governor’s office. Not wanting full-time work, she and Sybil Gwatney, friend and fellow volunteer, pitched the idea of job sharing to the director, Pat Torvestad.
“That was unheard of in state government at the time, but Pat loved the idea,” Myers said. “She got two different skill sets for the price of one.”
A couple of years later, when Clinton lost to Frank White, Myers’ job was in jeopardy. Clinton advised her and her staff to keep a low profile, which worked for a little while, until one Friday afternoon, White’s chief of staff announced everyone was terminated, except for Myers, who was promoted to acting director effective the following Monday.
Eight months later, Gov. White decided Myers was a keeper and made her director of the Arkansas Office of Volunteerism, which relocated to the Department of Human Services in 1981.
A bit of an oddity in the huge DHS bureaucracy, Myers’ tiny department was regarded as “everybody’s pet,” free to be innovative and create volunteer programs for the state.
In time, her tiny staff grew to 25 employees, needed mainly to coordinate activities of the Delta Service Corps, a prototype of AmeriCorps with a presence not only in east Arkansas but also north Louisiana and west Mississippi.
Myers’ work took her across the region and frequently to Washington. All that came to a halt in 1994, when Dub Myers suffered a stroke, necessitating her resignation. By the next year, his recovery was complete. So when Villines asked Myers to consider serving on the Alltel Arena project, she was able to say yes.
Myers sees her life as a series of amazing opportunities, each preparing her for more that lay ahead.
Right now, she is looking forward to more time with her husband – they will celebrate their 56th anniversary in August – and her two daughters, Olivia Farrell and Lee Ann Mishler; four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and two “great-grandchildren in-law.”
She says that she may even take on more volunteering if it is something closer to home and something she does not have to be in charge of.
“There are so many wonderful things to do; good things come when you are willing to walk through an open door,” she said.
“And it is okay to do something different – it is good to do things that are different.”
Myers’ dream as a young woman had been to join the Army as her dad had or to be an astronaut, but at the time, there were no female astronauts and the Army only accepted women into the nursing corps.
For someone with her flair for innovation perhaps that was just as well, she has concluded. “Yes, that would probably have been too structured for me.” Instead, she trusted her creative instincts and followed her heart for service – and found fulfillment after all.
Leader staff writer
Billie Ann Myers of Jacksonville is in her eighth decade of volunteerism. She thinks it is about time to scale back her community endeavors.
“At least no more multi-year projects – no more bridges, arenas, or state operations,” vows Myers, who is looking forward to more time for family and perhaps painting and drawing, a lifelong interest.
In the next year, Myers will step down as president of the state American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and as chair of the county board charged with construction and management of the newly opened Junction Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycle crossing between Little Rock and North Little Rock. Both of these demanding leadership positions are entirely voluntary, as have been so many of the other service roles Myers has played in her lifetime.
These endeavors follow on the heels of Myers’ stint on another county board that oversaw an earlier high-profile construction project – the Alltel Arena, in North Little Rock. Myers, at the invitation of County Judge F.G. “Buddy” Villines, joined that board in 1995; the arena opened in 1999. Myers’ term ended in 2001.
At that point, Myers said she intended to “take a breather,” but that same year she was invited to serve on the state AARP executive council, and has served as council chair since 2004.
In 2002, Myers joined the Pulaski County Bridges Facilities Board, again at the invitation of Villines. Soon after coming on the board, Myers was unanimously elected chair by the other four members, who are all men.
According to Villines, he and the other board members saw in Myers the requisite leadership skills for a challenging project.
The idea of converting the 100-year-old-plus railroad bridge to a foot and bike crossing had languished since the mid 1990s.
By 2002, the price of steel had skyrocketed, making the original design out of reach. Community stakeholders on the north and south shores had different ideas about how to spend limited funds. An impartial party was needed to bring both sides together.
“She was the ideal person,” Villines said. “She is inclusive, patient, able to work with other people – not just the board, but professional folks – architects, engineers. The public facilities board is a group of strong men, but they had confidence in her, not because she is a woman, but because she is Billie Ann.”
Myers’ handling of a crisis on opening day of the arena proved that she had the mettle and aplomb for the complex and unexpected. Just hours before the inaugural sports event, an engineer discovered a crack in a beam in the balcony. The game was called off, the arena board chair wound up in the hospital from stress and high blood pressure, and Myers suddenly was facing reporters and TV news cameras to explain what had happened.
She says her work as a TV camera operator in her early years of teaching junior high and later as a division chief in state government prepared her for the crisis. It helped too that most reporters covering the story were about the age of her grandchildren. “They were so sweet – how could they not be nice to someone who reminded them of their grandmother?” she laughed.
“It seemed like an eternity, but actually only lasted a week,” Myers said of the episode.
Myers traces her lifetime of volunteerism to the example set by her grandparents and parents, who instilled her with “a sense of obligation to others – that you did what you could to make life better for everybody.” Myers’ first act of volunteerism was at age 8. She sold U.S. savings stamps for the war effort. Both her parents were “doers.” Her mother was creative – “someone who would rather make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than buy one,” she recalls.
Myers’ father worked as an agricultural engineer during the New Deal era, mapping soil types across south Arkansas. Short stays in one town then another taught Myers early in life to adapt to new situations and be comfortable with strangers.
“I had to make friends quickly because I might not see them again,” Myers said. “I never got attached to any place – except maybe my grandmother’s house, so I tend to be part of any place I am.”
Over the years, that positive attitude towards new circumstances and challenges has been the open door to many successes for Myers.
After marrying and starting a family, she put her college education on hold until both daughters were in elementary school. It was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her love of art and earn a degree. One summer while a student at Arkansas State, she and a fellow student taught art classes to Paragould youth.
In the process, she caught the attention of the school superintendent, who asked Myers to establish an art program in the schools after she graduated. In her years with Paragould schools, Myers helped establish art departments on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels and participated in a federally funded pilot project that tested the viability of television as a teaching method for art, Spanish and music. As part of a creative team, Myers proved herself as a “jack of all trades” – puppeteer, graphics designer and camera operator. She taught eighth graders how to run a TV school news program.
In 1973, Dub Myers’ career in the National Guard took the couple to Camp Robinson. With one daughter now in college and the other newly married, and her husband busy with new responsibilities, Myers found herself at loose ends. With her characteristic practicality, she chose to confront her lack of purpose head on.
“I could sit there and be depressed or go to the Art Center and have lunch,” said Myers. She wasn’t sitting at the Vineyard restaurant long before a waitress approached her to ask if she’d be interested in volunteering to wait tables. At the time, the café’s wait staff was all volunteers. Myers happily accepted. “I was looking to reinvent myself.” That opportunity soon led to a series of enjoyable service activities – as a museum docent, director of volunteers, and board chair of the Arts Center’s Fine Arts Club.
By the late 70s, Myers was ready to explore new horizons in the realm of public service. She stepped into party politics for the first time as a volunteer on Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign. In 1979, she joined Clinton’s staff as a non-paid aide to his scheduling director a couple of days a week. Unlike many political campaign helpers, Myers had no career ambitions – only a desire to be of service and in the process keep her life interesting. She found it “great fun to be right in the middle of things volunteering in the governor’s inner sanctum.”
Her knack for problem-solving and communication led to more responsibilities and an offer of a secretarial job in the state Office of Volunteerism, then housed in the governor’s office. Not wanting full-time work, she and Sybil Gwatney, friend and fellow volunteer, pitched the idea of job sharing to the director, Pat Torvestad.
“That was unheard of in state government at the time, but Pat loved the idea,” Myers said. “She got two different skill sets for the price of one.”
A couple of years later, when Clinton lost to Frank White, Myers’ job was in jeopardy. Clinton advised her and her staff to keep a low profile, which worked for a little while, until one Friday afternoon, White’s chief of staff announced everyone was terminated, except for Myers, who was promoted to acting director effective the following Monday.
Eight months later, Gov. White decided Myers was a keeper and made her director of the Arkansas Office of Volunteerism, which relocated to the Department of Human Services in 1981.
A bit of an oddity in the huge DHS bureaucracy, Myers’ tiny department was regarded as “everybody’s pet,” free to be innovative and create volunteer programs for the state.
In time, her tiny staff grew to 25 employees, needed mainly to coordinate activities of the Delta Service Corps, a prototype of AmeriCorps with a presence not only in east Arkansas but also north Louisiana and west Mississippi.
Myers’ work took her across the region and frequently to Washington. All that came to a halt in 1994, when Dub Myers suffered a stroke, necessitating her resignation. By the next year, his recovery was complete. So when Villines asked Myers to consider serving on the Alltel Arena project, she was able to say yes.
Myers sees her life as a series of amazing opportunities, each preparing her for more that lay ahead.
Right now, she is looking forward to more time with her husband – they will celebrate their 56th anniversary in August – and her two daughters, Olivia Farrell and Lee Ann Mishler; four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and two “great-grandchildren in-law.”
She says that she may even take on more volunteering if it is something closer to home and something she does not have to be in charge of.
“There are so many wonderful things to do; good things come when you are willing to walk through an open door,” she said.
“And it is okay to do something different – it is good to do things that are different.”
Myers’ dream as a young woman had been to join the Army as her dad had or to be an astronaut, but at the time, there were no female astronauts and the Army only accepted women into the nursing corps.
For someone with her flair for innovation perhaps that was just as well, she has concluded. “Yes, that would probably have been too structured for me.” Instead, she trusted her creative instincts and followed her heart for service – and found fulfillment after all.
TOP STORY > >Myers scaling back after 80 years of volunteerism
By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer
Billie Ann Myers of Jacksonville is in her eighth decade of volunteerism. She thinks it is about time to scale back her community endeavors.
“At least no more multi-year projects – no more bridges, arenas, or state operations,” vows Myers, who is looking forward to more time for family and perhaps painting and drawing, a lifelong interest.
In the next year, Myers will step down as president of the state American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and as chair of the county board charged with construction and management of the newly opened Junction Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycle crossing between Little Rock and North Little Rock. Both of these demanding leadership positions are entirely voluntary, as have been so many of the other service roles Myers has played in her lifetime.
These endeavors follow on the heels of Myers’ stint on another county board that oversaw an earlier high-profile construction project – the Alltel Arena, in North Little Rock. Myers, at the invitation of County Judge F.G. “Buddy” Villines, joined that board in 1995; the arena opened in 1999. Myers’ term ended in 2001.
At that point, Myers said she intended to “take a breather,” but that same year she was invited to serve on the state AARP executive council, and has served as council chair since 2004.
In 2002, Myers joined the Pulaski County Bridges Facilities Board, again at the invitation of Villines. Soon after coming on the board, Myers was unanimously elected chair by the other four members, who are all men.
According to Villines, he and the other board members saw in Myers the requisite leadership skills for a challenging project.
The idea of converting the 100-year-old-plus railroad bridge to a foot and bike crossing had languished since the mid 1990s.
By 2002, the price of steel had skyrocketed, making the original design out of reach. Community stakeholders on the north and south shores had different ideas about how to spend limited funds. An impartial party was needed to bring both sides together.
“She was the ideal person,” Villines said. “She is inclusive, patient, able to work with other people – not just the board, but professional folks – architects, engineers. The public facilities board is a group of strong men, but they had confidence in her, not because she is a woman, but because she is Billie Ann.”
Myers’ handling of a crisis on opening day of the arena proved that she had the mettle and aplomb for the complex and unexpected. Just hours before the inaugural sports event, an engineer discovered a crack in a beam in the balcony. The game was called off, the arena board chair wound up in the hospital from stress and high blood pressure, and Myers suddenly was facing reporters and TV news cameras to explain what had happened.
She says her work as a TV camera operator in her early years of teaching junior high and later as a division chief in state government prepared her for the crisis. It helped too that most reporters covering the story were about the age of her grandchildren. “They were so sweet – how could they not be nice to someone who reminded them of their grandmother?” she laughed.
“It seemed like an eternity, but actually only lasted a week,” Myers said of the episode.
Myers traces her lifetime of volunteerism to the example set by her grandparents and parents, who instilled her with “a sense of obligation to others – that you did what you could to make life better for everybody.” Myers’ first act of volunteerism was at age 8. She sold U.S. savings stamps for the war effort. Both her parents were “doers.” Her mother was creative – “someone who would rather make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than buy one,” she recalls.
Myers’ father worked as an agricultural engineer during the New Deal era, mapping soil types across south Arkansas. Short stays in one town then another taught Myers early in life to adapt to new situations and be comfortable with strangers.
“I had to make friends quickly because I might not see them again,” Myers said. “I never got attached to any place – except maybe my grandmother’s house, so I tend to be part of any place I am.”
Over the years, that positive attitude towards new circumstances and challenges has been the open door to many successes for Myers.
After marrying and starting a family, she put her college education on hold until both daughters were in elementary school. It was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her love of art and earn a degree. One summer while a student at Arkansas State, she and a fellow student taught art classes to Paragould youth.
In the process, she caught the attention of the school superintendent, who asked Myers to establish an art program in the schools after she graduated. In her years with Paragould schools, Myers helped establish art departments on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels and participated in a federally funded pilot project that tested the viability of television as a teaching method for art, Spanish and music. As part of a creative team, Myers proved herself as a “jack of all trades” – puppeteer, graphics designer and camera operator. She taught eighth graders how to run a TV school news program.
In 1973, Dub Myers’ career in the National Guard took the couple to Camp Robinson. With one daughter now in college and the other newly married, and her husband busy with new responsibilities, Myers found herself at loose ends. With her characteristic practicality, she chose to confront her lack of purpose head on.
“I could sit there and be depressed or go to the Art Center and have lunch,” said Myers. She wasn’t sitting at the Vineyard restaurant long before a waitress approached her to ask if she’d be interested in volunteering to wait tables. At the time, the café’s wait staff was all volunteers. Myers happily accepted. “I was looking to reinvent myself.” That opportunity soon led to a series of enjoyable service activities – as a museum docent, director of volunteers, and board chair of the Arts Center’s Fine Arts Club.
By the late 70s, Myers was ready to explore new horizons in the realm of public service. She stepped into party politics for the first time as a volunteer on Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign. In 1979, she joined Clinton’s staff as a non-paid aide to his scheduling director a couple of days a week. Unlike many political campaign helpers, Myers had no career ambitions – only a desire to be of service and in the process keep her life interesting. She found it “great fun to be right in the middle of things volunteering in the governor’s inner sanctum.”
Her knack for problem-solving and communication led to more responsibilities and an offer of a secretarial job in the state Office of Volunteerism, then housed in the governor’s office. Not wanting full-time work, she and Sybil Gwatney, friend and fellow volunteer, pitched the idea of job sharing to the director, Pat Torvestad.
“That was unheard of in state government at the time, but Pat loved the idea,” Myers said. “She got two different skill sets for the price of one.”
A couple of years later, when Clinton lost to Frank White, Myers’ job was in jeopardy. Clinton advised her and her staff to keep a low profile, which worked for a little while, until one Friday afternoon, White’s chief of staff announced everyone was terminated, except for Myers, who was promoted to acting director effective the following Monday.
Eight months later, Gov. White decided Myers was a keeper and made her director of the Arkansas Office of Volunteerism, which relocated to the Department of Human Services in 1981.
A bit of an oddity in the huge DHS bureaucracy, Myers’ tiny department was regarded as “everybody’s pet,” free to be innovative and create volunteer programs for the state.
In time, her tiny staff grew to 25 employees, needed mainly to coordinate activities of the Delta Service Corps, a prototype of AmeriCorps with a presence not only in east Arkansas but also north Louisiana and west Mississippi.
Myers’ work took her across the region and frequently to Washington. All that came to a halt in 1994, when Dub Myers suffered a stroke, necessitating her resignation. By the next year, his recovery was complete. So when Villines asked Myers to consider serving on the Alltel Arena project, she was able to say yes.
Myers sees her life as a series of amazing opportunities, each preparing her for more that lay ahead.
Right now, she is looking forward to more time with her husband – they will celebrate their 56th anniversary in August – and her two daughters, Olivia Farrell and Lee Ann Mishler; four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and two “great-grandchildren in-law.”
She says that she may even take on more volunteering if it is something closer to home and something she does not have to be in charge of.
“There are so many wonderful things to do; good things come when you are willing to walk through an open door,” she said.
“And it is okay to do something different – it is good to do things that are different.”
Myers’ dream as a young woman had been to join the Army as her dad had or to be an astronaut, but at the time, there were no female astronauts and the Army only accepted women into the nursing corps.
For someone with her flair for innovation perhaps that was just as well, she has concluded. “Yes, that would probably have been too structured for me.” Instead, she trusted her creative instincts and followed her heart for service – and found fulfillment after all.
Leader staff writer
Billie Ann Myers of Jacksonville is in her eighth decade of volunteerism. She thinks it is about time to scale back her community endeavors.
“At least no more multi-year projects – no more bridges, arenas, or state operations,” vows Myers, who is looking forward to more time for family and perhaps painting and drawing, a lifelong interest.
In the next year, Myers will step down as president of the state American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and as chair of the county board charged with construction and management of the newly opened Junction Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycle crossing between Little Rock and North Little Rock. Both of these demanding leadership positions are entirely voluntary, as have been so many of the other service roles Myers has played in her lifetime.
These endeavors follow on the heels of Myers’ stint on another county board that oversaw an earlier high-profile construction project – the Alltel Arena, in North Little Rock. Myers, at the invitation of County Judge F.G. “Buddy” Villines, joined that board in 1995; the arena opened in 1999. Myers’ term ended in 2001.
At that point, Myers said she intended to “take a breather,” but that same year she was invited to serve on the state AARP executive council, and has served as council chair since 2004.
In 2002, Myers joined the Pulaski County Bridges Facilities Board, again at the invitation of Villines. Soon after coming on the board, Myers was unanimously elected chair by the other four members, who are all men.
According to Villines, he and the other board members saw in Myers the requisite leadership skills for a challenging project.
The idea of converting the 100-year-old-plus railroad bridge to a foot and bike crossing had languished since the mid 1990s.
By 2002, the price of steel had skyrocketed, making the original design out of reach. Community stakeholders on the north and south shores had different ideas about how to spend limited funds. An impartial party was needed to bring both sides together.
“She was the ideal person,” Villines said. “She is inclusive, patient, able to work with other people – not just the board, but professional folks – architects, engineers. The public facilities board is a group of strong men, but they had confidence in her, not because she is a woman, but because she is Billie Ann.”
Myers’ handling of a crisis on opening day of the arena proved that she had the mettle and aplomb for the complex and unexpected. Just hours before the inaugural sports event, an engineer discovered a crack in a beam in the balcony. The game was called off, the arena board chair wound up in the hospital from stress and high blood pressure, and Myers suddenly was facing reporters and TV news cameras to explain what had happened.
She says her work as a TV camera operator in her early years of teaching junior high and later as a division chief in state government prepared her for the crisis. It helped too that most reporters covering the story were about the age of her grandchildren. “They were so sweet – how could they not be nice to someone who reminded them of their grandmother?” she laughed.
“It seemed like an eternity, but actually only lasted a week,” Myers said of the episode.
Myers traces her lifetime of volunteerism to the example set by her grandparents and parents, who instilled her with “a sense of obligation to others – that you did what you could to make life better for everybody.” Myers’ first act of volunteerism was at age 8. She sold U.S. savings stamps for the war effort. Both her parents were “doers.” Her mother was creative – “someone who would rather make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than buy one,” she recalls.
Myers’ father worked as an agricultural engineer during the New Deal era, mapping soil types across south Arkansas. Short stays in one town then another taught Myers early in life to adapt to new situations and be comfortable with strangers.
“I had to make friends quickly because I might not see them again,” Myers said. “I never got attached to any place – except maybe my grandmother’s house, so I tend to be part of any place I am.”
Over the years, that positive attitude towards new circumstances and challenges has been the open door to many successes for Myers.
After marrying and starting a family, she put her college education on hold until both daughters were in elementary school. It was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her love of art and earn a degree. One summer while a student at Arkansas State, she and a fellow student taught art classes to Paragould youth.
In the process, she caught the attention of the school superintendent, who asked Myers to establish an art program in the schools after she graduated. In her years with Paragould schools, Myers helped establish art departments on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels and participated in a federally funded pilot project that tested the viability of television as a teaching method for art, Spanish and music. As part of a creative team, Myers proved herself as a “jack of all trades” – puppeteer, graphics designer and camera operator. She taught eighth graders how to run a TV school news program.
In 1973, Dub Myers’ career in the National Guard took the couple to Camp Robinson. With one daughter now in college and the other newly married, and her husband busy with new responsibilities, Myers found herself at loose ends. With her characteristic practicality, she chose to confront her lack of purpose head on.
“I could sit there and be depressed or go to the Art Center and have lunch,” said Myers. She wasn’t sitting at the Vineyard restaurant long before a waitress approached her to ask if she’d be interested in volunteering to wait tables. At the time, the café’s wait staff was all volunteers. Myers happily accepted. “I was looking to reinvent myself.” That opportunity soon led to a series of enjoyable service activities – as a museum docent, director of volunteers, and board chair of the Arts Center’s Fine Arts Club.
By the late 70s, Myers was ready to explore new horizons in the realm of public service. She stepped into party politics for the first time as a volunteer on Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign. In 1979, she joined Clinton’s staff as a non-paid aide to his scheduling director a couple of days a week. Unlike many political campaign helpers, Myers had no career ambitions – only a desire to be of service and in the process keep her life interesting. She found it “great fun to be right in the middle of things volunteering in the governor’s inner sanctum.”
Her knack for problem-solving and communication led to more responsibilities and an offer of a secretarial job in the state Office of Volunteerism, then housed in the governor’s office. Not wanting full-time work, she and Sybil Gwatney, friend and fellow volunteer, pitched the idea of job sharing to the director, Pat Torvestad.
“That was unheard of in state government at the time, but Pat loved the idea,” Myers said. “She got two different skill sets for the price of one.”
A couple of years later, when Clinton lost to Frank White, Myers’ job was in jeopardy. Clinton advised her and her staff to keep a low profile, which worked for a little while, until one Friday afternoon, White’s chief of staff announced everyone was terminated, except for Myers, who was promoted to acting director effective the following Monday.
Eight months later, Gov. White decided Myers was a keeper and made her director of the Arkansas Office of Volunteerism, which relocated to the Department of Human Services in 1981.
A bit of an oddity in the huge DHS bureaucracy, Myers’ tiny department was regarded as “everybody’s pet,” free to be innovative and create volunteer programs for the state.
In time, her tiny staff grew to 25 employees, needed mainly to coordinate activities of the Delta Service Corps, a prototype of AmeriCorps with a presence not only in east Arkansas but also north Louisiana and west Mississippi.
Myers’ work took her across the region and frequently to Washington. All that came to a halt in 1994, when Dub Myers suffered a stroke, necessitating her resignation. By the next year, his recovery was complete. So when Villines asked Myers to consider serving on the Alltel Arena project, she was able to say yes.
Myers sees her life as a series of amazing opportunities, each preparing her for more that lay ahead.
Right now, she is looking forward to more time with her husband – they will celebrate their 56th anniversary in August – and her two daughters, Olivia Farrell and Lee Ann Mishler; four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and two “great-grandchildren in-law.”
She says that she may even take on more volunteering if it is something closer to home and something she does not have to be in charge of.
“There are so many wonderful things to do; good things come when you are willing to walk through an open door,” she said.
“And it is okay to do something different – it is good to do things that are different.”
Myers’ dream as a young woman had been to join the Army as her dad had or to be an astronaut, but at the time, there were no female astronauts and the Army only accepted women into the nursing corps.
For someone with her flair for innovation perhaps that was just as well, she has concluded. “Yes, that would probably have been too structured for me.” Instead, she trusted her creative instincts and followed her heart for service – and found fulfillment after all.
TOP STORY > >Meeting will discuss housing
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
Airmen at Little Rock Air Force Base and three other bases continue to make do with aging, sometimes decrepit, housing while negotiations drag on between failed developer American Eagle Communities and other parties including bondholders and the Hunt-Pinnacle Group.
Hunt-Pinnacle is slated to take over the privatization project. The Air Force is an interested observer, but not an actual party to the negotiations, because the housing and the responsibility to build, repair and manage it was sold to American Eagle in 2004.
Brig. Gen. Rowayne Schatz, Little Rock Air Force Base commander, will host a Town Hall meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at the Conference Center to update airmen and their families on progress in the stalled privatization process and address their questions and concerns regarding their current housing on the base.
Work on the building or remodeling of 1,200 housing units on the base has been at a standstill since American Eagle and its managing partner, Carabetta Enterprises, ceased work in May 2007.
The original contract called for construction of 468 new housing units and remodeling 732 existing units at LRAFB. Schatz has said the new contract would be scaled back.
“Right now everything is locked down,” according to Ken Williams, a civilian base spokesman. “The base is pretty much a customer,” he said. “The process is between other parties.”
“We expect that a purchase-and-sales agreement will be signed within the next few months and close in the fall,” according to Mike Hawkins, a spokesperson for the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment (AFCEE) headquartered at Brooks City-Base, Texas. AFCEE is the Air Force’s central manager for its housing privatization program.
That’s in line with Schatz’s estimation in April that the deal could close in October with construction starting back up perhaps in the spring.
“Pinnacle Property Manage-ment Services Corporation will then provide day-to-day property management services and Hunt Building Corporation will be responsible for execution of the construction and renovation program,” Hawkins said.
Hunt-Pinnacle, American Eagle and the Air Force all signed a letter of intent in April laying out the parameters of the remaining negotiations, although technically the Air Force is not a party to the negotiations.
Hunt-Pinnacle, which won the 2007 Air Force Professional Housing Management Association Award for best installation team for its work at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, has built and manages tens of thousands of such units for the military.
That’s good news for the airmen, dependents and the unpaid contractors and suppliers left in the lurch when the Carabetta Group and Shaw Infrastructure, doing business as American Eagle Communities, walked away last year from their contracts to build and remodel several thousand homes at Little Rock, Moody, Patrick and Hanscom Air Force bases. American Eagle Communities completed only about 25 of the 1,200 new and remodeled housing units it contracted to build, own and manage at Little Rock AFB and failed similarly at those other bases.
At the end of three years, Carabetta was two years behind on the Little Rock AFB contract, according to the Air Force.
The Air Force will not decide whether the Carabetta organization can bid on future government contracts until negotiations are settled and a new developer is in place to build and manage housing at four Air Force bases where Carabetta failed to fulfill its contracts, according to the general.
Pinnacle has completed five privatized, military family housing projects totaling 11,485 units with development costs in excess of $1.6 billion within the past five years. Pinnacle is the largest third-party fee management company, managing a $12.5 billion portfolio of properties in 42 states, including 22,000 military family homes.
The Hunt Development Group is 60 years old, according to information on its Web site. It has completed 170 projects for the Department of Defense, including 10 military housing privatization projects and is working on 14 others. It has constructed or rehabilitated 69,000 units of military housing.
Leader senior staff writer
Airmen at Little Rock Air Force Base and three other bases continue to make do with aging, sometimes decrepit, housing while negotiations drag on between failed developer American Eagle Communities and other parties including bondholders and the Hunt-Pinnacle Group.
Hunt-Pinnacle is slated to take over the privatization project. The Air Force is an interested observer, but not an actual party to the negotiations, because the housing and the responsibility to build, repair and manage it was sold to American Eagle in 2004.
Brig. Gen. Rowayne Schatz, Little Rock Air Force Base commander, will host a Town Hall meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at the Conference Center to update airmen and their families on progress in the stalled privatization process and address their questions and concerns regarding their current housing on the base.
Work on the building or remodeling of 1,200 housing units on the base has been at a standstill since American Eagle and its managing partner, Carabetta Enterprises, ceased work in May 2007.
The original contract called for construction of 468 new housing units and remodeling 732 existing units at LRAFB. Schatz has said the new contract would be scaled back.
“Right now everything is locked down,” according to Ken Williams, a civilian base spokesman. “The base is pretty much a customer,” he said. “The process is between other parties.”
“We expect that a purchase-and-sales agreement will be signed within the next few months and close in the fall,” according to Mike Hawkins, a spokesperson for the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment (AFCEE) headquartered at Brooks City-Base, Texas. AFCEE is the Air Force’s central manager for its housing privatization program.
That’s in line with Schatz’s estimation in April that the deal could close in October with construction starting back up perhaps in the spring.
“Pinnacle Property Manage-ment Services Corporation will then provide day-to-day property management services and Hunt Building Corporation will be responsible for execution of the construction and renovation program,” Hawkins said.
Hunt-Pinnacle, American Eagle and the Air Force all signed a letter of intent in April laying out the parameters of the remaining negotiations, although technically the Air Force is not a party to the negotiations.
Hunt-Pinnacle, which won the 2007 Air Force Professional Housing Management Association Award for best installation team for its work at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, has built and manages tens of thousands of such units for the military.
That’s good news for the airmen, dependents and the unpaid contractors and suppliers left in the lurch when the Carabetta Group and Shaw Infrastructure, doing business as American Eagle Communities, walked away last year from their contracts to build and remodel several thousand homes at Little Rock, Moody, Patrick and Hanscom Air Force bases. American Eagle Communities completed only about 25 of the 1,200 new and remodeled housing units it contracted to build, own and manage at Little Rock AFB and failed similarly at those other bases.
At the end of three years, Carabetta was two years behind on the Little Rock AFB contract, according to the Air Force.
The Air Force will not decide whether the Carabetta organization can bid on future government contracts until negotiations are settled and a new developer is in place to build and manage housing at four Air Force bases where Carabetta failed to fulfill its contracts, according to the general.
Pinnacle has completed five privatized, military family housing projects totaling 11,485 units with development costs in excess of $1.6 billion within the past five years. Pinnacle is the largest third-party fee management company, managing a $12.5 billion portfolio of properties in 42 states, including 22,000 military family homes.
The Hunt Development Group is 60 years old, according to information on its Web site. It has completed 170 projects for the Department of Defense, including 10 military housing privatization projects and is working on 14 others. It has constructed or rehabilitated 69,000 units of military housing.
TOP STORY > >Sherwood turns down road plan
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
A major east-west corridor in Sherwood, Maryland Avenue, will not be completed anytime in the near future, and neither will Hemphill Road, a north-south road.
The city council Monday voted 5-3 against a proposal to give Cypress Properties the go ahead to build its portion of Maryland Avenue now in exchange for a moratorium on completing the Hemphill thoroughfare.
Alderman Marina Brooks suggested the compromise motion. Aldermen Butch Davis and Sheila Sulcer voted for it, while the rest of the council, Aldermen Becki Vassar, Charlie Harmon, David Henry, Keith Rankin and Steve Fender, said no.
“It is in the best interest of the city to open Maryland,” Mayor Virginia Hillman said at the council meeting. “We aren’t doing the developer any favors as we can’t make him open up any street that he’s not developing.”
She called the proposal a win-win for Sherwood.
Rankin said, “Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. This proposal was not a win-win.”
“But now we have nothing,” Hillman said after the vote.
Cypress Properties, one of Sherwood’s largest landowners and the developer of Stonehill Subdivision, in meetings with Hillman earlier this year came up with a proposal that the company would spend about $400,000 of its own money to complete the portion of Maryland Avenue that runs through their property, and along with a small portion the city planned to complete,
Maryland Avenue would become a complete east-west thoroughfare connecting Brockington Road and Hwy. 107.
In exchange, the developer wanted assurances from the city that he would not have to build and open up the remainder of Hemphill Road. Hemphill runs north-south, from Kiehl Avenue, but then dead ends. The city’s master street plan shows the road eventually extending to Maryland Avenue.
To guarantee that Cypress Properties would not have to build the rest of Hemphill Road, Andy Collins, chairman of the board for the company, asked that the remainder of the planned road be removed from the city’s master street plan.
According to city ordinances, a developer doesn’t have to build a subdivision street until that section is developed, and in the case of Stonehill Subdivision, Cypress Properties hasn’t started developing the sections containing Maryland or Hemphill, so hasn’t had to build either road.
In Brooks’ compromise motion, Hemphill would not be removed from the master street plan, but Cypress Properties would be excused from completing the road, if they completed Maryland Avenue within nine months.
But the idea did not set well with Vassar who came armed with planning commission and council meeting minutes dating back to 1998 showing where the developer had agreed to open both roads.
“In meetings galore, month after month, year after year,” Vassar said it was made clear that the developer was responsible for opening up both roadways. “I want Maryland opened, but it’s not fair to give in to this ultimatum,” Vassar said.
Harmon called the developer’s plan a “sweet deal” for the developer. “If we give this developer a pass are we going to give it to others too?” he asked.
Scotty Thurman, director of real estate for Cypress, said, “Once Maryland is complete, the rush- hour congestion will be immediately and substantially alleviated. There would be no purpose whatsoever to extend Hemphill because it would become a commuter speedway through a secluded and peaceful neighborhood.”
Thurman added, “We respect the master street plan but it can and should be modified to fit changing realities.”
The master street is not something the council just got together and decided on it one day, explained Vassar. She said it was a joint effort by the city, Metroplan and the Municipal League. “The master street plan is a well-studied document. It took a long time to prepare and looks 20 to 30 years down the road,” she said.
“It’s not something to be taken lightly,” Vassar said.
A number of Maryland Avenue residents spoke in favor of the idea of opening Maryland. Resident Gary Stroud said, I don’t understand the magic of Hemphill. It’s a small insignificant street. We will have more opportunities with Maryland opened.”
Resident Jeff Stewart asked the council, “Why is it necessary to open Hemphill when the people don’t want it? I’d like to hear a logical reason. There are other alternatives.” Stewart said the council was foolish to force the road to be built on principle.
“Do you want us to give all the developers passes?” Vassar responded. Harmon added, “We must have both the east-west connection and the north-south.”
“I don’t want to make any developer mad, but maybe we’ve been too nice, letting them build out of sequence,” Vassar said. If Cypress Properties had built the Stonehill phases in order, Vassar believes both roads would have already been built.
But the city has no requirement to force developers to build in sequence and the phase changes Cypress Properties asked for had been approved by the city at either the planning commission or council level, or both.
In other council business:
Aldermen approved five new positions in the public works department and two in the wastewater department. It will cost the city about $86,000 to fill the newly created positions this year.
The council affirmed the planning commission’s approval to rezone a lot cornered by Ash, Kiehl and Elmwood from R-1 (single-family homes) to R-2 (duplexes and other multi-family structures) Plans call for duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes to be built on the acreage. A total of 25 units, the maximum allowed, are planned.
Leader staff writer
A major east-west corridor in Sherwood, Maryland Avenue, will not be completed anytime in the near future, and neither will Hemphill Road, a north-south road.
The city council Monday voted 5-3 against a proposal to give Cypress Properties the go ahead to build its portion of Maryland Avenue now in exchange for a moratorium on completing the Hemphill thoroughfare.
Alderman Marina Brooks suggested the compromise motion. Aldermen Butch Davis and Sheila Sulcer voted for it, while the rest of the council, Aldermen Becki Vassar, Charlie Harmon, David Henry, Keith Rankin and Steve Fender, said no.
“It is in the best interest of the city to open Maryland,” Mayor Virginia Hillman said at the council meeting. “We aren’t doing the developer any favors as we can’t make him open up any street that he’s not developing.”
She called the proposal a win-win for Sherwood.
Rankin said, “Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. This proposal was not a win-win.”
“But now we have nothing,” Hillman said after the vote.
Cypress Properties, one of Sherwood’s largest landowners and the developer of Stonehill Subdivision, in meetings with Hillman earlier this year came up with a proposal that the company would spend about $400,000 of its own money to complete the portion of Maryland Avenue that runs through their property, and along with a small portion the city planned to complete,
Maryland Avenue would become a complete east-west thoroughfare connecting Brockington Road and Hwy. 107.
In exchange, the developer wanted assurances from the city that he would not have to build and open up the remainder of Hemphill Road. Hemphill runs north-south, from Kiehl Avenue, but then dead ends. The city’s master street plan shows the road eventually extending to Maryland Avenue.
To guarantee that Cypress Properties would not have to build the rest of Hemphill Road, Andy Collins, chairman of the board for the company, asked that the remainder of the planned road be removed from the city’s master street plan.
According to city ordinances, a developer doesn’t have to build a subdivision street until that section is developed, and in the case of Stonehill Subdivision, Cypress Properties hasn’t started developing the sections containing Maryland or Hemphill, so hasn’t had to build either road.
In Brooks’ compromise motion, Hemphill would not be removed from the master street plan, but Cypress Properties would be excused from completing the road, if they completed Maryland Avenue within nine months.
But the idea did not set well with Vassar who came armed with planning commission and council meeting minutes dating back to 1998 showing where the developer had agreed to open both roads.
“In meetings galore, month after month, year after year,” Vassar said it was made clear that the developer was responsible for opening up both roadways. “I want Maryland opened, but it’s not fair to give in to this ultimatum,” Vassar said.
Harmon called the developer’s plan a “sweet deal” for the developer. “If we give this developer a pass are we going to give it to others too?” he asked.
Scotty Thurman, director of real estate for Cypress, said, “Once Maryland is complete, the rush- hour congestion will be immediately and substantially alleviated. There would be no purpose whatsoever to extend Hemphill because it would become a commuter speedway through a secluded and peaceful neighborhood.”
Thurman added, “We respect the master street plan but it can and should be modified to fit changing realities.”
The master street is not something the council just got together and decided on it one day, explained Vassar. She said it was a joint effort by the city, Metroplan and the Municipal League. “The master street plan is a well-studied document. It took a long time to prepare and looks 20 to 30 years down the road,” she said.
“It’s not something to be taken lightly,” Vassar said.
A number of Maryland Avenue residents spoke in favor of the idea of opening Maryland. Resident Gary Stroud said, I don’t understand the magic of Hemphill. It’s a small insignificant street. We will have more opportunities with Maryland opened.”
Resident Jeff Stewart asked the council, “Why is it necessary to open Hemphill when the people don’t want it? I’d like to hear a logical reason. There are other alternatives.” Stewart said the council was foolish to force the road to be built on principle.
“Do you want us to give all the developers passes?” Vassar responded. Harmon added, “We must have both the east-west connection and the north-south.”
“I don’t want to make any developer mad, but maybe we’ve been too nice, letting them build out of sequence,” Vassar said. If Cypress Properties had built the Stonehill phases in order, Vassar believes both roads would have already been built.
But the city has no requirement to force developers to build in sequence and the phase changes Cypress Properties asked for had been approved by the city at either the planning commission or council level, or both.
In other council business:
Aldermen approved five new positions in the public works department and two in the wastewater department. It will cost the city about $86,000 to fill the newly created positions this year.
The council affirmed the planning commission’s approval to rezone a lot cornered by Ash, Kiehl and Elmwood from R-1 (single-family homes) to R-2 (duplexes and other multi-family structures) Plans call for duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes to be built on the acreage. A total of 25 units, the maximum allowed, are planned.
TOP STORY > >Sherwood turns down road plan
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
A major east-west corridor in Sherwood, Maryland Avenue, will not be completed anytime in the near future, and neither will Hemphill Road, a north-south road.
The city council Monday voted 5-3 against a proposal to give Cypress Properties the go ahead to build its portion of Maryland Avenue now in exchange for a moratorium on completing the Hemphill thoroughfare.
Alderman Marina Brooks suggested the compromise motion. Aldermen Butch Davis and Sheila Sulcer voted for it, while the rest of the council, Aldermen Becki Vassar, Charlie Harmon, David Henry, Keith Rankin and Steve Fender, said no.
“It is in the best interest of the city to open Maryland,” Mayor Virginia Hillman said at the council meeting. “We aren’t doing the developer any favors as we can’t make him open up any street that he’s not developing.”
She called the proposal a win-win for Sherwood.
Rankin said, “Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. This proposal was not a win-win.”
“But now we have nothing,” Hillman said after the vote.
Cypress Properties, one of Sherwood’s largest landowners and the developer of Stonehill Subdivision, in meetings with Hillman earlier this year came up with a proposal that the company would spend about $400,000 of its own money to complete the portion of Maryland Avenue that runs through their property, and along with a small portion the city planned to complete,
Maryland Avenue would become a complete east-west thoroughfare connecting Brockington Road and Hwy. 107.
In exchange, the developer wanted assurances from the city that he would not have to build and open up the remainder of Hemphill Road. Hemphill runs north-south, from Kiehl Avenue, but then dead ends. The city’s master street plan shows the road eventually extending to Maryland Avenue.
To guarantee that Cypress Properties would not have to build the rest of Hemphill Road, Andy Collins, chairman of the board for the company, asked that the remainder of the planned road be removed from the city’s master street plan.
According to city ordinances, a developer doesn’t have to build a subdivision street until that section is developed, and in the case of Stonehill Subdivision, Cypress Properties hasn’t started developing the sections containing Maryland or Hemphill, so hasn’t had to build either road.
In Brooks’ compromise motion, Hemphill would not be removed from the master street plan, but Cypress Properties would be excused from completing the road, if they completed Maryland Avenue within nine months.
But the idea did not set well with Vassar who came armed with planning commission and council meeting minutes dating back to 1998 showing where the developer had agreed to open both roads.
“In meetings galore, month after month, year after year,” Vassar said it was made clear that the developer was responsible for opening up both roadways. “I want Maryland opened, but it’s not fair to give in to this ultimatum,” Vassar said.
Harmon called the developer’s plan a “sweet deal” for the developer. “If we give this developer a pass are we going to give it to others too?” he asked.
Scotty Thurman, director of real estate for Cypress, said, “Once Maryland is complete, the rush- hour congestion will be immediately and substantially alleviated. There would be no purpose whatsoever to extend Hemphill because it would become a commuter speedway through a secluded and peaceful neighborhood.”
Thurman added, “We respect the master street plan but it can and should be modified to fit changing realities.”
The master street is not something the council just got together and decided on it one day, explained Vassar. She said it was a joint effort by the city, Metroplan and the Municipal League. “The master street plan is a well-studied document. It took a long time to prepare and looks 20 to 30 years down the road,” she said.
“It’s not something to be taken lightly,” Vassar said.
A number of Maryland Avenue residents spoke in favor of the idea of opening Maryland. Resident Gary Stroud said, I don’t understand the magic of Hemphill. It’s a small insignificant street. We will have more opportunities with Maryland opened.”
Resident Jeff Stewart asked the council, “Why is it necessary to open Hemphill when the people don’t want it? I’d like to hear a logical reason. There are other alternatives.” Stewart said the council was foolish to force the road to be built on principle.
“Do you want us to give all the developers passes?” Vassar responded. Harmon added, “We must have both the east-west connection and the north-south.”
“I don’t want to make any developer mad, but maybe we’ve been too nice, letting them build out of sequence,” Vassar said. If Cypress Properties had built the Stonehill phases in order, Vassar believes both roads would have already been built.
But the city has no requirement to force developers to build in sequence and the phase changes Cypress Properties asked for had been approved by the city at either the planning commission or council level, or both.
In other council business:
Aldermen approved five new positions in the public works department and two in the wastewater department. It will cost the city about $86,000 to fill the newly created positions this year.
The council affirmed the planning commission’s approval to rezone a lot cornered by Ash, Kiehl and Elmwood from R-1 (single-family homes) to R-2 (duplexes and other multi-family structures) Plans call for duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes to be built on the acreage. A total of 25 units, the maximum allowed, are planned.
Leader staff writer
A major east-west corridor in Sherwood, Maryland Avenue, will not be completed anytime in the near future, and neither will Hemphill Road, a north-south road.
The city council Monday voted 5-3 against a proposal to give Cypress Properties the go ahead to build its portion of Maryland Avenue now in exchange for a moratorium on completing the Hemphill thoroughfare.
Alderman Marina Brooks suggested the compromise motion. Aldermen Butch Davis and Sheila Sulcer voted for it, while the rest of the council, Aldermen Becki Vassar, Charlie Harmon, David Henry, Keith Rankin and Steve Fender, said no.
“It is in the best interest of the city to open Maryland,” Mayor Virginia Hillman said at the council meeting. “We aren’t doing the developer any favors as we can’t make him open up any street that he’s not developing.”
She called the proposal a win-win for Sherwood.
Rankin said, “Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. This proposal was not a win-win.”
“But now we have nothing,” Hillman said after the vote.
Cypress Properties, one of Sherwood’s largest landowners and the developer of Stonehill Subdivision, in meetings with Hillman earlier this year came up with a proposal that the company would spend about $400,000 of its own money to complete the portion of Maryland Avenue that runs through their property, and along with a small portion the city planned to complete,
Maryland Avenue would become a complete east-west thoroughfare connecting Brockington Road and Hwy. 107.
In exchange, the developer wanted assurances from the city that he would not have to build and open up the remainder of Hemphill Road. Hemphill runs north-south, from Kiehl Avenue, but then dead ends. The city’s master street plan shows the road eventually extending to Maryland Avenue.
To guarantee that Cypress Properties would not have to build the rest of Hemphill Road, Andy Collins, chairman of the board for the company, asked that the remainder of the planned road be removed from the city’s master street plan.
According to city ordinances, a developer doesn’t have to build a subdivision street until that section is developed, and in the case of Stonehill Subdivision, Cypress Properties hasn’t started developing the sections containing Maryland or Hemphill, so hasn’t had to build either road.
In Brooks’ compromise motion, Hemphill would not be removed from the master street plan, but Cypress Properties would be excused from completing the road, if they completed Maryland Avenue within nine months.
But the idea did not set well with Vassar who came armed with planning commission and council meeting minutes dating back to 1998 showing where the developer had agreed to open both roads.
“In meetings galore, month after month, year after year,” Vassar said it was made clear that the developer was responsible for opening up both roadways. “I want Maryland opened, but it’s not fair to give in to this ultimatum,” Vassar said.
Harmon called the developer’s plan a “sweet deal” for the developer. “If we give this developer a pass are we going to give it to others too?” he asked.
Scotty Thurman, director of real estate for Cypress, said, “Once Maryland is complete, the rush- hour congestion will be immediately and substantially alleviated. There would be no purpose whatsoever to extend Hemphill because it would become a commuter speedway through a secluded and peaceful neighborhood.”
Thurman added, “We respect the master street plan but it can and should be modified to fit changing realities.”
The master street is not something the council just got together and decided on it one day, explained Vassar. She said it was a joint effort by the city, Metroplan and the Municipal League. “The master street plan is a well-studied document. It took a long time to prepare and looks 20 to 30 years down the road,” she said.
“It’s not something to be taken lightly,” Vassar said.
A number of Maryland Avenue residents spoke in favor of the idea of opening Maryland. Resident Gary Stroud said, I don’t understand the magic of Hemphill. It’s a small insignificant street. We will have more opportunities with Maryland opened.”
Resident Jeff Stewart asked the council, “Why is it necessary to open Hemphill when the people don’t want it? I’d like to hear a logical reason. There are other alternatives.” Stewart said the council was foolish to force the road to be built on principle.
“Do you want us to give all the developers passes?” Vassar responded. Harmon added, “We must have both the east-west connection and the north-south.”
“I don’t want to make any developer mad, but maybe we’ve been too nice, letting them build out of sequence,” Vassar said. If Cypress Properties had built the Stonehill phases in order, Vassar believes both roads would have already been built.
But the city has no requirement to force developers to build in sequence and the phase changes Cypress Properties asked for had been approved by the city at either the planning commission or council level, or both.
In other council business:
Aldermen approved five new positions in the public works department and two in the wastewater department. It will cost the city about $86,000 to fill the newly created positions this year.
The council affirmed the planning commission’s approval to rezone a lot cornered by Ash, Kiehl and Elmwood from R-1 (single-family homes) to R-2 (duplexes and other multi-family structures) Plans call for duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes to be built on the acreage. A total of 25 units, the maximum allowed, are planned.
TOP STORY > >Foreclosures hitting Lonoke County hard
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
The likelihood of home foreclosure in bedroom communities such as Jacksonville, Cabot, Ward and Austin are greater than in employment centers such as Little Rock, North Little Rock and Conway, according to Jonathan Lupton, a Metroplan city planner.
Following a review of readily available data, Lupton called his early assessment “more than speculation but less than hard numbers,” adding that he had just taken a preliminary look at foreclosures and pre-foreclosures.
He said Cabot, Ward, Austin and Carlisle were the hardest hit.
Sherwood, so far, is not.
Interviewed later, Lupton said that he had ranked foreclosures compared with housing market size in 15 central Arkansas towns. Lonoke had the greatest prevalence of foreclosures, followed by Austin, then Carlisle. Ward ranked sixth and Jacksonville ranked ninth.
Lupton said he was surprised by the relatively high prevalence of foreclosures in Jacksonville, since the other larger communities, such as Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood had lower foreclosure rates.
“Lonoke County in general came up with the highest overall foreclosure rate among the four counties I checked,” said Lupton.
The others were Faulkner, Pulaski and Saline counties.
He said he would monitor the trend over the next couple of years.
He suggested that escalating prices of gasoline was contributing not only to foreclosures, but also to a fall off in the number of new housing starts in the area, particularly in those towns.
He said in the past, people bought houses further from employment centers because the cost per square foot was less—they could afford more house in Austin than in West Little Rock, but that rising fuel prices could offset lower housing costs and change buying and population patterns in the future.
The population in central Arkansas—that’s the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan statistical area—has grown 9.2 percent since the 2000 census, outpacing growth in other metropolitan areas in the region, such as Baton Rouge, Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, Jackson, Memphis and Birmingham.
That metropolitan statistical area of central Arkansas includes Sherwood, Jacksonville, Austin, Ward and Cabot as well.
The Metrotrends Demographic Review and Outlook 2008 showed a steady stream of out migration from Pulaski County into neighboring counties.
New housing starts declined by 20 percent, which was marginally less severe than a national decline of 26 percent.
While the number of new, single-family housing starts in 2007 declined by more than 550 in the area to a seven-year low of 2,315, Jacksonville declined only one to 125 and Sherwood increased one to 219.
New housing starts in Cabot, however, dropped from 416 in 2006 to 183 in 2007.
Still, Lonoke County’s estimated population increased 26 percent from 2000 to 2008 to a current high of 66,384, according to Metrotrends.
Austin’s population increased 89 percent from 605 to an estimated 1,141 in 2008. Cabot’s population increased 48 percent to 22,629 and Ward’s 43 percent to 3,691.
“Ward still shows a major growth trend, and has dropped less than average across the region,” Lupton said. “Sherwood and Jacksonville both are holding up pretty well.”
“Perhaps I should have mentioned Jacksonville along with Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood for a steady construction trend,” said Lupton. “But Jacksonville had a lot of foreclosures relative to its size.”
“Don’t forget that building permits and foreclosures, like any economic measures, can be contradictory at times. Thus, Ward can have a strong construction trend and a higher-than-average share of foreclosures simultaneously,” Lupton said.
The population for the city of Lonoke increased only 3 percent 4,420. Carlisle’s population gain since 2000 was 3.5 percent, bringing the population to 2,384.
England gained only 1.5 percent population, or 45 people, to an estimated 2008 population of 3,017.
Unincorporated Lonoke County grew by about 18 percent to 28,309.
In Pulaski County, Maumelle had the greatest rate of growth, 51 percent, bringing the estimated population to 15,911.
Population remained about the same in landlocked North Little Rock and Cammack Village.
Jacksonville’s population increased about 6 percent to 31,661 and Sherwood grew nearly 18 percent to 25,340.
“Growth and development are not really the same thing. The region’s northeast area has had plenty of growth in recent years but a serious lack of development,” he said.
Lupton said it was hard to identify “downtown” in many of these communities.
Aside from the air base, there are few major employers in this region, and the vast majority of residents depend on commuting into the metro area - and paying $4 per gallon for gas - for their livelihoods.
National trends are suggesting that urban growth is moving in the direction of greater population density within walkable, amenity-rich environments.
People who spend a lot of time commuting have high rates of obesity, he said.
With fuel prices rising, and home values tumbling, we may be reaching a “tipping point” that will lead to a renaissance in our more-developed urban areas and decline in sprawling, conventional suburbs, he said.
Leader senior staff writer
The likelihood of home foreclosure in bedroom communities such as Jacksonville, Cabot, Ward and Austin are greater than in employment centers such as Little Rock, North Little Rock and Conway, according to Jonathan Lupton, a Metroplan city planner.
Following a review of readily available data, Lupton called his early assessment “more than speculation but less than hard numbers,” adding that he had just taken a preliminary look at foreclosures and pre-foreclosures.
He said Cabot, Ward, Austin and Carlisle were the hardest hit.
Sherwood, so far, is not.
Interviewed later, Lupton said that he had ranked foreclosures compared with housing market size in 15 central Arkansas towns. Lonoke had the greatest prevalence of foreclosures, followed by Austin, then Carlisle. Ward ranked sixth and Jacksonville ranked ninth.
Lupton said he was surprised by the relatively high prevalence of foreclosures in Jacksonville, since the other larger communities, such as Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood had lower foreclosure rates.
“Lonoke County in general came up with the highest overall foreclosure rate among the four counties I checked,” said Lupton.
The others were Faulkner, Pulaski and Saline counties.
He said he would monitor the trend over the next couple of years.
He suggested that escalating prices of gasoline was contributing not only to foreclosures, but also to a fall off in the number of new housing starts in the area, particularly in those towns.
He said in the past, people bought houses further from employment centers because the cost per square foot was less—they could afford more house in Austin than in West Little Rock, but that rising fuel prices could offset lower housing costs and change buying and population patterns in the future.
The population in central Arkansas—that’s the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan statistical area—has grown 9.2 percent since the 2000 census, outpacing growth in other metropolitan areas in the region, such as Baton Rouge, Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, Jackson, Memphis and Birmingham.
That metropolitan statistical area of central Arkansas includes Sherwood, Jacksonville, Austin, Ward and Cabot as well.
The Metrotrends Demographic Review and Outlook 2008 showed a steady stream of out migration from Pulaski County into neighboring counties.
New housing starts declined by 20 percent, which was marginally less severe than a national decline of 26 percent.
While the number of new, single-family housing starts in 2007 declined by more than 550 in the area to a seven-year low of 2,315, Jacksonville declined only one to 125 and Sherwood increased one to 219.
New housing starts in Cabot, however, dropped from 416 in 2006 to 183 in 2007.
Still, Lonoke County’s estimated population increased 26 percent from 2000 to 2008 to a current high of 66,384, according to Metrotrends.
Austin’s population increased 89 percent from 605 to an estimated 1,141 in 2008. Cabot’s population increased 48 percent to 22,629 and Ward’s 43 percent to 3,691.
“Ward still shows a major growth trend, and has dropped less than average across the region,” Lupton said. “Sherwood and Jacksonville both are holding up pretty well.”
“Perhaps I should have mentioned Jacksonville along with Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood for a steady construction trend,” said Lupton. “But Jacksonville had a lot of foreclosures relative to its size.”
“Don’t forget that building permits and foreclosures, like any economic measures, can be contradictory at times. Thus, Ward can have a strong construction trend and a higher-than-average share of foreclosures simultaneously,” Lupton said.
The population for the city of Lonoke increased only 3 percent 4,420. Carlisle’s population gain since 2000 was 3.5 percent, bringing the population to 2,384.
England gained only 1.5 percent population, or 45 people, to an estimated 2008 population of 3,017.
Unincorporated Lonoke County grew by about 18 percent to 28,309.
In Pulaski County, Maumelle had the greatest rate of growth, 51 percent, bringing the estimated population to 15,911.
Population remained about the same in landlocked North Little Rock and Cammack Village.
Jacksonville’s population increased about 6 percent to 31,661 and Sherwood grew nearly 18 percent to 25,340.
“Growth and development are not really the same thing. The region’s northeast area has had plenty of growth in recent years but a serious lack of development,” he said.
Lupton said it was hard to identify “downtown” in many of these communities.
Aside from the air base, there are few major employers in this region, and the vast majority of residents depend on commuting into the metro area - and paying $4 per gallon for gas - for their livelihoods.
National trends are suggesting that urban growth is moving in the direction of greater population density within walkable, amenity-rich environments.
People who spend a lot of time commuting have high rates of obesity, he said.
With fuel prices rising, and home values tumbling, we may be reaching a “tipping point” that will lead to a renaissance in our more-developed urban areas and decline in sprawling, conventional suburbs, he said.
SPORTS>>Bruins come up short vs. Colts
By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — Sylvan Hills ‘AAA’ B team fell 4-1 to North Little Rock in the opening round of the Wood Bat Tournament on Thursday afternoon.
The Bruins managed only two hits, though both came in the first inning when they produced their lone run of the contest.
After Cody Cormier walked, Ryan Dillon singled and Korey Arnold followed with an RBI single.
That lead held up for the Bruins and pitcher Chris Perez until the Colts broke through with a bunt single and a sacrifice fly to tie it in the third. Perez allowed only three hits — all infield singles — in taking the tough-luck loss.
The Colts took the lead on an unearned run in the fourth on a hit batsman, a passed ball and an error, and added another unearned run in the fifth.
The Sylvan Hills ‘AAA’ A team opened pool play on Wednesday night with Benton, and led 8-4 when the game was suspended in the sixth inning.
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — Sylvan Hills ‘AAA’ B team fell 4-1 to North Little Rock in the opening round of the Wood Bat Tournament on Thursday afternoon.
The Bruins managed only two hits, though both came in the first inning when they produced their lone run of the contest.
After Cody Cormier walked, Ryan Dillon singled and Korey Arnold followed with an RBI single.
That lead held up for the Bruins and pitcher Chris Perez until the Colts broke through with a bunt single and a sacrifice fly to tie it in the third. Perez allowed only three hits — all infield singles — in taking the tough-luck loss.
The Colts took the lead on an unearned run in the fourth on a hit batsman, a passed ball and an error, and added another unearned run in the fifth.
The Sylvan Hills ‘AAA’ A team opened pool play on Wednesday night with Benton, and led 8-4 when the game was suspended in the sixth inning.
SPORTS>>Fenton tosses 3-hit shutout in Gwatney win
By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — The familiar ping of aluminum bats was replaced with the occasional crack of wooden ones as Jacksonville Gwatney Chevrolet got pool play under way on Thursday afternoon in the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament.
The absence of aluminum firepower seemed to matter little to Gwatney, which belted 12 hits on its way to an 11-0 win over Little Rock Blue. Clayton Fenton tossed a 3-hit shutout for Gwatney, striking out five and allowing only one walk.
Four Chevy boys produced two hits apiece as Gwatney hit throughout the lineup. Gwatney took on Benton on Friday afternoon and will conclude pool play today against Maumelle.
Gwatney took advantage of two Blue errors in the first inning to grab a 2-0 lead. Adam Ussery walked and moved to second on Terrell Brown’s bunt single. Ussery came around on Cameron Hood’s groundout to second, and Brown scored on an error on the shortstop.
Fenton issued a leadoff walk in the first, but only one Blue player reached base until the fifth when Davis Ward beat out an infield single in the third.
Gwatney added four more runs in the second.
Tyler Wisdom drew a one-out walk and moved to second on Ussery’s solid single to left. After Brown walked, Matt McAnally lined a 2-run single to left.
Patrick Castleberry was safe on an infield hit and Hood made it 5-0 with a force out at third base that scored Brown.
Castleberry scored when Ricky Tomboli was safe on an error.
Hood and Tomboli delivered one-out singles in the fourth. Hood scored on a throwing error and Tomboli came around later on the play when the first baseman held the ball and failed to throw home.
Gwatney busted it wide open in the fifth with three more runs to invoke the mercy rule. Brown was hit and eventually scored on a wild pitch. Tomboli had an RBI single and Jared Toney got an RBI when he was hit with a pitch with the bases loaded.
The only trouble Fenton ran into was in the fifth when the first three Blue players reached safely — on a long double to the fence in left, a single and an error. But Fenton preserved the shutout with two strikeouts and a pop to first to end it.
Ussery, Hood, Tomboli and Wisdom each collected two hits. Brown scored three runs, while McAnally and Hood each drove in two.
The winners of each of the four pools will play in the semifinals on Sunday at 2 p.m., with the finals to take place immediately afterward.
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — The familiar ping of aluminum bats was replaced with the occasional crack of wooden ones as Jacksonville Gwatney Chevrolet got pool play under way on Thursday afternoon in the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament.
The absence of aluminum firepower seemed to matter little to Gwatney, which belted 12 hits on its way to an 11-0 win over Little Rock Blue. Clayton Fenton tossed a 3-hit shutout for Gwatney, striking out five and allowing only one walk.
Four Chevy boys produced two hits apiece as Gwatney hit throughout the lineup. Gwatney took on Benton on Friday afternoon and will conclude pool play today against Maumelle.
Gwatney took advantage of two Blue errors in the first inning to grab a 2-0 lead. Adam Ussery walked and moved to second on Terrell Brown’s bunt single. Ussery came around on Cameron Hood’s groundout to second, and Brown scored on an error on the shortstop.
Fenton issued a leadoff walk in the first, but only one Blue player reached base until the fifth when Davis Ward beat out an infield single in the third.
Gwatney added four more runs in the second.
Tyler Wisdom drew a one-out walk and moved to second on Ussery’s solid single to left. After Brown walked, Matt McAnally lined a 2-run single to left.
Patrick Castleberry was safe on an infield hit and Hood made it 5-0 with a force out at third base that scored Brown.
Castleberry scored when Ricky Tomboli was safe on an error.
Hood and Tomboli delivered one-out singles in the fourth. Hood scored on a throwing error and Tomboli came around later on the play when the first baseman held the ball and failed to throw home.
Gwatney busted it wide open in the fifth with three more runs to invoke the mercy rule. Brown was hit and eventually scored on a wild pitch. Tomboli had an RBI single and Jared Toney got an RBI when he was hit with a pitch with the bases loaded.
The only trouble Fenton ran into was in the fifth when the first three Blue players reached safely — on a long double to the fence in left, a single and an error. But Fenton preserved the shutout with two strikeouts and a pop to first to end it.
Ussery, Hood, Tomboli and Wisdom each collected two hits. Brown scored three runs, while McAnally and Hood each drove in two.
The winners of each of the four pools will play in the semifinals on Sunday at 2 p.m., with the finals to take place immediately afterward.
SPORTS>>Community Bank turns things around
By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — It’s hard to imagine a much worse beginning to the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament than the one Cabot Community Bank suffered through on Thursday afternoon.
The first six Hot Springs batters reached safely. The first three scored.
But Cabot starter Matt Evans quickly got hold of things, allowing only three more base runners from that point on as Community Bank opened with an 8-3 win in the pool-play portion of the tournament.
Cabot (6-6) belted out 13 hits in the contest — a particularly large number considering wood bats have much less firepower than the aluminum bats American Legion players are used to playing with.
“I’m pretty happy with eight runs and 13 hits,” said Community Bank coach Jay Darr. “We finally got our offense going and were able to come out of here with a win.”
Darr was heading to the store after the game to buy more bats after his team broke five of the seven they brought with them.
Cabot took on Russellville in a game played last night after Leader deadlines, and will battle Sheridan tonight at 6:30. The tournament semifinals — between the winners of the four pools — will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, with the finals immediately following.
Two soft singles, three Cabot errors, a hit batsman and a walk got Hot Springs off and running on Thursday before catcher Ben Wainright threw out a runner trying to steal second and Evans retired the final two of the inning with just three runs worth of damage.
It took Cabot five innings to eventu ally erase that deficit, though they began in the first inning. Shayne Burgan and Drew Burks singled with one out. Burgan was gunned down trying to reach third on the play, but Burks made it 3-1 when Sam Bates beat out an infield single and the second baseman threw wildly to first.
In the third, Evans got the first of his three hits when he doubled with one out, then scored on Burgan’s single up the middle.
Community Bank’s bid to tie it in the fourth was thwarted when Ty Steele tried to score all the way from second on Jeff
Cooper’s ground-out to short. Steele was out at the plate.
Meanwhile, Evans was mowing them down, retiring 12 straight until Randy Young’s one-out single in the fifth.
Community Bank finally took the lead in the fifth with three runs on three hits. After Jeremy Wilson and Evans reached on infield singles, Burgan was dealt an intentional walk to load the bases. Burks then delivered a single past a drawn-in second baseman to score two and put Cabot on top 4-3. Burgan scored on Bates’ sacrifice fly.
With Evans dealing, insurance seemed unnecessary, but Community Bank got it in the sixth when they put together five hits to score three more runs. A double by Matt Turner and singles by Cooper, Wilson, Evans and Burgan made it 8-3.
Evans and Burgan each had three hits. Evans scored three times, while Burgan drove in two. Burks and Wilson added two hits apiece. Burks drove in two and Wilson scored twice.
Evans settled down to toss a 4-hitter, allowing two earned runs and fanning eight.
“We got off to a slow start and they got a couple of bloop hits,” Darr said. “That’s going to happen (in a wood bat tournament) until your guys figure out where to position themselves.
“Matt had a good game. He has a really good eye at the plate and a lot of pop. And you see what he can do on the mound.
He’s just a real well-rounded player.”
Leader sports editor
SHERIDAN — It’s hard to imagine a much worse beginning to the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament than the one Cabot Community Bank suffered through on Thursday afternoon.
The first six Hot Springs batters reached safely. The first three scored.
But Cabot starter Matt Evans quickly got hold of things, allowing only three more base runners from that point on as Community Bank opened with an 8-3 win in the pool-play portion of the tournament.
Cabot (6-6) belted out 13 hits in the contest — a particularly large number considering wood bats have much less firepower than the aluminum bats American Legion players are used to playing with.
“I’m pretty happy with eight runs and 13 hits,” said Community Bank coach Jay Darr. “We finally got our offense going and were able to come out of here with a win.”
Darr was heading to the store after the game to buy more bats after his team broke five of the seven they brought with them.
Cabot took on Russellville in a game played last night after Leader deadlines, and will battle Sheridan tonight at 6:30. The tournament semifinals — between the winners of the four pools — will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, with the finals immediately following.
Two soft singles, three Cabot errors, a hit batsman and a walk got Hot Springs off and running on Thursday before catcher Ben Wainright threw out a runner trying to steal second and Evans retired the final two of the inning with just three runs worth of damage.
It took Cabot five innings to eventu ally erase that deficit, though they began in the first inning. Shayne Burgan and Drew Burks singled with one out. Burgan was gunned down trying to reach third on the play, but Burks made it 3-1 when Sam Bates beat out an infield single and the second baseman threw wildly to first.
In the third, Evans got the first of his three hits when he doubled with one out, then scored on Burgan’s single up the middle.
Community Bank’s bid to tie it in the fourth was thwarted when Ty Steele tried to score all the way from second on Jeff
Cooper’s ground-out to short. Steele was out at the plate.
Meanwhile, Evans was mowing them down, retiring 12 straight until Randy Young’s one-out single in the fifth.
Community Bank finally took the lead in the fifth with three runs on three hits. After Jeremy Wilson and Evans reached on infield singles, Burgan was dealt an intentional walk to load the bases. Burks then delivered a single past a drawn-in second baseman to score two and put Cabot on top 4-3. Burgan scored on Bates’ sacrifice fly.
With Evans dealing, insurance seemed unnecessary, but Community Bank got it in the sixth when they put together five hits to score three more runs. A double by Matt Turner and singles by Cooper, Wilson, Evans and Burgan made it 8-3.
Evans and Burgan each had three hits. Evans scored three times, while Burgan drove in two. Burks and Wilson added two hits apiece. Burks drove in two and Wilson scored twice.
Evans settled down to toss a 4-hitter, allowing two earned runs and fanning eight.
“We got off to a slow start and they got a couple of bloop hits,” Darr said. “That’s going to happen (in a wood bat tournament) until your guys figure out where to position themselves.
“Matt had a good game. He has a really good eye at the plate and a lot of pop. And you see what he can do on the mound.
He’s just a real well-rounded player.”
SPORTS>>Home opener
By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
There’s a new game in town. And it starts tonight at 7.
The second era of the Arkansas Rhinos will begin at Red Devil Field today with a rematch against the Memphis Blast. The perennial North America Football League contenders took an easy 34-7 win over the Blast in their opener two weeks ago in
Memphis, but today’s matchup will be the Rhinos’ first in their new hometown of Jacksonville.
“They are really looking forward to it,” said head coach Oscar Malone, a former Arkansas Razorback running back. “They’re ready to play their first game at home, plus we’ve been off for a week, so they are ready to get out there and play again. I have several guys from Jacksonville, and a lot of them are talking about how much fun it’s going to be to play in their hometown again.”
The Rhinos spent their first seven seasons in the Little Rock area, but the Jacksonville Middle School football field will host their five home games this summer. The next home game after tonight will not be played until Aug. 2, but from that point on, the Rhinos will play at Red Devil Field every other weekend through the Sept. 13 home finale against the Texarkana Warriors.
Malone, who played for the Razorbacks in the mid-90s and was once listed as the No. 4 all-time rusher for the UA, says his team is ready for their first home game, and anxious to make its presence felt here in Jacksonville.
In the first meeting between the two teams, the Blast offense had to play without the services of big-play running back Kevin Veal. The former Ohio St. Buckeye, Veal (5 feet, 10 inches, 220 pounds) was sidelined with a hamstring injury, but is expected to be back for tonight’s contest.
Malone says the addition of Veal changes everything.
“He makes a big difference in their game plan,” Malone said. “He gives them a lot more firepower for their offense.”
In that first game, the Rhinos got great special teams play in the form of three interceptions and a returned punt for a touchdown. Robert Jemerson returned his pick for a score, while Jermaine Kornegay picked off two passes.
Lance Smith returned a punt 41 yards for a touchdown.
Defensively, Enrico Williams had a big game, making 12 solo tackles and assisting on three more.
Tony Phillips led the rushing attack for the Rhinos with 87 yards and a touchdown as Arkansas piled up 388 yards. Josh Dixon and Jeremiah Crouch split time at quarterback. Dixon was 8 of 21 for 157 yards and a touchdown. Smith caught a team-high six passes for 109 yards, while kicker/receiver Morgan Garrett caught five passes — one for a touchdown.
Confidence is high for the Rhinos going in to tonight’s game after handily beating the Blast the first time around, but Malone says that is not necessarily a good thing.
“That’s the toughest part,” Malone said. “You want to make sure that execution is good everywhere, but some guys will say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do it in the game,’ and I say, ‘No, you’ll do it right now, so we can see where we’re at.’ Yeah, confidence is high right now with the first win, and stuff we did in the past like a undefeated regular season and 10-2 seasons and things like that, so you have to change up what you say to them to get them motivated.”
Jacksonville Middle School Boys principal Michael Nellums helped bring Malone and the Rhinos to town by making the JMSB field available on Saturdays throughout the summer. Nellums, along with assistant principal Jackie Calhoun and recently retired athletic director Eugene Stuckey, saw the potential for success with a local semi-pro football team in their backyard.
“I was really more of just a facilitator,” Nellums said. “I knew there was potential for them to come in and have a good fan base in the community. A lot of people in this town enjoy football, and there is a lull in sports during the summer time.
“We have baseball and softball that goes on over at Dupree, but there were a lot of people from the Air Force Base and otherwise that expressed interest in seeing semi-pro football in this town.”
Coach Stuckey says that having the Rhinos in town helps out in various ways.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Stuckey said. “Jacksonville is a pretty good-sized town, and everybody wants their own team to root for. It will also help on the school level to help us bring in some money. It will be a good place for people to go on weekends.
They’ve played in different areas of Little Rock over the years and they want a permanent home.”
Malone says the realization for him of how far things have come since he joined the Rhinos organization back in 2002 came on a recent trip back from War Memorial Stadium. The Rhinos billboard sign at the 67/167 exit at Kiehl Avenue in Sherwood is more than a simple advertisement for a NAFL team. For Malone, it is also a reminder of a potentially groundbreaking summer for his squad.
“I didn’t think it would be up this soon, because we only play here once before August,” Malone said. “But I saw it that day and thought about the fact that it’s going to be there for the entire month of July before we come back on Aug. 2 (vs. Nashville), and that’s a good thing.”
The Rhinos have enjoyed much success in their short history, winning five consecutive Tennessee Valley Conference titles from 2002-06 and reaching the NAFL semifinals in 2005.
Leader sportswriter
There’s a new game in town. And it starts tonight at 7.
The second era of the Arkansas Rhinos will begin at Red Devil Field today with a rematch against the Memphis Blast. The perennial North America Football League contenders took an easy 34-7 win over the Blast in their opener two weeks ago in
Memphis, but today’s matchup will be the Rhinos’ first in their new hometown of Jacksonville.
“They are really looking forward to it,” said head coach Oscar Malone, a former Arkansas Razorback running back. “They’re ready to play their first game at home, plus we’ve been off for a week, so they are ready to get out there and play again. I have several guys from Jacksonville, and a lot of them are talking about how much fun it’s going to be to play in their hometown again.”
The Rhinos spent their first seven seasons in the Little Rock area, but the Jacksonville Middle School football field will host their five home games this summer. The next home game after tonight will not be played until Aug. 2, but from that point on, the Rhinos will play at Red Devil Field every other weekend through the Sept. 13 home finale against the Texarkana Warriors.
Malone, who played for the Razorbacks in the mid-90s and was once listed as the No. 4 all-time rusher for the UA, says his team is ready for their first home game, and anxious to make its presence felt here in Jacksonville.
In the first meeting between the two teams, the Blast offense had to play without the services of big-play running back Kevin Veal. The former Ohio St. Buckeye, Veal (5 feet, 10 inches, 220 pounds) was sidelined with a hamstring injury, but is expected to be back for tonight’s contest.
Malone says the addition of Veal changes everything.
“He makes a big difference in their game plan,” Malone said. “He gives them a lot more firepower for their offense.”
In that first game, the Rhinos got great special teams play in the form of three interceptions and a returned punt for a touchdown. Robert Jemerson returned his pick for a score, while Jermaine Kornegay picked off two passes.
Lance Smith returned a punt 41 yards for a touchdown.
Defensively, Enrico Williams had a big game, making 12 solo tackles and assisting on three more.
Tony Phillips led the rushing attack for the Rhinos with 87 yards and a touchdown as Arkansas piled up 388 yards. Josh Dixon and Jeremiah Crouch split time at quarterback. Dixon was 8 of 21 for 157 yards and a touchdown. Smith caught a team-high six passes for 109 yards, while kicker/receiver Morgan Garrett caught five passes — one for a touchdown.
Confidence is high for the Rhinos going in to tonight’s game after handily beating the Blast the first time around, but Malone says that is not necessarily a good thing.
“That’s the toughest part,” Malone said. “You want to make sure that execution is good everywhere, but some guys will say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do it in the game,’ and I say, ‘No, you’ll do it right now, so we can see where we’re at.’ Yeah, confidence is high right now with the first win, and stuff we did in the past like a undefeated regular season and 10-2 seasons and things like that, so you have to change up what you say to them to get them motivated.”
Jacksonville Middle School Boys principal Michael Nellums helped bring Malone and the Rhinos to town by making the JMSB field available on Saturdays throughout the summer. Nellums, along with assistant principal Jackie Calhoun and recently retired athletic director Eugene Stuckey, saw the potential for success with a local semi-pro football team in their backyard.
“I was really more of just a facilitator,” Nellums said. “I knew there was potential for them to come in and have a good fan base in the community. A lot of people in this town enjoy football, and there is a lull in sports during the summer time.
“We have baseball and softball that goes on over at Dupree, but there were a lot of people from the Air Force Base and otherwise that expressed interest in seeing semi-pro football in this town.”
Coach Stuckey says that having the Rhinos in town helps out in various ways.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Stuckey said. “Jacksonville is a pretty good-sized town, and everybody wants their own team to root for. It will also help on the school level to help us bring in some money. It will be a good place for people to go on weekends.
They’ve played in different areas of Little Rock over the years and they want a permanent home.”
Malone says the realization for him of how far things have come since he joined the Rhinos organization back in 2002 came on a recent trip back from War Memorial Stadium. The Rhinos billboard sign at the 67/167 exit at Kiehl Avenue in Sherwood is more than a simple advertisement for a NAFL team. For Malone, it is also a reminder of a potentially groundbreaking summer for his squad.
“I didn’t think it would be up this soon, because we only play here once before August,” Malone said. “But I saw it that day and thought about the fact that it’s going to be there for the entire month of July before we come back on Aug. 2 (vs. Nashville), and that’s a good thing.”
The Rhinos have enjoyed much success in their short history, winning five consecutive Tennessee Valley Conference titles from 2002-06 and reaching the NAFL semifinals in 2005.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
EDITORIAL >>Prospecting for good jobs
Even the occasional good economic news nowadays is alloyed with the bad. Central Arkansas landed the biggest industrial prize of the era last week, but time will tell whether it was worth the high public cost.
For now, we must assume that it is and celebrate with Governor Beebe, Conway city officials and the economic-development establishment the announcement that Hewlett Packard, one of the leading technology companies in the world, will build a support center at Conway and employ 1,200 people, eventually. They will be upscale jobs, with starting salaries upwards of $40,000 a year and some jobs paying in six figures.
Arkansas has had to be content with industries that provide low-paying jobs in apparel, food processing and services.
Arkansas has lost out over and over to neighboring states in the quest for the big automotive plants that employ thousands and pay wages well above the median wage in Arkansas, but lately the governor and economic-development officials have been able to announce a few consolation prizes. Last year, LM Glasfiber announced that it would make windmill blades at Little Rock and employ 1,100 people someday.
Conway won over neighboring states and several suburban towns in Arkansas — apparently Jacksonville, Sherwood, North Little Rock, Cabot, Lonoke, Beebe and others weren’t considered good enough for the Hewlett Packard center, which also will start a slightly larger operation in an Albuquerque suburb. Three colleges, a large college-educated population, good transportation, the lack of sprawl and even a restrictive city sign ordinance were decisive factors for Conway. Those and, of course, eager government officials with limber pocketbooks. Arkansas has never before offered so many financial incentives to an industry, and we will never know whether those were essential to landing those jobs and the fat payroll.
Industries never say that the publicly financed incentives were decisive but, of course, every company is grateful and it is a rare one now that does entertain bidding from competing cities and states. Even the hefty incentives offered by Arkansas and Conway are only mousepads to a company that is 14th on the Fortune 400 list, but who can blame executives for exploiting every financial advantage that they can when they expand or move? Conway’s workforce, geographical and environmental advantages may have been compelling for the giant company, but few companies are willing to leave any money on the table when a little bargaining and teasing about competing offers will improve the bottom line.
Gov. Beebe put up $10 million from the quick-action closing fund that he had the legislature establish last year to help him in the bidding battles for new industry. The city of Conway doled out $5 million. The land at the Conway industrial development park will be free and a lease on the building that the city will build will be heavily subsidized. The state will rebate sales taxes to the company, give it a sizable credit on its income taxes for a few years, rebate 5 percent of the company’s payroll for 10 years if it meets the terms of a private and undisclosed agreement and, as always, help train the workforce. The city of Conway agreed to slash property taxes on the plant and equipment by 65 percent although the Conway schools, which depend upon property taxes, will have to educate an influx of students when the center reaches full employment.
Not all the terms of the taxpayers’ investment are known or intended to be known, but we trust the media will pursue the truth.
Arkansas taxpayers are making a sizable investment in the industry in hopes that it will provide good jobs for lots of Arkansas people and energize a lumbering economy that is shedding payrolls and jobs at an accelerating clip.
Is it worth it? Probably, although we wish that states and localities had not got themselves into these enervating bidding wars over industry. Arkansas did not start it and participates now with some desperation. The test will be whether the support center fulfills the company’s hiring promises and hangs around long enough to repay the public’s generous investment.
But the next time a big prospect comes looking, let’s hope our own communities right here will get a better shot at landing one — without giving away the store. With Little Rock Air Force Base and a nearby college-level education center scheduled for construction next year, another high-tech prospect should take a more serious look at us.
With that, we extend a medium-sized hello to our newest corporate citizen. Welcome to Arkansas, Hewlett Packard.
For now, we must assume that it is and celebrate with Governor Beebe, Conway city officials and the economic-development establishment the announcement that Hewlett Packard, one of the leading technology companies in the world, will build a support center at Conway and employ 1,200 people, eventually. They will be upscale jobs, with starting salaries upwards of $40,000 a year and some jobs paying in six figures.
Arkansas has had to be content with industries that provide low-paying jobs in apparel, food processing and services.
Arkansas has lost out over and over to neighboring states in the quest for the big automotive plants that employ thousands and pay wages well above the median wage in Arkansas, but lately the governor and economic-development officials have been able to announce a few consolation prizes. Last year, LM Glasfiber announced that it would make windmill blades at Little Rock and employ 1,100 people someday.
Conway won over neighboring states and several suburban towns in Arkansas — apparently Jacksonville, Sherwood, North Little Rock, Cabot, Lonoke, Beebe and others weren’t considered good enough for the Hewlett Packard center, which also will start a slightly larger operation in an Albuquerque suburb. Three colleges, a large college-educated population, good transportation, the lack of sprawl and even a restrictive city sign ordinance were decisive factors for Conway. Those and, of course, eager government officials with limber pocketbooks. Arkansas has never before offered so many financial incentives to an industry, and we will never know whether those were essential to landing those jobs and the fat payroll.
Industries never say that the publicly financed incentives were decisive but, of course, every company is grateful and it is a rare one now that does entertain bidding from competing cities and states. Even the hefty incentives offered by Arkansas and Conway are only mousepads to a company that is 14th on the Fortune 400 list, but who can blame executives for exploiting every financial advantage that they can when they expand or move? Conway’s workforce, geographical and environmental advantages may have been compelling for the giant company, but few companies are willing to leave any money on the table when a little bargaining and teasing about competing offers will improve the bottom line.
Gov. Beebe put up $10 million from the quick-action closing fund that he had the legislature establish last year to help him in the bidding battles for new industry. The city of Conway doled out $5 million. The land at the Conway industrial development park will be free and a lease on the building that the city will build will be heavily subsidized. The state will rebate sales taxes to the company, give it a sizable credit on its income taxes for a few years, rebate 5 percent of the company’s payroll for 10 years if it meets the terms of a private and undisclosed agreement and, as always, help train the workforce. The city of Conway agreed to slash property taxes on the plant and equipment by 65 percent although the Conway schools, which depend upon property taxes, will have to educate an influx of students when the center reaches full employment.
Not all the terms of the taxpayers’ investment are known or intended to be known, but we trust the media will pursue the truth.
Arkansas taxpayers are making a sizable investment in the industry in hopes that it will provide good jobs for lots of Arkansas people and energize a lumbering economy that is shedding payrolls and jobs at an accelerating clip.
Is it worth it? Probably, although we wish that states and localities had not got themselves into these enervating bidding wars over industry. Arkansas did not start it and participates now with some desperation. The test will be whether the support center fulfills the company’s hiring promises and hangs around long enough to repay the public’s generous investment.
But the next time a big prospect comes looking, let’s hope our own communities right here will get a better shot at landing one — without giving away the store. With Little Rock Air Force Base and a nearby college-level education center scheduled for construction next year, another high-tech prospect should take a more serious look at us.
With that, we extend a medium-sized hello to our newest corporate citizen. Welcome to Arkansas, Hewlett Packard.
EDITORIAL >>Prospecting for good jobs
Even the occasional good economic news nowadays is alloyed with the bad. Central Arkansas landed the biggest industrial prize of the era last week, but time will tell whether it was worth the high public cost.
For now, we must assume that it is and celebrate with Governor Beebe, Conway city officials and the economic-development establishment the announcement that Hewlett Packard, one of the leading technology companies in the world, will build a support center at Conway and employ 1,200 people, eventually. They will be upscale jobs, with starting salaries upwards of $40,000 a year and some jobs paying in six figures.
Arkansas has had to be content with industries that provide low-paying jobs in apparel, food processing and services.
Arkansas has lost out over and over to neighboring states in the quest for the big automotive plants that employ thousands and pay wages well above the median wage in Arkansas, but lately the governor and economic-development officials have been able to announce a few consolation prizes. Last year, LM Glasfiber announced that it would make windmill blades at Little Rock and employ 1,100 people someday.
Conway won over neighboring states and several suburban towns in Arkansas — apparently Jacksonville, Sherwood, North Little Rock, Cabot, Lonoke, Beebe and others weren’t considered good enough for the Hewlett Packard center, which also will start a slightly larger operation in an Albuquerque suburb. Three colleges, a large college-educated population, good transportation, the lack of sprawl and even a restrictive city sign ordinance were decisive factors for Conway. Those and, of course, eager government officials with limber pocketbooks. Arkansas has never before offered so many financial incentives to an industry, and we will never know whether those were essential to landing those jobs and the fat payroll.
Industries never say that the publicly financed incentives were decisive but, of course, every company is grateful and it is a rare one now that does entertain bidding from competing cities and states. Even the hefty incentives offered by Arkansas and Conway are only mousepads to a company that is 14th on the Fortune 400 list, but who can blame executives for exploiting every financial advantage that they can when they expand or move? Conway’s workforce, geographical and environmental advantages may have been compelling for the giant company, but few companies are willing to leave any money on the table when a little bargaining and teasing about competing offers will improve the bottom line.
Gov. Beebe put up $10 million from the quick-action closing fund that he had the legislature establish last year to help him in the bidding battles for new industry. The city of Conway doled out $5 million. The land at the Conway industrial development park will be free and a lease on the building that the city will build will be heavily subsidized. The state will rebate sales taxes to the company, give it a sizable credit on its income taxes for a few years, rebate 5 percent of the company’s payroll for 10 years if it meets the terms of a private and undisclosed agreement and, as always, help train the workforce. The city of Conway agreed to slash property taxes on the plant and equipment by 65 percent although the Conway schools, which depend upon property taxes, will have to educate an influx of students when the center reaches full employment.
Not all the terms of the taxpayers’ investment are known or intended to be known, but we trust the media will pursue the truth.
Arkansas taxpayers are making a sizable investment in the industry in hopes that it will provide good jobs for lots of Arkansas people and energize a lumbering economy that is shedding payrolls and jobs at an accelerating clip.
Is it worth it? Probably, although we wish that states and localities had not got themselves into these enervating bidding wars over industry. Arkansas did not start it and participates now with some desperation. The test will be whether the support center fulfills the company’s hiring promises and hangs around long enough to repay the public’s generous investment.
But the next time a big prospect comes looking, let’s hope our own communities right here will get a better shot at landing one — without giving away the store. With Little Rock Air Force Base and a nearby college-level education center scheduled for construction next year, another high-tech prospect should take a more serious look at us.
With that, we extend a medium-sized hello to our newest corporate citizen. Welcome to Arkansas, Hewlett Packard.
For now, we must assume that it is and celebrate with Governor Beebe, Conway city officials and the economic-development establishment the announcement that Hewlett Packard, one of the leading technology companies in the world, will build a support center at Conway and employ 1,200 people, eventually. They will be upscale jobs, with starting salaries upwards of $40,000 a year and some jobs paying in six figures.
Arkansas has had to be content with industries that provide low-paying jobs in apparel, food processing and services.
Arkansas has lost out over and over to neighboring states in the quest for the big automotive plants that employ thousands and pay wages well above the median wage in Arkansas, but lately the governor and economic-development officials have been able to announce a few consolation prizes. Last year, LM Glasfiber announced that it would make windmill blades at Little Rock and employ 1,100 people someday.
Conway won over neighboring states and several suburban towns in Arkansas — apparently Jacksonville, Sherwood, North Little Rock, Cabot, Lonoke, Beebe and others weren’t considered good enough for the Hewlett Packard center, which also will start a slightly larger operation in an Albuquerque suburb. Three colleges, a large college-educated population, good transportation, the lack of sprawl and even a restrictive city sign ordinance were decisive factors for Conway. Those and, of course, eager government officials with limber pocketbooks. Arkansas has never before offered so many financial incentives to an industry, and we will never know whether those were essential to landing those jobs and the fat payroll.
Industries never say that the publicly financed incentives were decisive but, of course, every company is grateful and it is a rare one now that does entertain bidding from competing cities and states. Even the hefty incentives offered by Arkansas and Conway are only mousepads to a company that is 14th on the Fortune 400 list, but who can blame executives for exploiting every financial advantage that they can when they expand or move? Conway’s workforce, geographical and environmental advantages may have been compelling for the giant company, but few companies are willing to leave any money on the table when a little bargaining and teasing about competing offers will improve the bottom line.
Gov. Beebe put up $10 million from the quick-action closing fund that he had the legislature establish last year to help him in the bidding battles for new industry. The city of Conway doled out $5 million. The land at the Conway industrial development park will be free and a lease on the building that the city will build will be heavily subsidized. The state will rebate sales taxes to the company, give it a sizable credit on its income taxes for a few years, rebate 5 percent of the company’s payroll for 10 years if it meets the terms of a private and undisclosed agreement and, as always, help train the workforce. The city of Conway agreed to slash property taxes on the plant and equipment by 65 percent although the Conway schools, which depend upon property taxes, will have to educate an influx of students when the center reaches full employment.
Not all the terms of the taxpayers’ investment are known or intended to be known, but we trust the media will pursue the truth.
Arkansas taxpayers are making a sizable investment in the industry in hopes that it will provide good jobs for lots of Arkansas people and energize a lumbering economy that is shedding payrolls and jobs at an accelerating clip.
Is it worth it? Probably, although we wish that states and localities had not got themselves into these enervating bidding wars over industry. Arkansas did not start it and participates now with some desperation. The test will be whether the support center fulfills the company’s hiring promises and hangs around long enough to repay the public’s generous investment.
But the next time a big prospect comes looking, let’s hope our own communities right here will get a better shot at landing one — without giving away the store. With Little Rock Air Force Base and a nearby college-level education center scheduled for construction next year, another high-tech prospect should take a more serious look at us.
With that, we extend a medium-sized hello to our newest corporate citizen. Welcome to Arkansas, Hewlett Packard.
TOP STORY > >Lonoke County JPs feud with judge
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader staff writer
“Quit feuding and get on down the road taking care of the people of this county,” Sheriff Jim Roberson admonished the Lonoke County Quorum Court on Thursday night, so thin had worn the thin veil of civility.
Democrats on the court applauded, but most of the Republicans, twice rebuffed in recent months by County Judge Charlie Troutman’s actions, pressed on to challenge the judge, using harsh language and tone.
Republicans on the quorum court went over in detail the findings of the state Legislative Audit Committee review of county fi-nances, particularly those in which Troutman authorized the sale of county equipment to county employees.
Troutman said that the vehicles in question were essentially junk, but that he would abide by the rules in the future that require an auction or public sale.
Twice Republicans have left quorum court meetings believing they had prevailed on an issue, only to be frustrated by the judge’s unitary, but apparently legal, actions.
The first time, he overturned their choice of health insurance agents, convening a special session of the county court, over which he presides.
Then, since the May meeting, he vetoed an ordinance unanimously ap-proved by the quorum court to hire a consultant to study personnel and salaries, but without the support of Democrats on Thursday, Republicans couldn’t even suspend the rules to try to override his veto.
Some Democrats had voted for that ordinance believing it was part of a deal struck with Republicans.
Republican JP Mark Edwards was particularly confrontational with Troutman, saying the judge had lied when he told a reporter Republicans had reneged on the deal after approval of the ordinance they sought.
Thursday night, Edwards said there was never any hard and fast deal. He demanded an apology from the judge, who said, “I could tell you what to do with it, but I apologize.”
At that May quorum court meeting, members unanimously approved a resolution to hire JSEP consultants to evaluate job descriptions, pay and benefits for all county employees and compare them to similar local jobs in the public and private sectors.
But the Democrats on the court believed that unanimous approval was tied to approval of changes in the personnel-policy handbook, and most Republicans voted against that ordinance, which amended the personnel policy.
The first reading of the personnel-policy ordinance, which increases starting salaries for deputy clerks to $18,500 a year plus benefits, was approved Thursday night by a vote of eight to five.
So frustrated was Republican Lynn Clarke last Thursday that she gathered up her belongings and left quickly without a word.
In other business, the England School Board appeared before the court, asking it to appoint someone to fill a board vacancy until the September school board elections.
The school board, deadlocked at 3-3, deferred to the quorum court, and after JP Mike Dolan of England abstained, the quorum court’s first vote was a 6-6 tie.
Eventually, on a revote, Clarke abstained also, and by a 6-5 vote, Shaunda Brewer, 26, was appointed to fill the vacancy over rival Randy Stracener, 54.
Among the issues at hand is whether or not to buy out the contract of England Superintendent Paula Henderson.
Leader staff writer
“Quit feuding and get on down the road taking care of the people of this county,” Sheriff Jim Roberson admonished the Lonoke County Quorum Court on Thursday night, so thin had worn the thin veil of civility.
Democrats on the court applauded, but most of the Republicans, twice rebuffed in recent months by County Judge Charlie Troutman’s actions, pressed on to challenge the judge, using harsh language and tone.
Republicans on the quorum court went over in detail the findings of the state Legislative Audit Committee review of county fi-nances, particularly those in which Troutman authorized the sale of county equipment to county employees.
Troutman said that the vehicles in question were essentially junk, but that he would abide by the rules in the future that require an auction or public sale.
Twice Republicans have left quorum court meetings believing they had prevailed on an issue, only to be frustrated by the judge’s unitary, but apparently legal, actions.
The first time, he overturned their choice of health insurance agents, convening a special session of the county court, over which he presides.
Then, since the May meeting, he vetoed an ordinance unanimously ap-proved by the quorum court to hire a consultant to study personnel and salaries, but without the support of Democrats on Thursday, Republicans couldn’t even suspend the rules to try to override his veto.
Some Democrats had voted for that ordinance believing it was part of a deal struck with Republicans.
Republican JP Mark Edwards was particularly confrontational with Troutman, saying the judge had lied when he told a reporter Republicans had reneged on the deal after approval of the ordinance they sought.
Thursday night, Edwards said there was never any hard and fast deal. He demanded an apology from the judge, who said, “I could tell you what to do with it, but I apologize.”
At that May quorum court meeting, members unanimously approved a resolution to hire JSEP consultants to evaluate job descriptions, pay and benefits for all county employees and compare them to similar local jobs in the public and private sectors.
But the Democrats on the court believed that unanimous approval was tied to approval of changes in the personnel-policy handbook, and most Republicans voted against that ordinance, which amended the personnel policy.
The first reading of the personnel-policy ordinance, which increases starting salaries for deputy clerks to $18,500 a year plus benefits, was approved Thursday night by a vote of eight to five.
So frustrated was Republican Lynn Clarke last Thursday that she gathered up her belongings and left quickly without a word.
In other business, the England School Board appeared before the court, asking it to appoint someone to fill a board vacancy until the September school board elections.
The school board, deadlocked at 3-3, deferred to the quorum court, and after JP Mike Dolan of England abstained, the quorum court’s first vote was a 6-6 tie.
Eventually, on a revote, Clarke abstained also, and by a 6-5 vote, Shaunda Brewer, 26, was appointed to fill the vacancy over rival Randy Stracener, 54.
Among the issues at hand is whether or not to buy out the contract of England Superintendent Paula Henderson.
TOP STORY > >Cabot ‘islands’ could be taken into city limits
By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer
Cabot has not annexed any property against the will of property owners in recent years, but that could change since the city council voted last week to start the process of annexing the “islands” that are completely surrounded by the city.
Cabot can legally annex land three ways: by petition of property owners, by an election such as the recent elections at Gravel Ridge and by a council vote to take in land.
For many years, all property has come into the city by petition of the property owners, usually subdivision developers who wanted city water, sewer, fire protection and police protection.
But last week, the council considered an ordinance to take in a 20-acre island that included 10 acres owned by members of the Woosley family. The other 10 acres are being sold to a developer of mini-storages who wants fire and police protection. The Woosley family protested, saying that they don’t want to be in the city, but if they are to be annexed, the city needs to fix the drainage problem in their area caused by the construction of housing developments that are already in the city.
Furthermore, Jimmy Woosley told the council it is discrimination to annex his family’s land without annexing the other islands in the city especially considering that some of the people who live inside the islands have sold property for subdivisions that are now part of the city.
“Don’t start picking on me,” Jimmy Woosley told the council.
Although the council did not affirm that Woosley had a valid point about the discrimination, members did say that instead of annexing just one, they should consider annexing all and asked the mayor to have public works staff to identify all the islands and bring that information to the next public works committee meeting.
The Woosley property is on Linda Lane off Campground Road. Two more islands are located on the other side of Campground on Diederich Lane.
Contacted by The Leader this week, Nancy Feland, who lives in one of those islands, was not aware that the city council had voted to look into annexing her family’s property.
“Tell them ‘no thanks,’” Feland said. “We don’t want it. We have no desire to be part of Cabot as a city. We have lived out here peacefully for 40 years.”
Eddie Diederich, who also lives on land surrounded by the city, could not be reached for comment.
In addition to property owned by the Woosleys, Felands and Diederichs, Norma Nacquin at Cabot Public Works, tentatively identified these other islands: two houses in front of Silver Streak Subdivision, one house on First Street and the city sewer ponds.
The new sewer treatment plant is inside the city limits, but the sewer ponds aren’t Naquin said. Bill Cypert, secretary and spokesman for the Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission, told the council last week that the commission would not oppose annexation of the ponds.
But in fact, the council can annex the islands even without the property owners’ approval. The question that remains to be answered is whether their interest in annexing will dwindle as opposition grows.
Leader staff writer
Cabot has not annexed any property against the will of property owners in recent years, but that could change since the city council voted last week to start the process of annexing the “islands” that are completely surrounded by the city.
Cabot can legally annex land three ways: by petition of property owners, by an election such as the recent elections at Gravel Ridge and by a council vote to take in land.
For many years, all property has come into the city by petition of the property owners, usually subdivision developers who wanted city water, sewer, fire protection and police protection.
But last week, the council considered an ordinance to take in a 20-acre island that included 10 acres owned by members of the Woosley family. The other 10 acres are being sold to a developer of mini-storages who wants fire and police protection. The Woosley family protested, saying that they don’t want to be in the city, but if they are to be annexed, the city needs to fix the drainage problem in their area caused by the construction of housing developments that are already in the city.
Furthermore, Jimmy Woosley told the council it is discrimination to annex his family’s land without annexing the other islands in the city especially considering that some of the people who live inside the islands have sold property for subdivisions that are now part of the city.
“Don’t start picking on me,” Jimmy Woosley told the council.
Although the council did not affirm that Woosley had a valid point about the discrimination, members did say that instead of annexing just one, they should consider annexing all and asked the mayor to have public works staff to identify all the islands and bring that information to the next public works committee meeting.
The Woosley property is on Linda Lane off Campground Road. Two more islands are located on the other side of Campground on Diederich Lane.
Contacted by The Leader this week, Nancy Feland, who lives in one of those islands, was not aware that the city council had voted to look into annexing her family’s property.
“Tell them ‘no thanks,’” Feland said. “We don’t want it. We have no desire to be part of Cabot as a city. We have lived out here peacefully for 40 years.”
Eddie Diederich, who also lives on land surrounded by the city, could not be reached for comment.
In addition to property owned by the Woosleys, Felands and Diederichs, Norma Nacquin at Cabot Public Works, tentatively identified these other islands: two houses in front of Silver Streak Subdivision, one house on First Street and the city sewer ponds.
The new sewer treatment plant is inside the city limits, but the sewer ponds aren’t Naquin said. Bill Cypert, secretary and spokesman for the Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission, told the council last week that the commission would not oppose annexation of the ponds.
But in fact, the council can annex the islands even without the property owners’ approval. The question that remains to be answered is whether their interest in annexing will dwindle as opposition grows.
TOP STORY > >Frontage roads go one-way, one lane
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
Frontage roads running parallel to Hwy. 67/167 from the Wildwood Avenue exit to the Kiehl Avenue exit are now one-way roads, matching the flow of traffic on the frontage roads from Wildwood to McCain.
Sherwood police, along with state police, will have extra patrols out to make sure there is a smooth conversion and to help motorists who may get turned around by the change.
The conversion process was completed late Tuesday night. The two-mile section of frontage road being changed to one-way traffic will also drop from two to one lane for about the next month as construction crews continue to complete work on the frontage roads and the Brookwood Flyover which will exit onto Brookwood across from Kohl’s.
“The orange barrels in the opposite lane will help drivers know that the sections are now one-way,” said Sherwood police Capt. James Bedwell.
He said the last conversion to one-way lanes (from McCain to Wildwood) went pretty smoothly.
“We’ll do what we can to keep everyone safe and the traffic flowing properly,” the captain said.
The work is part of the $42.3 million contract awarded to Weaver-Bailey Contractors in September 2005.
The project includes reconstruction and widening of Hwy. 67/167 from four to six lanes from Wildwood to just north of Kiehl and from McCain Boulevard south to I-40.
The contract also includes the Brookwood flyover and a new Kiehl overpass.
“As always,” the police warned, “motorists are urged to exercise caution when approaching and traveling through highway work zones.”
Leader staff writer
Frontage roads running parallel to Hwy. 67/167 from the Wildwood Avenue exit to the Kiehl Avenue exit are now one-way roads, matching the flow of traffic on the frontage roads from Wildwood to McCain.
Sherwood police, along with state police, will have extra patrols out to make sure there is a smooth conversion and to help motorists who may get turned around by the change.
The conversion process was completed late Tuesday night. The two-mile section of frontage road being changed to one-way traffic will also drop from two to one lane for about the next month as construction crews continue to complete work on the frontage roads and the Brookwood Flyover which will exit onto Brookwood across from Kohl’s.
“The orange barrels in the opposite lane will help drivers know that the sections are now one-way,” said Sherwood police Capt. James Bedwell.
He said the last conversion to one-way lanes (from McCain to Wildwood) went pretty smoothly.
“We’ll do what we can to keep everyone safe and the traffic flowing properly,” the captain said.
The work is part of the $42.3 million contract awarded to Weaver-Bailey Contractors in September 2005.
The project includes reconstruction and widening of Hwy. 67/167 from four to six lanes from Wildwood to just north of Kiehl and from McCain Boulevard south to I-40.
The contract also includes the Brookwood flyover and a new Kiehl overpass.
“As always,” the police warned, “motorists are urged to exercise caution when approaching and traveling through highway work zones.”
TOP STORY > >Frontage roads go one-way, one lane
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
Frontage roads running parallel to Hwy. 67/167 from the Wildwood Avenue exit to the Kiehl Avenue exit are now one-way roads, matching the flow of traffic on the frontage roads from Wildwood to McCain.
Sherwood police, along with state police, will have extra patrols out to make sure there is a smooth conversion and to help motorists who may get turned around by the change.
The conversion process was completed late Tuesday night. The two-mile section of frontage road being changed to one-way traffic will also drop from two to one lane for about the next month as construction crews continue to complete work on the frontage roads and the Brookwood Flyover which will exit onto Brookwood across from Kohl’s.
“The orange barrels in the opposite lane will help drivers know that the sections are now one-way,” said Sherwood police Capt. James Bedwell.
He said the last conversion to one-way lanes (from McCain to Wildwood) went pretty smoothly.
“We’ll do what we can to keep everyone safe and the traffic flowing properly,” the captain said.
The work is part of the $42.3 million contract awarded to Weaver-Bailey Contractors in September 2005.
The project includes reconstruction and widening of Hwy. 67/167 from four to six lanes from Wildwood to just north of Kiehl and from McCain Boulevard south to I-40.
The contract also includes the Brookwood flyover and a new Kiehl overpass.
“As always,” the police warned, “motorists are urged to exercise caution when approaching and traveling through highway work zones.”
Leader staff writer
Frontage roads running parallel to Hwy. 67/167 from the Wildwood Avenue exit to the Kiehl Avenue exit are now one-way roads, matching the flow of traffic on the frontage roads from Wildwood to McCain.
Sherwood police, along with state police, will have extra patrols out to make sure there is a smooth conversion and to help motorists who may get turned around by the change.
The conversion process was completed late Tuesday night. The two-mile section of frontage road being changed to one-way traffic will also drop from two to one lane for about the next month as construction crews continue to complete work on the frontage roads and the Brookwood Flyover which will exit onto Brookwood across from Kohl’s.
“The orange barrels in the opposite lane will help drivers know that the sections are now one-way,” said Sherwood police Capt. James Bedwell.
He said the last conversion to one-way lanes (from McCain to Wildwood) went pretty smoothly.
“We’ll do what we can to keep everyone safe and the traffic flowing properly,” the captain said.
The work is part of the $42.3 million contract awarded to Weaver-Bailey Contractors in September 2005.
The project includes reconstruction and widening of Hwy. 67/167 from four to six lanes from Wildwood to just north of Kiehl and from McCain Boulevard south to I-40.
The contract also includes the Brookwood flyover and a new Kiehl overpass.
“As always,” the police warned, “motorists are urged to exercise caution when approaching and traveling through highway work zones.”
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