TOP STORY >> Looking back at the final months of 2009

COMPILED BY RICK KRON

OCTOBER

• The Jacksonville Sewer Commission got the city council’s blessings to proceed with obtaining more than $18.2 million in bonds for repairs and expansion, with the promise that it would not mean a rate increase.

The commission plans to spend $5.1 million on rehabilitation and repairs, $3.9 million on additions and expansion of the system; $4.4 million to pay off old loans, $1 million for sewer work at the proposed new state fairgrounds site and $700,000 in debt service and administrative costs.

Larry Gaddis with Crist Engineers said the city had about 175 miles of underground sewers that were about 70 years old and difficult to maintain.

• Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher aimed to clean up Jacksonville by passing a 33-page nuisance-abatement ordinance.

But the idea was met with public concern and resistance.

• A Cabot businessman who was also voted 2008 man of the year for the Lonoke County Republican Committee was arrested on a rape charge and has since pleaded not guilty by reason of mental defect.

Roger Lemaster, 54, husband of former Cabot Alderman Becky Lemaster, was arrested Sept. 21 and released from the county jail Sept. 22 on a $50,000 bond. Court records show he filed for divorce that same day on the grounds of general indignities.

• The streets of Cabot received a sprucing up as 264 people came out during the fall Cabot Cleanup to pick up litter along the roads before visitors arrived for Cabotfest.

Cabot City Beautiful president Matt Webber said, “We filled a 30-yard dumpster up a half and three quarters. We were able to cover more routes because of the number of people.”

• The Arkansas Fallen Firefighters Memorial statue called Cabot home for a week during October as it was a centerpiece for the annual Cabotfest.

The 6,000-pound, 11.6-foot tall statue was displayed at the First Security bank parking lot on 205 W. Pine St., then moved onto the street for Cabotfest.

The statue’s permanent home will be at the state Capitol. The statue has been transported to different locations around the state to bring awareness and to raise money for the memorial.

 
• Arkansas received, in October, its first allotment of the H1N1 “swine” influenza Avaccine — 17,000 doses — that was reserved for children, a group at greater risk for severe illness if they contract the virus. The initial shipment, which was in nasal mist form, was used at statewide school immunization clinics.

The vaccines were free.

Since the new strain of the type A influenza virus emerged last spring, 600 deaths in the United States, including seven in Arkansas, have been attributed to it.

• Sherwood Detective Beverly Hughes went back to work days after the city’s Civil Service Commission overturned her July firing.

“She’s back on the same shift, the same u-nit and even the same car,” said Sherwood Police Chief Kel Nicholson, who fired Hughes for insubordination.

Hughes returned to work with all of her benefits and back pay, but that may not be the end of the case. She has since settled her federal discrimination lawsuit with the city.

• The city of Ward officially opened its new dog park.

Dog owners can let their pets run leash-free in the 136-feet by 42-feet chain-link fenced park. The park is located behind city hall at 405 Hickory St. Construction of the dog park cost around $600.

Friends of Ward Shelter president Janice Holden said, “the park makes for better dogs in the community. They are exercised, socialized and better behaved.”

• Four Jacksonville apartments in the Willow Bend complex were left gutted and roofless after a fire, which was ignited by a methamphetamine lab.

Apparently the fire was ignited when a makeshift meth lab exploded in Apt. 33.

The tenant of Apt. 33 hurriedly awoke her neighbor telling her that the building was on fire and fled in her car before police and firefighters arrived.

• A 9-year-old girl along with her parents and another person escaped a fiery meth lab explosion at a home in the Sunnyside addition of Jacksonville.

Amanda Randall said she and her daughter were sleeping on the couch in the living room while Donald Randall and Deborah Christian, 37, of 126 South Eastern Ave., were in the back bedroom making methamphetamine using the “shake-and-bake” method.

A neighbor told police she was awakened by her children, who said there was someone knocking on the door. Amanda Randall told her that she and her daughter were asleep in the living room when she heard a loud noise, woke up and saw that the house was on fire.

• Jacksonville hired Rickey Hayes of Retail Attractions in Owasso, Okla., to help bring retail businesses and restaurants to Jacksonville.

In just six years as economic development director for Owasso, Okla., Rickey Hayes doubled the city’s sales tax base and add new commercial construction totaling more than 4.2 million square feet with over a quarter of a billion dollars in total value.That impressive record is the main reason that the Jacksonville city council agreed with the mayor to spend $20,000 to hire Hayes’ company for the remainder of the year. Hayes’ contract was later extended for all of 2010.

• After more than a year of trying, Cabot finally passed a new animal control ordinance.

The ordinance, which limits the number of dogs and cats per household to four in any combination, was approved unanimously.

In addition to limiting the number of dogs and cats, the ordinance bans selling or giving away animals in parking lots, parks, flea markets or any other outside area. The ban does not apply to humane societies, animal control agencies or nonprofit agencies sponsoring pet adoptions that have obtained approval from the head of Cabot Animal Control.

The ordinance includes a $30 fee for relinquishing unwanted pets. The fee is reduced to $15 for residents taking care of strays who provide a current newspaper clipping to show they have tried to find the owner.

• The Lonoke Farm Bureau honored Jim Malone and his family as farm family of the year. The Malones pioneered several areas of fish farming in Arkansas and the U.S. and survived yet another round of floods earlier this year.

Accepting the award were Jim Malone and his wife Louise and Beverley Jones and her husband Bobby. Malone and Jones are brother and sister.

Jim Malone Sr. started with 20 acres in 1951 and today his children run the farm with 2,000 acres of ponds.

“It’s been a very difficult year for us,” Jim Malone said. “We are deeply grateful and very humble and appreciate (the honor) and will never forget,” he said.

• Cabot’s top students, its National Merit Semifinalists and AP Scholars, were recognized during the October board meeting.

In 2009, 147 Arkansas high school seniors were named National Merit Semifinalists.

Seven from Cabot included Spencer Sharp, Justin Blankenship, Grace Coggins, Katie Van Druff, Emily Foltz, Courtney Anderson and Hannah Norton.

Cabot’s AP Scholars included Josh McIntyre, Spencer Sharp, Justin Blankenship, Brendon Tucker, Taylor Burrington, Paula Shepard, Grace Coggins, Emily Foltz, Kelsey Loraditch, Rachel Best, Laken Harrington, Thomas Medak, Gary Newman and Courtney Anderson.

• Longtime Ward Alderman Ginger Tarno resigned, saying ill health prevented her from doing her job as well as she wanted to.

Tarno has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

Tarno, who was appointed to the council about 12 years ago and won every election since, grew up in Ward.

She said every decision she made as a member of the city council was for the people.

“I tried to treat the city like I’d like to be treated,” she said.

• The family of a man who hanged himself last year in the Cabot jail has filed suit in federal court against the city, mayor, police chief, several named officers and 10 others called John Does for his death, saying it should have been prevented.

Donnie Lee Isom was arrested Sept. 8, 2008 for public intoxication and disorderly conduct after a disturbance at Steeple Chase Apartments. Isom was booked into the jail and about 30 minutes after being placed in a cell, he was found lying between two bunks with a blanket around his neck.

A state police investigation that included viewing the surveillance tapes in the jail cleared the city of any wrongdoing. But the suit says the city caused Isom’s death through multiple failures in training and personnel actions.

• The Arkansas Congressional delegation announced that Cabot WaterWorks would receive $500,000 to help pay for the installation of a gravity sewer to increase capacity for continued development of residential and commercial property.

Cabot WaterWorks applied for stimulus funding for the estimated $8 to $9 million improvement project in the spring and learned soon afterward that the money would not be forthcoming. However, WaterWorks officials were told then that more stimulus money might be available in 2010.

• Central Arkansas ended up with more than 11 inches of rain in October, making it the third wettest October on record, and putting the year on track to be the wettest year ever (which it turned out to be).

The very wet October came on the heels of a very wet September.

• Four area fire departments using boats and other rescue equipment evacuated about a dozen people from a trailer park off Tom Box Road in north Pulaski County when heavy rains hit the area again.

Also, a number of people had to be rescued from the roofs of their floating cars at Hwy. 161 and the railroad overpass and another person was pulled to safety as their car continued to float away on Jacksonville Cutoff near Main Street.

The Ward Fire Department ran rescue missions as the rain fell, pulling one family from a car that had stalled in four feet of water on Hwy. 319 and Lewisburg Road, and saving dogs in the city’s animal control kennels off Hwy. 367.

Ward Police Chief Charlie Martin said firefighters waded in water up to their armpits to get the dogs to safety.

• Union Pacific was reluctant to reopen the Graham Railroad crossing, but the city was equally persistent in its efforts to get it open.

“We will knock down any obstacle they throw at us,” said City Administrator Jim Durham.

The city responded to an Oct. 8 letter from Union Pacific, in which Charles Felkins, manager of special projects, industry and public, wrote that the “city and UP agreed that the at-grade crossing at Graham Road would be closed upon completion of the overpass project.”

In his Oct. 15 response to the railroad, Mayor Gary Fletcher wrote that the area was negatively affected by the closure and has suffered tremendously.

• The North Pulaski High School band completed a rewarding marching season bringing home multiple awards in October.

Trombonist Nikki Mullen, a 12th grader, said of the competitions, “There is a lot of energy and excitement before you get on the field. It is there throughout the performance. I feel I am on a natural high of happiness. You’re doing what you love.”

“We try to make a name for our school. We take pride,” said drum major Erica Frost.

The North Pulaski High School band has 117 members.

NOVEMBER

• After operating at a loss for four years, North Metro Medical Center posted a profit three months in a row. Hospital board members credited measures implemented since Allegiance Health Management took over daily operations 11 months ago.

“It is still a tough economic fight,” but with “cost-cutting measures and careful attention to income and expenses, we’ve been able to turn the ship around, somewhat,” hospital board chair Mike Wilson said.

The last year that the hospital operated in the black was 2003-04, when it closed the fiscal year with a $652,000 positive balance. The next year, net income slipped to the other side of the ledger with a $98,000 loss. In 2006-07, losses jumped to $3 million. The 2007-08 fiscal year closed out with a net loss of $2.38 million. Since then, the net loss has reached as high as $400,000 each month.

• Messages of sympathy and love poured into Pulaski Technical College for Johnny Dollar, 53, of Jacksonville, who was killed when he was struck by an ambulance as he tried to remove an injured dog from a busy highway just north of Conway.

Dollar was a popular professor of theology and history at Pulaski Tech and worked there for the past 16 years. In those early Pulaski Tech days, he was also reporter for area newspapers like the Jacksonville News covering government meetings and sports.

His wife Susan, who is on the Jacksonville Planning Commission, also teaches part time at Pulaski Tech. They had twin daughters, Charlotte and Lauralee.

• Occupants of nine households on Bronco Lane in Sherwood struggled to put their lives back together after flood waters from Woodruff Creek forced them to flee their homes, when almost four inches of rain fell within a five-hour period.

Residents affected by the flood watched as city workers loaded garbage trucks with their belongings, which had been reduced to rubbish by rushing water that swept through their houses.

The low-lying stretch of Bronco Lane is in a flood plane. It has a history of flooding, but long-time residents there say this time was the worst they had ever experienced. The monsoon-like rains ran off ground already saturated from recent downpours, quickly filling the creek – actually a narrow, concrete culvert – behind their homes which overflowed its banks into their yards.

• The state Supreme Court reversed former Lonoke Police Chief Jay Campbell’s convictions for running a continuing criminal enterprise and a slew of burglary, theft, drug and drug manufacturing charges and remanded the case back to Lonoke County Circuit Court, but not before Campbell served 31 months of a 40-year sentence.

He has since been released on bond, awaiting trial for drugs and theft.

• Parents, teachers and staff, along with community leaders, helped dedicate Jacksonville’s new charter school — the first new school built in the city in almost three decades.

“Thank you, Jacksonville, for letting us move into our new home,” principal Nigena Livingston said during the dedication ceremony. “This is the school that was built for a better tomorrow.”

Students moved into the Lighthouse Academy, 251 N. First St., from temporary quarters at Second Baptist Church.

Construction of the $4 million school got off to a late start in March, in part due to spring rains, followed by frequent torrential downpours through October.

• A disgruntled worker at a Jacksonville daycare set fire to her classroom with 16 youngsters napping or resting, and was arrested on 17 charges.

Jacksonville police arrested Darlene Ann Kostyk, 24, of Jacksonville on one count of arson and 16 counts of endangering the welfare of a minor in connection with a fire at Kareer Kids daycare in November.

The arson charge is a misdemeanor, but each of the child endangerment charges is a felony.

• Site preparation began on the long-awaited $10.6 million Joint Education Center at Little Rock Air Force Base with an official groundbreaking ceremony.

The contractor, W.G. Yates and Sons Construction of Philadelphia, Miss., are building the new cooperative college at the corner of Vandenberg Boulevard and John Harden Drive.

The Air Force’s contribution is $9.8 million and Jacksonville’s is $5 million, raised by local residents who approved a dedicated tax for the purpose in 2003.

• Jacksonville adopted a revised nuisance abatement ordinance. The city council at its regular monthly meeting unanimously approved the amended code without so much as a comment or complaint from any council member or citizens in attendance.

The ordinance covers everything from the per person square footage requirements for bedrooms to weed control to parking and storage of vehicles.

“It just does a better job of bringing it all together so that it is easier to understand and enforce,” Mayor Gary Fletcher said.

• A McRae man was charged with capital murder in the death of his father whose body was found in his Beebe home.

Beebe Chief of Police Wayne Ballew said Billy Joe Clark, 75, 305 N. Hickory St., was found murdered and a short time later Christopher S. Clark, 43, of McRae, was in police custody.

• For the lottery player on the go, Bill’s Sales, Rental and More in Ward started to offer drive-through service in November.

Building owner Bill Boyd transformed the rustic wooden garage built in 1945 at 312 Elm St. into a one-stop lottery center. Boyd also rents U-Haul trucks and trailers on the side.

The double-door garage is a place where lottery players do not have to step out of their vehicle to purchase scratch-off cards, Powerball tickets or claim winnings.

• Jacksonville was awarded $53,191 to build the second phase of a hiking and bicycle trail to the Bayou Meto.

“It’s been a year or so since I applied for those funds,” Jimmy Oakley, Jacksonville’s public works director, said. He said he hadn’t yet heard from the Arkansas Highway Commission, which awarded the funding, but he was happy to learn the money would soon be awarded.

“Phase two will go around the back of the lake,” Oakley said about the Bayou Meto Creek Trail, “so people can go fishing there.” The trail will also be for walking, he said.

• Sherwood’s Trail of Lights went green. In order to cut down on the electrical power needed for its humongous Christmas display now in its eighth year, the city of Sherwood invested in LED (light emitting diode) light bulbs.

The dazzling display at Sherwood Forest had 92 displays.

More than $5,000 was used to buy 6,000 red, green, white and amber LED light bulbs.

The LED bulbs, though costlier, use only a twelfth of the electricity, require fewer power outlets and are made of durable plastic that is resistant to fading and breakage.

• A Cabot man was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, on a multitude of federal charges, including bookmaking, distribution of illegal drugs and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with an alleged kickback scheme also involving a North Little Rock alderman and a contractor.

George Wylie Thompson, 64, lived in the modest Oak Meadows subdivision in the central part of Cabot when police got a courtesy call from the Federal Bureau of Investigation last spring, informing them that they were working in Cabot.

DECEMBER

• The new Jacksonville Pathfinder preschool building was dedicated in December.

The 38,000-square-foot, one-story building is located adjacent to the Reynolds Building, the main facility on the Pathfinder campus at 2400 W. Main St.

The new building, with its 188-individual capacity, has alleviated the preschool’s waiting list, with room to spare. Current enrollment is about 135.

• The Cabot School District announced plans to buy 25.8 acres adjacent to Junior High North for $462,000 for a new ninth-grade school.

The district has talked for some time about separating ninth graders and since the two junior high schools are near capacity, now is the time to do it, the board decided.

• Jacksonville has the best site and has made the best offer to move the state fair from Little Rock, according to the official in charge of the prestigious program.

Ralph Shoptaw, the general manager of the Arkansas Livestock Show Association, called Jacksonville’s offer to give the association 430 acres of land in southeast Jacksonville “very attractive.”

He told The Leader during a visit to Jacksonville that the site off Hwy. 161 South near Hwy. 67/167 and the North Belt Freeway was the best he’s seen from among 19 that were submitted.

A committee will make a decision in the coming months. After a site is chosen, the new fairgrounds could cost up to $150 million and could be completed in three to five years, Shoptaw said.

• A decade-long dream became a reality with the groundbreaking of a $10 million armory in Cabot.

“This is truly a great day for the Arkansas Na-tional Guard, but it’s and even greater day for Cabot,” Adjutant Gen. William Wofford said. The economic impact to the area should be about $1 million a year, he said.

“This is the biggest and best thing that has happened in Cabot in many years,” Mayor Eddie Joe Williams said.

• Tempers flared at a Pulaski County Special School District meeting in December when the board voted to decertify both the teachers union and the support staff union.

This caused the teachers union to call for a one day walkout in which about half the district teachers participated. The union also sued the district over the decertification.

The board, in return, hired about 20 long term substitutes in case the teacher’s go on strike again. The new hires are costing the district close to $500,000.

The board also voted unanimously to table a motion that would have authorized a second-lien bond sale of as much as $2 million for construction of a new elementary school on Little Rock Air Force Base to replace both Arnold Drive and Tolleson elementary schools.

Acting Superintendent Rob McGill and Chief Financial Officer Anita Farver told the board that they didn’t believe the district had enough money to give raises to teachers and build the new school.

• After 15 years of trying every which way to expand the old jail or build a new one, Lonoke County officials were smiling, slapping backs and shaking hands after a Cabot company was the apparent low bidder for a new 142-bed jail.

“I never dreamed we’d be able to build everything with the money we had,” said Tim Lemons, a Cabot engineer and Quorum Court member.

“It’s a wonderful day for the county,” said Odom. “A 15-year battle with a whole lot of effort with a whole lot of people — especially the voters who approved the sales tax,” Odom said.

GAG Builders of Cabot bid about $5.48 million to build the 35,000-square-foot building, including lockup, offices, a courtroom big enough for a jury trial and the 911 dispatch office.

County residents voted for a one-year, one-penny sales tax dedicated to jail construction. Collection of that tax stopped Sept. 30, and it raised nearly $6.25 million.

• The good news, announced at a December state highway commission meeting, was that making Hwy. 67/167 into a six-lane from Redmond to Kiehl Avenue was a definite and slated for bid letting in April. The bad news was that reconfiguring the Vandenberg Boulevard intersection and a host of other road improvements that Jacksonville motorists and city planners wanted are not going to happen anytime soon.

“We do not have any money – not today; we are committed through 2013,” Carl Rosenbaum, head of the Arkansas Highway Commission, told citizens at a meeting hosted by the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.

• State Police investigated a two-time unsuccessful candidate for the Lonoke County Clerk’s Office in connection with the misappropriation of $67,244 from the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office.

The funds were found to be missing during a routine audit by the state Bureau of Legislative Audit, which sent copies of its findings to the prosecutor and county officials and reported its findings to the state Legislative Audit Committee.

“Sheriff’s Office Book-keeper Cassandra Pitts, custodian of bond and fine funds, was responsible for the receipting, depositing and recording process for these funds,” according to the report, authored by June M. Barron, deputy legislative auditor.

“Ms. Pitts, whose employment terminated Oct. 29, 2009, was custodian of misappropriated funds totaling $67,224.”

• Flooding around Christmas closed numerous roads in Jacksonville, Cabot, Sherwood and Pulaski County, including broad stretches of Hwy. 67/167.

I-30 near Bryant was closed for several hours because of flooding and rain-related accidents.

While the I-30 closure may have affected the most holiday travelers, other highways, county roads and city streets were closed in scores of sites around Arkansas including Hwy. 5 and Hwy. 67/167 between Jacksonville and Cabot and Hwy. 11 southeast of Searcy.

Numerous homes were flooded and rescue boats had to be used in a number of places to move residents to safety. Valentine Road residents were evacuated and homes were flooded near Reed’s Bridge.

South Bend Fire Department had 23 of their 36 firefighters involved in rescues over a 96-hour period. The department responded to 38 calls from motorists trapped in their vehicles due to high water and helped six families evacuate from their flooded homes in Lonoke and Pulaski counties.

Pulaski, Lonoke, White and Prairie counties were declared disaster areas by Gov. Mike Beebe on Jan. 4.

• There’ll be no financial partnership between Jacksonville and the Foxwood Country Club in 2010, as the city doesn’t have the money to even consider it.

Any future partnership depends on the committee receiving answers to its many legal questions about the partnership.

When the 13-member group first met to consider Ted Belden’s idea of the city becoming a partner in Foxwood Country Club for an annual infusion of $200,000, the committee was told by the chairman that it was legal. But the city attorney was not at that meeting to give any details or answer other questions.

As the questions mounted, the group’s chairman, Alderman Kenny Elliott, said he would get answers. But at the next meeting there was no city attorney and no answers.

TOP STORY >> Victims of flooding asked to call hotline

Residents affected by the severe storms and flooding that occurred on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are asked to call a state disaster information hotline set up for a limited time by the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.

The state is requesting information about damages sustained in the storms in a number of counties including Pulaski, Lonoke, White and Prairie counties, which Gov. Mike Beebe declared to be disaster areas after the storms that began Dec. 23 caused severe damage.

A news release from the state agency said it is requesting information about damage for assesment purposes, although no disaster assistance is available yet and grants will not be awarded. It said that the call center is for information purposes only.

The call center will be operated from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Friday only by calling 888-683-ADEM (2336) or 501-682-8820.

Information needed includes primary homeowners information (Social Security number, damage address, phone number, e-mail address), insurance coverage, damages, essential or special needs, temporary housing needs and uninsured property loss.

The department has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send assessment teams to the state.

The state will use those assessments to support any requests for federal aid made to President Barack Obama.

TOP STORY >> Old man winter strikes frigid blow

By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer

A series of arctic fronts moving across the state at a slow pace may drive low temperatures in central Arkansas into the single digits by the end of the week. This is the time to bring in the pets, keep the faucets dripping and think of your neighbors. And watch for those icy patches on roadways and driveways.

January is typically the coldest month of the year, with 49 degrees Fahrenheit the average high, and 27 the average low. This week, daytime highs are feeling more like the normal lows and there is little chance that temperatures will get above 40 degrees until Monday.

On Tuesday, the temperature dipped to 12 degrees at the National Weather Service in North Little Rock and 14 degrees at Little Rock Air Force Base. Predicted lows for the area this week are 2 degrees on Thursday and 8 degrees Friday.

The good news is that after another bout of wintry precipitation moves out of the way Thursday morning, sunshine will prevail through the weekend.

An upper air pattern is being blamed for the plunge in temperatures that is affecting most of the country east of the Rockies.

“This low-pressure trough, not unusual for the winter, is conducive to letting these fronts come down, become stagnant and not allow the arctic air to move off in a different direction,” said Chris Bunanno, science and weather operations officer for the National Weather Service in Little Rock. “A good chunk of the nation is experiencing well below normal temperatures as several arctic air masses have moved all the way to the Gulf Coast.”

The lowest low on record for the area is -7 degrees which occurred twice in 1989, on Dec. 1 and Dec. 23.

PETS AND THE COLD

Pet owners are advised to bring their animals inside, or at least provide added insulation to dog houses or keep them in an outbuilding.

“Nobody wants to stay outside in this weather,” said Hedy Limke, director of animal services for Jacksonville.

And horses, though much more able to withstand extreme cold than dogs and cats, will be helped with some grain to “keep their body weight up” during the winter, said Cheryl Wood, animal control officer for Jacksonville.

PROTECTING THE PLUMBING

Local plumbing companies are already getting calls from homeowners with frozen and burst water lines. With little relief from freezing temperatures this week, extra precautions are in order to prevent a plumbing catastrophe.

“Keeping the water moving will help, but is no sure fix for the problem,” said Woody Arrowwood, district manager of Arrow Plumbing. “Typically, when you’re talking about temperatures going into the teens, you could have some problems, though a big thing is how a house is constructed and how well it is insulated.”

Arrowwood recommends insulating all pipes under a house or in unheated areas such as a utility room. And don’t forget about outdoor faucets. “They need what you need when you are outside on a cold day – bundle up and keep them warm.”

Inexpensive, strap-on hose bib covers that can be purchased at any building-supply store will protect against cold and wind that can drive water up into the pipe and cause it to burst. Plumbers can install frost-proof hoses that shuts the water off behind the exterior wall.

If you are away from home during the winter months, “even for a couple of days,” or own a building that is not occupied, keeping the heat on to protect the plumbing is essential, Arrowwood said.

LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS

Winter weather can keep folks at home and unable to get out, so it is a time to think of those who might need assistance.

Although no ice or power outages are expected this week in central Arkansas, a cold spell is a good time to take stock, says American Red Cross spokeswoman Brigette Williams.

“Winter storms can knock down power lines, make travel difficult because of icy road conditions, and keep people isolated in their homes for several days as did last January’s ice storm,” Williams said. “That’s why now is the perfect time to get ready before more winter weather hits our area. Make sure you have the food and supplies on hand that you may need if it’s not safe to travel or if the power goes out.”

The Red Cross recommends stocking up on easy-to-prepare foods, medications, diapers, baby formula, pet food, spare flashlight batteries and hygiene items like toilet paper and tissue, as well as fuel for a fireplace or heater.

For anyone needing a place to get out of the cold, Jacksonville Senior Center’s doors are open until 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 1 p.m. on Friday. The center is closed due to weather whenever Pulaski County Special School District is closed.

Don Hindman, director of the Jack Evans Senior Center in Sherwood, said that the center, which is the city’s gathering point for emergency services, is equipped with “pillows, cots, plenty of blankets and food” for emergencies.

“If people are out of heat and have no place to go, we will try to take care of them,” Hindman said.

TOP STORY >> Reform to help hospitals

By GARRICK FELDMAN AND JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader staff writers

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) says community hospitals in Arkansas will recover millions of dollars a year in losses after the health-reform bill becomes law.

Lincoln says hospitals like North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville, which provides charity care to thousands of patients a year, will be paid for almost all the care they provide because virtually all Americans will be insured when the bill is enacted.

In one recent year, North Metro wrote off $10 million in uncompensated care, or more than 10 percent of its annual revenues of $46.8 million. By law, hospitals cannot turn away patients if they’re uninsured or cannot pay the bill.

This is the main reason North Metro has lost millions of dollars in the last decade.

In a wide-ranging interview Monday, the senator said the 10-year, $871 billion health bill will help insure most Arkansans and bring more Medicare and Medicaid funds to Arkansas without having to make backdoor deals like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who won concessions from the Democrats in return for his support of the health bill.

She said the bill will close the so-called donut hole in the Medicare drug program, which will eventually pay for all the drugs for middle-class seniors. They now pay several thousand dollars that Medicare doesn’t cover.

The senator said some 500,000 Arkansans are uninsured today. At least 250,000 will be insured under the new law. Others will be insured as other features of the law — such as multi-state compacts, ex-changes, cooperatives and other nonprofit groups, where more affordable insurance will be available — are phased in over the next decade.

The senator said the bill would steer people into insurance programs, including automatic enrollment for those available for public assistance, such as ARKids, the state Medicaid program for children.

These efforts, she said, will greatly reduce unreimbursed care and will put more paying patients in hospitals once the state gets the Medicaid rolls expanded to include adults up to 133 or 150 percent of the poverty line. Over time, that should restrain insurance premiums because hospitals won’t be passing along so many costs to insured customers.

“Hopefully, all Americans will be covered,” said Lincoln, who is running for re-election this year.

Amy Arnone, a spokeswoman for North Metro, said Tuesday the hospital “is still evaluating how (the bill) will affect us.”

She said charity care and other uncompensated care has cost the hospital tens of millions of dollars over the years.

Lincoln is one of 60 Democrats and independents supporting the health-care bill.

Sen. Olympia Snow (R-Maine) could be a 61st vote for the plan if it returns from the joint conference committee without significant changes from the bill the Senate approved, Lincoln said.

The bill from that committee must still be approved by both houses of Congress, and in the Senate it will take 60 votes again to avoid a filibuster, Lincoln said.

“If it’s close to what we’ve got, we can maintain the 60 votes we need,” she said.

Lincoln opposes a public option, which she believes would be more costly than its supporters want to admit.

“My concern is that it’s a risk to taxpayers and it it will hurt private insurers,” she said of the public option, which is not included in the Senate version, although it is in the House bill.

Asked how the system could accommodate the influx of 31 million currently uninsured Americans, Lincoln said the bill would expand medical-residency programs, which is pretty much the only way to increase the numbers of health professionals in Arkansas—most medical students are homegrown.

“The key is to make sure we get some residency slots,” she said, “and also an increase in reimbursement, more commensurate with that of other states.”

The senator said there was so much misinformation about the plan—that Medicare services would be cut and that the reforms are socialist.

She said there was $118 billion in subsidies to health-insurance companies paid by Medicare.

Lincoln said core Medicare benefits would be more generous than the current benefits.

“Just absurd,” she said of charges that implementation of the proposed new health-care bill would be another step along the path to socialism.

She said the senators were “painfully aware” of the needs of the private market place, but that it needed to be painfully aware of the health care needs of a nation.

Three out of five Arkansas voters picked John McCain over President Obama in November 2008, leading many pundits, particularly Republicans, to predict Republican upsets of Lincoln and of Cong. Vic Snyder in November.

But she said Sen. Mark Pryor didn’t have competition in the 2008 general election and it was an off-year for statewide elections, so Democrats didn’t have a lot of incentive to turn out.

“(Obama) didn’t create all the challenges and problems we face,” she said. “His plate is full, too.”

“Only by working together are we going to see the country grow strong,” she said, “To make people and the marketplace strong.”

In addition to health-care reform, Lincoln said Congress must provide some predictability to help put people back to work.

She said Congress needs to stop short-term extensions of the highway bill and approve the five-year highway reauthorization bill, to give predictability to state highway departments, which depend on the federal money, and create more jobs.

SPORTS >> Ex-coach can still drive Hogs fans nuts

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

I got a Twitter update Saturday from an acquaintance road tripping to Memphis to see the Liberty Bowl between Arkansas and the East Carolina Pirates.

It seems my friend had stopped at a popular barbecue joint full of Hogs fans and a few disturbed East Carolina fans cowering in a corner.

I asked if the East Carolina fans had been disturbed by one those spontaneous callings of the Hogs always so welcome and appropriate in places like restaurants, wedding receptions, military deployments and wakes.

No, my friend said, but the visitors from the East may have been intimidated by the outpouring of hate the Arkansas fans were showing for Ole Miss as it played Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl.

I would hazard a guess these are the same Hogs fans who like to tout SEC supremacy on most other occasions. The difference in the case of Ole Miss, of course, is former Arkansas coach and Little Rock native Houston Nutt was coaching the Rebels.

Nutt’s Ole Miss team beat Oklahoma State 21-7 to finish the year 9-4, yet no Razorback fan I know was jumping forward to brag about Nutt’s blow for SEC supremacy. If Hogs fans really care about the SEC brand, they need to be reminded that under
Ed Orgeron, Ole Miss lost all eight of its conference games before Nutt came on board.

Later that night, Hogs fans were uneasily cheering their team’s 20-17 overtime victory in a dog-ugly Liberty Bowl that should be renamed the Wide Left Classic. But Arkansas prevailed and was congratulated for an 8-5 finish and victory in a mid-level bowl under second-year coach Bobby Petrino.

I pointed out the Hogs frequently did the same under Nutt, to which a fan replied that the difference is the Razorbacks now don’t have an “idiot” for a coach.

This is the “idiot” who has led Ole Miss to consecutive 9-4 records and two Cotton Bowl victories and who beat Arkansas 23-21 in 2008 and 30-17 this season.

This is the “idiot” who was 75-48 at Arkansas, who was usually good for a thrilling victory over LSU, and who led the Razorbacks to two SEC West championships and eight bowl games, with a victory over hated Texas in the 2000 Cotton Bowl.

But Hogs fans have this irrational blind spot when it comes to their former coach, and certainly Nutt did things while at Arkansas that were infuriating.

There were the disappointing losses that seemed to come with each thrilling victory. Think of the 1998 game at top-ranked Tennessee when quarterback Clint Stoerner fumbled or the three season-ending losses — including one to Wisconsin in the Capitol One Bowl — that tarnished the 10-1 start of 2006.

There was Nutt’s apparent inability to find room in the pigpen for Arkansas offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, now at Auburn.

There was the controversy over the handling of Springdale standout quarterback Mitch Mustain, who was 8-0 as a starter in his time at Arkansas.

And of course there was the scandal in a bottle over Nutt’s game of text-message footsie with a female television reporter and, probably more irritating to fans, his interest in other jobs like Nebraska and LSU. In fact, Nutt may have been perhaps the only man to flirt with Donna Bragg AND Tom Osborne.

So Nutt and his $2 million salary are gone after he posted a .610 winning percentage at Arkansas. Now the Razorbacks have Petrino, who made close to $2.9 million this season and has so far posted a .520 winning percentage.

Folks, it doesn’t get much better than that at Arkansas.

Every 15-20 years the Razorbacks might catch the right teams at the right time to break into the BCS championship picture.

But, without a Florida- or Texas-sized recruiting pool and competing in a league like the SEC, which IS darn good, the best Arkansas fans can regularly expect is an average 7.5 victories and a decent bowl.

Nutt gave them that, and they’re still cursing his name, if they say anything about him at all.

Lou Holtz, the former Razor-backs coach turned television commentator, made the statement during the Liberty Bowl that Arkansas fans are the most uneducated in college football.

Those are strong and unkind words I would have saved for the idiots supporting ousted Texas Tech coach Mike Leach and who cruelly mocked one of Leach’s allegedly abused players at the Alamo Bowl.

That’s the same Mike Leach who had a .613 winning percentage at Texas Tech, lost to Nutt in the 2009 Cotton Bowl, never won a national championship with the Red Raiders and only occasionally got his team into the BCS discussion.

Hmm, minus the player-abuse allegations, a lot of that sounds like Houston Nutt.

The difference?

Leach got more support from fans.

SPORTS >> Lonoke girls focus on hardware hunt

Ashleigh Himstedt is a senior leader as Lonoke eyes a 2-4A Conference title.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

The prize has eluded the Lonoke Lady Jackrabbits for two years now — that’s the other prize.

The Lady ’Rabbits’ unsuccessful bids for a state championship the past three seasons have been well documented, but they have also finished runner-up to Bald Knob in the 2-4A Conference for the past two years.

Lonoke has gone on to defeat Bald Knob in the district and regional finals in those seasons, but victory in round-robin conference play has gone to the scrappy Tim Fulks-coached squad from northern White County.

Such a title might seem insignificant for teams which have come as close to winning the big hardware as many times as Lonoke has, but a victory over Star City last week in the final of the Beebe holiday tournament proved the Lady Jackrabbits’ hunger for any trophy is still alive.

It was Lonoke’s second consecutive championship in the holiday tourney.

“That’s also a goal for us,” Lonoke coach Nathan Morris said. “It’s something we want to win — the first goal we want to attain.

If we’re clicking well enough to win a conference championship, then the rest of them that follow should take care of themselves.”

Lonoke is already 2-0 in conference play with road victories over Southside Batesville and DeWitt before the holiday break. The Lady ’Rabbits resumed their league schedule Tuesday against Stuttgart as part of a three-game stretch at home.

Stuttgart is expected by many to give Lonoke its strongest challenge this season, but the intense rivalry with Bald Knob will resume at Lonoke on Friday, then Marianna visits on Tuesday.

“Stuttgart will be really tough, and Bald Knob is still a tradition-rich program,” Morris said. “Those kids have played against good people in practice for the past two years, and now they’re the ones out there on the court playing. They are still real solid.

“But we came out of the game at Southside winning by just three points, so it’s tough regardless of who you play. But that can help us in tournaments down the road, as well as the teams we play; we like to see everyone in this conference do well.”

The Lady Jackrabbits, 10-5, have suffered most of their losses at the hands of much larger 7A schools, but Lonoke made a statement in the semifinal round of the Beebe tourney with a victory over Conway, a team that won the 7A state championship two years ago.

“I’m real proud of that effort,” Morris said. “Those two games, we controlled it. The Conway game we controlled the whole time. The Star City game got shaky some at the end, but we controlled most of that one as well except for a few turnovers.

“We took control of those games. I liked the intensity they had and how it carried over from one game to the next. Sometimes it doesn’t carry over.”

Winning the conference championship is the first step in a long process for any team playing at the 4A level or lower. After that comes the district, regional and finally the state tournament.

Morris admitted focusing on conference and regional play and putting hopes of a state championship return on the back burner are not always possible.

“To be honest, I don’t know if you fully can,” Morris said. “I believe that game is sitting there — it can be a burden. What we have to get the kids to understand is that we don’t want to wish ourselves back into that game, because it might not be there.”

SPORTS >> Jacksonville trying to grow up quickly

Red Devil Justin McCleary dribbles around a defender earlier this season.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

The Jacksonville Red Devils have shown signs of life lately, coach Victor Joyner said.

With 6A-East Conference play getting under way, they don’t have much choice.

“The atmosphere is going to change; it’s going to be way more intense in conference play,” Joyner said.

The Red Devils, the defending 6A state champions, had shown a frustrating inconsistency heading into Tuesday’s conference opener at Little Rock Parkview. Joyner especially was troubled by aggressive play that seemed to come and go.

“With a young team it’s sporadic,” Joyner said. “They bring it sometimes and sometimes they don’t.”

The Red Devils’ effort has improved somewhat since a 60-48 home loss to 5A state runner-up North Pulaski on Dec. 18, when Jacksonville closed within five points of the lead with 3:31 left only to give up six offensive rebounds as the Falcons pulled away.

“Are they better than they were? Yes,” Joyner said. “Hopefully as we get into the conference they can bring a little more aggression because it helps more.”

Joyner admitted it isn’t as easy to draw up aggression and effort as it is to draw up an inbounds play.

“That’s kind of where we are right now,” Joyner said. “We’ve got a lot of passive kids. They play hard for the most part, most of the time, and we’ve got some who are a little passive and timid.”

Joyner said the need for extra effort is made more important by the Red Devils’ lack of size. Guard and returning senior starter Deshone McClure, 6-3, is Jacksonville’s tallest player.

“That’s not good when your guard is the tallest one on your team, at any level,” Joyner said. “We’re getting ready to play some teams that have a lot more skilled big kids than some of the ones we’ve played.”

Joyner said even if his players use proper form, getting position and boxing out, rebounding will always be a challenge because of the Red Devils’ size.

“That’s pretty much all we talk about in practice,” Joyner said. “That’s what all the coaches have been harping on. Even when you’re small you can box them out, but if you box them out and you’re small it’s still hard to go up and get the rebound.

You’ve got to be gritty and you’ve got to cut down your mistakes and you’ve got to get the best out of each possession.”

Yet Joyner was looking forward to the chance to measure his team against Parkview in the 6A-East opener.

“You go into a hostile ground right off the bat,” he said. “We like the challenge. I love challenges. It’s a challenge for this team; it’s a challenge for the coaching staff. We’re looking forward to going over there regardless of what happens.

“Hopefully the people around Jacksonville will come out and support these youngsters because they’re the team of the future.”

Joyner said he has enjoyed coaching this year’s team as much or more than last year’s bigger, more athletic state champions.

Having a young team means there is more coaching to do, he said.

“Last year’s team, there was pressure every game,” Joyner said. “There’s not as much pressure on these kids. There’s going to be mistakes and you can’t be so critical that you’re going to worry about them getting out there and making those mistakes.”

SPORTS >> Falcons set for takeoff

Kyron Ware has been one of North Pulaski’s leading scorers in early action.


By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

A losing streak isn’t how North Pulaski coach Raymond Cooper wanted to get the attention of his players.

He just hopes the Falcons are listening now.

“If losing three of four is not a wakeup call, there’s not one,” Cooper said. “You’ve got the phone off the hook.”

The Falcons, 9-4, begin 5A-Southeast Conference play at Mills on Friday night.

“We started the season pretty good and over the last couple of weeks we kind of lost focus,” Cooper said. “We lost focus and intensity and going into the conference that’s not a good thing.”

After finishing as the state runner-up last year and returning most of that team, North Pulaski charged out to an 8-0 start that included victories over defending 6A champion and crosstown rival Jacksonville.

But something looked fishy to Cooper. He didn’t see the levels of motivation and leadership he expected, and his players were too blinded by their early success to notice, Cooper said.

“Actually around the first of December I started noticing it,” Cooper said. “But we were on an eight-game winning streak and it’s hard to tell guys they’re not playing with the intensity level they need to be playing with when they’re on an eight-game winning streak. It kind of went in one ear and out the other.

“The problem with not playing well, it takes some losses to make them say ‘Maybe Coach is right.’ We’ve got the losses now.”

Most distressing to Cooper is the nature of those losses.

There was an overtime setback to 7A Conway in the Wampus Cat Classic at Conway. Against Memphis power Raleigh-Egypt, the Falcons trailed by 19 points before rallying for the lead, then losing on free throws down the stretch.

“It was the way we began the game,” Cooper said. “We came out with no enthusiasm, knowing we’re playing one of the top teams in Memphis and to come out flat like that.”

North Pulaski lost a 16-point lead in a loss against Poplar Bluff, Mo., and was without certain players who were suspended for missing practice.

“At this stage of the game we shouldn’t be having that,” Cooper said.

Finally, Forrest City, a team North Pulaski beat by 12 points at Conway, won the rematch on a buzzer-beater.

“We started 8-0 now we’re 9-4,” Cooper said. “Obviously, if it hasn’t become clear to you now then we’ll have some major problems.”

Aaron Cooper, averaging between 18-19 points a game and Kyron Ware, averaging 15, have been the Falcons’ most consistent scorers.

“I was hoping that we’d be playing more motivated than we have over the last couple of weeks,” Raymond Cooper said. “I haven’t gotten a whole lot of leadership from some of the guys that are back from last year. We’re not playing with the same desire and the same hunger that we played with last year. And that’s a big concern.”

Cooper said a better overall output is vital if North Pulaski wants to survive its conference schedule.

“Little Rock McClellan may possibly be playing as well as anybody in the state in any classification,” Cooper said of the Lions, 11-2 with losses to last year’s 6A runner-up Little Rock Hall and Memphis’ Craigmont. “They are playing extremely good basketball. They are playing very hungry, very dangerous.

“Mills has got some talent and they are a team you can’t overlook. Sylvan Hills is young, they could get on a roll because they’re young and they’re very talented.”

Cooper was concerned enough about his team’s recent play that he wasn’t going to give in to Monday’s snowy weather without a fight.

Rather than let his players get away with the snow day that canceled classes and extended the holiday break, Cooper was huddling with his assistants and trying to plan a practice.

“We need to get into the gym because we’ve got some things we need to work on, mainly our defensive intensity level,” Cooper said. “I can’t wait to practice.”

SPORTS >> Badgers finally succeed on home court

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

The first two rounds of the Beebe Christmas Classic were tough for the host, but the Badgers closed the three-day tournament strong with a 59-47 victory over White Hall in the seventh-place game Wednesday at Badger Sports Arena.

Junior guard Devonte Young got the Badgers out to a fast start and helped keep his team out front by leading all scorers with 21 points, seven of which came in the first two minutes.

Beebe went to the free-throw line four times in the final minute and hit 4 of 8 shots while keeping the Bulldogs scoreless.

The victory improved Beebe to 2-8 and gave the Badgers momentum heading into the new year and 5A-Southeast Conference play.

“The whole thing is a process,” first-year Beebe coach Chris Parker said. “What we are really trying to do is establish some principles early on that are going to help us later down the road.

“We really don’t get caught up in wins and losses, although wins are certainly great to have. But hopefully, it will boost our morale a little bit and help us continue the progress we’ve already started to make.”

While Young took the reigns offensively, Beebe’s tough defense was a group effort. Young led with six steals, but teammates Zach May and Scot Gowen also grabbed multiple turnovers.

The Badgers also held shooting guard Evan Sidwell to six points, two coming on free throws, after he scored 19 points and had five three-pointers against Riverview in the first round.

“We really keyed on that,” Parker said. “We talked about what we wanted to do, what we felt like some of the keys to the game were. We did a really good job on him.

“We were able to stay with our man-to-man defense, which is our preference, and really get up into the shooters. We made them put the ball on the floor so they couldn’t establish a rhythm.”

The Bulldogs erased Beebe’s early lead and took control midway through the first period. A three-pointer by Tanner Moore with 3:07 left in the quarter gave White Hall its biggest lead of the game, and Beebe was not able to catch up until 2:08 was left in the half when Gowen drove inside and tied it at 25.

The Badgers made up for their size deficit and youth with hustle, which they did with a tight, man-to-man defense and a full-court press that gave White Hall problems in the fourth quarter. That led to 14 steals for Beebe, including three by May and a pair for Gowen.

“They are very experienced,” Parker said. “Everybody they played except for one kid was a senior. For us, as inexperienced as we are, to come out and really compete with a team that has competed for two or three years on the varsity level was certainly a good thing.”

Beebe finally began to pull away in the final 1:45 when Brandon Fuller went the length of the floor and scored to give the Badgers a 53-45 lead.

SPORTS >> Harding Academy beats buzzer, rival

Harding Academy post Daniel Stevens
drives against Raider Rodney White

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

The cross-town rivalry game was filled with drama, but Jordan Smith’s buzzer-beating lay-in for Harding Academy gave it a made-for-TV ending no after-school special could match.

Smith’s final play helped the Wildcats beat 2-3A Conference rival Riverview 38-37 in the third-place game of the Beebe Christmas Classic tournament at Badger Sports Arena on Wednesday. Smith drove through the lane and put up a shot that rolled around the rim three times before dropping in just as the buzzer sounded.

“We found a way to make it exciting and blow about a 13-point lead,” Wildcats coach Brad Francis said. “The kids kept their composure and did what we needed to do at the end, and we got that shot to go. It makes it an exciting win for sure.”

The Raiders (12-4) overcame a 28-15 deficit with 2:19 left in the third quarter and led most of the final period thanks to the shooting of guard Keinan Lee, but the Wildcats (7-2) put a stop to Lee’s three-point spree in the final quarter and allowed only one Riverview field goal in the final five minutes.

Lee made 4 of 4 three-pointers in the last 1:53 of the third quarter to fuel a 15-1 run and put the Raiders ahead 30-29 at the start of the fourth quarter after they had trailed by 14.

Wildcats junior post player Daniel Stevens extended Harding Academy’s lead in the early stages of the third quarter with a pair of inside shots.

Wildcats freshman Will Francis hit his fifth and final three-pointer with 2:19 left in the quarter and drew a foul after the shot.

He made the free throw to give Harding Academy a 28-15 lead.

Lee had been quiet up to that point, content in trying to find Smith and senior Jordan Perry. But Lee made a long three-pointer with 1:53 left in the third and another with 1:23 left that cut the lead to 28-21.

“I thought the key was that we were making turnovers in the second half that we weren’t making in the first half,” Brad Francis said. “Several of those turnovers turned into opportunities for them, and they obviously shot the ball better in the second half.

I didn’t think we contested as well, but you have to give them credit for finding a way to get back in it.”

The only interruption in the Riverview run was a free throw by Stevens, but the Raiders quickly picked up the charge again when Smith and Lee made three-pointers.

Lee’s shot with 15 seconds left in the quarter made it 29-27, then the Raiders forced the Wildcats into a turnover in the near court. Lee capped off the period with his fourth three-pointer just before the buzzer to hand Riverview a one-point lead.

It was the outside shooting of Will Francis that made the difference in the first half. Francis hit the first of his four three-pointers with 1:21 left in the first quarter to give the Wildcats their first lead at 8-7, and he extended the lead with another three-pointer with 6:58 left in the half.

Two straight baskets for Riverview junior guard Taylor Smith made it a one-point game, but Francis made his fourth three-pointer, followed by a three-point basket by Lane Dailey with 2:19 left.

That put the Wildcats up 20-13, and the teams were scoreless over the final two minutes of the half.

Francis led the Wildcats with 22 points while Lee led the Raiders with 16.Dailey and Smith each added five points for the Wildcats, and Smith finished with 12 points, 11 rebounds and two steals for Riverview.

The Raiders out-rebounded the Wildcats 23-13.

The exciting matchup was the first of at least three games for the two schools, which sit fewer than three miles apart and will play two regular-season conference games.

“The kids all know each other; we’re close,” Francis said. “It’s a fun, good rivalry in football and basketball. Just with the locations, it’s always going to be like that.”

SPORTS >> Jackrabbits get in gear to grab grudge match

Lonoke's Tarrel Watson extends for a rebound against Warren.


By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Warren’s attempt at revenge against Lonoke fell just short on Wednesday in the fifth-place game of the Beebe Christmas Classic basketball tournament at Badger Sports Arena.

The Jackrabbits, who beat Warren in the 4A football playoffs, found a way through the Lumberjacks’ stifling press in the late going, and found their way to the free-throw line six times in the fourth quarter to help themselves to a 48-44 victory.

Lonoke scored a football upset at Warren on the way to the state championship game, but the Lumberjacks’ bid for redemption was not to be because of solid free-throw shooting from ’Rabbits junior guard Darius Scott, a starting receiver/defensive back in football.

“I don’t know how much that came into play,” Jackrabbits coach Dean Campbell said of the vengeance factor. “I know a lot of them did play on the football team, and one of them even made a comment to one of our guys. He laughed and shrugged it off.

“There may have been a little bit of that, but it’s something that we as coaches have no control over.”

Scott went 6 of 8 from the free-throw line in the final 1:11 to keep Lonoke out front, and went on to lead the Jackrabbits with 13 points.

“We still missed 10 free throws in the first half, but we made some big ones when we needed to,” Campbell said. “Especially when we were up by only three to make it a two-possession game. We did that a couple of times.

“We did a better job of handling pressure at times and played better defense at times. We talked about doing better on the boards with Warren being such a good, athletic team, and we did a fairly good job of doing that.”

Lonoke pushed its lead in the second half to 31-24, but as it did in the first half, Warren quickly rallied to make it a one-point game at the end of the third quarter.

The lead changed hands four times in the first quarter until Lonoke established momentum two minutes into the second period. Scott scored inside to give the Jackrabbits a 14-10 lead, and Tarrale Watson followed a pair of Warren free throws with a three-point basket that extended the lead to 17-12 with 3:53 left.

But that momentum was short lived. Demarcus Calbert sparked a Lumberjack rally with a dunk with 3:20 left, and Jalen Cobb hit 3 of 4 free throws on two consecutive possessions to tie it 17-17 with 1:49 left in the first half.

Lonoke got the last word before halftime with an inside shot by junior post player Chad Dixon and a Watson free throw tacked on for a 22-17 lead.

Watson added 10 points for Lonoke. Cobb led Warren with 21 points.

Lonoke went 2-1 in the three-day tournament. The Jackrabbits almost came from behind against county rival Carlisle in the first round, but lost 62-58.

They easily downed White Hall in the consolation round before closing out the tournament with their victory on Wednesday.

“It ended up being a very good tournament for us,” Campbell said. “We are learning to come out and play hard at the beginning of games. That was something we didn’t do against Carlisle, and we dug a hole for ourselves. It was a lot of work to try and come back from that, so maybe it was a good first game for us to have.

“Warren is much more athletic than some of the other teams we’ve played. We were able to get our legs under us and play at a faster pace, and control the tempo at times. We’re in good shape and have some momentum for conference play.”

SPORTS >> Lady Jackrabbits’ victory worth the wait

Lonoke junior guard Cara Neighbors makes a move inside during the Lady Jackrabbits' 31-28 victory over Star City in the championship game of the First Security/Gillam Farms Christmas Classic at Beebe High School.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Lonoke’s unusual four-minute break to end the third quarter might have made for a low score, but it was the only stretch of calm in an otherwise frantic tournament championship game against Star City.

The Lady Jackrabbits did their best to pace themselves and barely escaped the Lady Bulldogs’ bullying press down the stretch to win the Beebe Christmas Classic final 31-28 on Wednesday night at Badger Sports Arena. The game was a repeat of last year’s tournament final won by Lonoke.

Junior guard Cara Neighbors declared her recovery from recent wrist surgery complete by leading the Lady Jackrabbits with 18 points, half of which came in the fourth quarter.

Asiah Scribner gave Lonoke a 30-28 lead when she made a free throw with 34 seconds left and Neighbors made the first of two free throws with 6 seconds left for the final margin, as Lonoke’s defense kept Star City from a last-ditch shot attempt.

“We had to fight; we definitely had to fight. It was tough,” Lonoke coach Nathan Morris said. “We had a one-point deficit at the half and I’m very proud of our kids — they were patient. It’s two nights in a row that they were patient against great athletes.

“Maybe not that great against the press late, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen that kind of pressure. We’ll be okay if it’s that way again. There’s nobody else in 4A that can press like that.”

Lonoke (10-5) put its patience on display for almost four minutes at the end of the third quarter when senior point guard Michaela Brown stood near mid court with the ball and let the seconds, then minutes, tick away.

Lonoke finally passed with a minute left, but Brown returned to her spot with 48 seconds to go and let the clock wind down to within 10 seconds before Lonoke attacked the basket. A steal by Lady Bulldog post Ja-Quayshia Linsy under the goal made the nearly four-minute possession fruitless.

Morris said there was a method to the madness.

“Scribner was on the bench, and we had the possession arrow,” Morris said. “We were going to get the ball to start the quarter.

So it was one last free possession. If they were going to let us run it all the way down, that’s what we were going to do.

“It gave those three guards that had been in there the whole game a little bit of catch-your-breath time. It let Scribner get some rest on the bench. We didn’t execute it like we wanted to, but it’s still our ball coming out to start the quarter.”

Star City (10-4) had an obvious vendetta against the only team to beat the Lady Bulldogs last season. Lonoke won the Christmas Classic final a year ago and beat Star City again in the 4A state semifinals in Pine Bluff.

The Lady Jackrabbits advanced to the Christmas Classic final this year with a first-round rout of Carlisle and a big victory over 7A power Conway in the semifinals.

“I guess it’s the same road we had last year in back-to-back years,” Morris said. “Carlisle coming right out of the break, a very good, very athletic Conway team and a great, athletic Star City team.”

Neighbors was the only double-digit scorer for either team thanks to the Lady Bulldogs’ emphasis on shutting down Scribner’s inside game. The effort paid off as the UALR signee scored just six points, though she contributed her critical free throw down the stretch.

Scribner made her only field goal with 5:14 left in the first quarter. She earned two trips to the free-throw line later in the period and went 3 of 4.

“She carried two or three people every time,” Morris said of Scribner. “Every time she came across, they knew where she was going, and they didn’t want her to beat them. We got one quick feed to her when they were in a zone on the back side. She got it; from then on, it was all free throws.”

Neighbors made the most of the opening fourth-quarter possession when she made a three-point basket to give Lonoke a 22-18 lead. She extended the lead with a steal and layup on Star City’s next trip and gave the Lady ’Rabbits their biggest lead with a basket and free throw to make it 29-22 with 2:36 left.

“She’s a scorer – that’s all there is to it,” Morris said. “The kid can flat score. It took a little bit to get going. The only problem we have is sometimes when others stand and watch.

“Even not all of hers go in, so we have to go grab glass and get offensive rebounds. We need more offensive rebounds. She’s a scoring machine when she catches fire.”

Lonoke will host Stuttgart in 2-4A Conference play Tuesday.

EDITORIAL >> High-dollar propaganda

The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that marks the sparrow’s fall with Washington spending, reports that industry groups spent more than $600 million this year to influence members of Congress on the health-care overhaul and another $200 million on television advertising on the legislation. It did not break the spending down between pro and con, but you can be sure that the vast preponderance of the money was directed against the various insurance reform measures making their way through Congress.

That is because most of the money was spent by segments of the health industry, principally insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and their allies like the United States Chamber of Commerce.

There is good news and bad news for us in the figures, which include only part of the year. (A full accounting of the whole propaganda campaign will approach $2 billion or perhaps much more.) The good news is that Arkansas got more than its pro-rata share of the spending because Arkansas members of Congress were viewed as vacillating and vulnerable to pressure. They also happened to be keys in the close voting in both the House and Senate. Arkansas television stations and the large newspapers, which Lord knows needed the money, enjoyed a huge infusion of cash owing to the advertising directed at our senators and congressmen: “Tell Blanche Lincoln . . . .”

The bad news is that the campaign badly misinformed Arkansas people about what was at stake in the bills. People were told that the health bills would drive up the federal budget deficits (they would lower them), create a vast bureaucracy that would dictate medical treatment (they wouldn’t), deprive seniors of their Medicare insurance (they would improve Medicare coverage for a huge majority of seniors) and amount to a government “takeover” of health care (they will produce the biggest expansion of private health insurance in history).

All the spending identified by the Center for Responsive Politics, which covered the first nine months of the year and did not include the hundreds of millions spent on lobbying Congress in 2008, did not include the scores of millions spent by insurance companies to persuade seniors to convert their Medicare insurance to a Medicare Advantage HMO plan, which is a huge taxpayer subsidy to the profits of insurance companies. Every Medicare recipient was bombarded with pitches in almost every day’s mail for three months, along with newspaper and TV ads. The more people they could sign up would be more people who would get excited about legislative attempts to reduce the wasteful subsidies.

The blizzard of glib and earnest-sounding ads worked, as they always have. People became genuinely frightened about what will happen to their health care, and public-opinion polls, which only nine months ago showed a huge majority of people favoring a system of government-backed universal health coverage, now show it fairly close between opponents and supporters. As former President Bill Clinton observed, those fears will be overcome by truth when the legislation actually takes effect. That happened with Social Security and Medicare, which became fantastically popular.

It is worth noting that in 1974, our own congressman, Wilbur D. Mills of White County, introduced a bill providing more sweeping insurance coverage than either of the bills that passed one house of Congress in 2009. So did President Richard Nixon and his health and human services secretary, Caspar Weinberger (known to most of us as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense in the next decade). They couldn’t quite get together on a final bill (Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was a participant, too), and Nixon’s impeachment troubles and Mills’ own brush with infamy that fall scuttled the whole deal for what would prove to be another 35 years.

They faced the same cabal of protective interests — the insurance industry and parts of the medical establishment — but the spending by the industry then amounted to less than $5 million. To have overcome a propaganda machine willing to spend billions, not just millions — now that is an accomplishment.

Let us in Arkansas be thankful for the huge economic stimulus from the propaganda money but also for the courage of lawmakers to do what is clearly best for the great majority of the citizenry.

TOP STORY >> Proposed new Sherwood library to be discussed

By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer

A temporary sales tax could pay for a new Sherwood Library. Residents and officials will discuss the proposal at a 6:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting at Amy Sanders Library in Sherwood.

Mayor Virginia Hillman says she sees the need for a larger facility. She says an added benefit would be that the police department, which is also cramped for space, could expand into the vacated city-owned building.

“It would be up to the people to support a tax for 18 months – if the people want to embrace it, we’ll do it,” Hillman said.

“The library we have, there is no parking, and there is a waiting list for kids’ programs because we don’t have the facilities for them.”

Hillman added, “The myth is out there that people don’t use libraries anymore, but that is just not true.”

She said that anyone who thinks that is so should go to one of the Central Arkansas Library System branches with a large parking lot.

“Just look at the crowds at the libraries in Jacksonville and Maumelle,” Hillman said.

Alderman Charles Harmon noted, “Libraries are not just about books anymore.” And that is one of the shortcomings of Sherwood’s library, some say.

When the library was built 20 years ago, tools such as computers, the Internet and PowerPoint were not available. Now, many people come to libraries expecting that technology to be available, Hillman said.

But at the Amy Sanders Library, “there is not a place to put it,” Hillman observed at a recent city council meeting.

For people out of work and needing to process a job application, a library with computers for public use provides a critical service, Hillman said.

“Space is the biggest issue,” agreed assistant library manager Matthew Landers.

The library is hampered by lack of space for additional computers as well as meeting and study rooms. There is one meeting room that will accommodate 25 people and no study rooms.

Landers said that the library staff definitely supports building a larger facility. But the word of the public forum on Tuesday, organized by Sherwood residents, came as a surprise to employees there.

“We didn’t know anything about it,” Landers said. “The meeting will be a way to gauge support, to allow the public to say what they’d want – to do it, or that they don’t want it.”

Any new library will not affected by a ruling by the Arkansas Supreme Court last week that the Central Arkansas Library System illegally collected $1.5 million in taxes in 2008 from Little Rock residents, said CALS deputy director Linda Bly.

Little Rock residents in 2007 had voted in favor of the tax. But the court ruled that because of missed deadlines, the collection of the tax should not have commenced when it did.

“The election itself was not in question, but when we could collect the tax,” Bly explained. “Our shortfall is just for a year, so come January next year, we will be collecting that money again.”

TOP STORY >> Sherwood golf course could sell beer, wine

By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer

Beer and wine may be served at the Sherwood municipal golf course when it opens.

Sherwood resident Thomas Reynolds and partner Richard Miller of Maumelle applied for a beer and restaurant permit with the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board on Dec. 21.

The director should make a decision at the board’s Jan. 20 meeting. Anyone wanting to voice an opinion in support or against the permit needs to have it to the board by Jan. 19.

Reynolds said he was approved to lease the golf course’s old bar and grill area after the city published requests for proposals three different times. He’s not sure what his eatery, tentatively called Bunker’s Bistro, will carry or the hours that it will be open, but it should be ready to open along with the golf course sometime in April.

Reynolds said right now the city is doing some sewer work and remodeling that prevents him from starting any work on the bistro. “Once they are through we’ll go in and see what we can do,” he said.

The lease with the city is open ended at this point, Reynolds explained. “It’ll be an experiment. But we are working closely with the city and want to help the golf course as much as possible.”

In the three proposals the city sent out, it asked for all submissions to be in by Nov. 30.

The legal notice stated that the city was “seeking business plan proposals for a restaurant/sports bar establishment in the lower level of the clubhouse facility at North Hills Park. It is anticipated that the restaurant would be open to the general public and not offered just as support to the anticipated golf course.”

The city wanted proposals to include the anticipated theme of the restaurant, a proposed food and beverage menu, history and experience of the entity or individuals submitting the plans and equipment needed. Reynolds admits he’s the “Sherwoodian in the deal and that his partner has the technical food experience.”

Michael Langley of the ABC said it’s not unusual for a city or individual leasing city property to apply for a beer and restaurant permit. “Look at War Memorial and Verizon Arena,” he said.

But to get the permit the individuals, business and location must meet numerous requirements. Reynolds believes his partnership has met all the requirements.

The permit will only allow Reynolds’ facility to sell beer and wine. If Reynolds wants to sell liquor, he will have to get a private- club permit which falls under more stringent requirements.

TOP STORY >> Looking back at July, August, September

COMPILED BY RICK KRON

This is the third in a four-part series looking back at 2009. Here are many of the news stories The Leader covered from July through September.

JULY

• The Cabot High School marching band represented Arkansas in the National Independence Day parade.

This was the second time the high school band had been invited to march in the parade. The band’s previous trip was in 2006.

A caravan of four charter buses took 160 students and 29 adults to Washington for five days and four nights.

Making the trip were students who chose to go who were in 10th, 11th and 12th grades during the 2009 school year. Each student was responsible for paying their own way. The cost was $1,000.

The band played “Patriotic Medley” comprised of “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.”

• Jacksonville officially had a new mayor, Gary Fletcher, as Justice of the Peace Bob Johnson swore in Fletcher in front of about 200 friends, family members and well-wishers at the community center.

Fletcher told the crowd he felt a bit guilty becoming mayor. “The apples are ripe and on the trees for me to just pick and hand to you,” he said, complimenting the work of former mayors Tommy Swaim and James Reid. “They have been great.”

• A $10.7 million contract for the new Joint Education Center outside the air base was awarded to W.G. Yates and Sons Construction of Philadelphia, Miss., to build the new school at the corner of Vandenberg Boulevard and John Harden Drive.

• The Air Force’s contribution is $9.8 million and Jacksonville’s is $5 million, raised by local residents who approved a dedicated tax for the purpose in 2003.

“We used every dime of the federal dollars, what’s left are city dollars,” according to Craig Pierce, chief of military programs branch, Little Rock District Engineers.
The current 46,000-square-foot plan calls for about 30 classrooms and labs.

• The ribbon was cut in July in a dedication ceremony for the newly completed Grand Prairie Bayou Two, Larry W. Sims Water Treatment Facility.

Construction of the plant near Hwy. 31 and Hwy. 321 Spur between Lonoke and Beebe was finished in May. Work began in early 2008. The Grand Prairie Bayou Two water system supplies water to approximately 4,000 customers in northeast Lonoke County and portions of Ward.

• High winds and ice-cube-sized hailstones beat crops like a rented mule around Schafer Road.

In all, 26,000 acres or more of Lonoke County crops were damaged or destroyed in a matter of minutes in a year where farmers already have suffered floods and near-drought conditions, according to Jeff Welch, county extension service chief agent.

While the Schafer Road/Hwy. 31 intersection was the epicenter of the storm, the area affected was about four miles wide and 10.5 miles long from near Furlow all the way to the airport at Carlisle.

• Before new Mayor Fletcher could finish his thoughts about filling his vacant Jacksonville council seat, the council nominated, seconded and approved John Ferrell for the position even though six residents had expressed an interest.

Alderman Terry Sansing abstained, calling the whole affair a slap in the face of the city residents and the new mayor.

“It was unfair to the other five candidates who applied for the position and unfair to the citizens to not have a voice,” he said.

• Little Rock Air Force Base commander Col. Gregory Otey endeared himself to the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce by endorsing the effort for a stand-alone Jacksonville school district and also by seeing off just-retired Mayor Tommy Swaim with a couple of well choreographed audio visual gags.

Otey, who has both of his children in Pulaski County Special School District schools, commended the work of “Daniel (Gray) and some of the folks here,” to improve existing schools and get a Jacksonville district.

• Jacksonville’s interim parks and recreation director Kristen Griggs was officially hired in July to permanently run the department.

Mayor Gary Fletcher surprised Griggs, 27, with the announcement in the guise of a second interview.

Former director George Biggs resigned after city officials learned that he is a convicted felon.

• Bids were opened in July for the construction of Jacksonville’s training facility for the city’s police and fire departments at the former Vertac site off Marshall Road.

Kullander Construction of Little Rock was the low bidder, estimating the cost at $2,259,000, about $1 million less than had been budgeted.

Construction started in August and should be done by May.

• After six months of investigation, Sherwood had received less than 10 percent of the $200,000 siphoned from one of its city checking accounts by a gang of cyber criminals.

Eagle Bank officials made the city aware of the theft in December 2008. State Police and the FBI were then called to investigate.

The Sherwood case is similar to a Kentucky incident where Russian criminals stole $415,000 electronically from county accounts.

City Treasurer Angela Nicholson said nothing had been said earlier publicly because the case was under investigation. She said the city audited all of its other accounts and funds seemed to be missing only out of the one.

She said in July that authorities recovered about $16,000 and the city made changes and added additional safeguards to help prevent such theft from happening again.

It seems the money was stolen electronically over a three-day period last December.

Mayor Virginia Hillman said the stolen funds were placed in at least 20 accounts across the country in amounts less than $10,000.

• A $35,000 economic development infrastructure grant will help Jacksonville jump-start an ambitious proposal to define a Main Street district and turn it into a pedestrian-friendly destination with shops, dining and entertainment, according to city planner Chip McCulley.

The grant is likely to be spent on decorative, energy-efficient street lighting on Main Street east and west of James Street, he said.

State Sen. John Paul Capps helped the city get the grant.

• On July 4, Sherwood’s Steve Perry was named Pops on the River winner after his performance of The Star Spangled Banner.

“It’s taken me 30 years to be an overnight success,” Perry joked. He said he’s always enjoyed singing.

Perry began taking voice lessons at age 18, when a singer at his church encouraged him to get training. He says he now has a range of three octaves. Perry, who sings at the Church at Rock Creek, said he mostly performs Christian music and the National Anthem.

• The APA named The Leader the state’s best large weekly newspaper after it received 17 awards, including first place for best news story, best front page, best special issue, as well as top honors for investigative reporting, news and political column, sports column and sports feature photo.

“Violent end brings pall over subdivision” by Jonathan Feldman and Garrick Feldman won for best news article in a large weekly.

The story described a standoff in August 2008 between the Jacksonville police and a mentally disturbed man in a residence in the Foxwood subdivision who was shooting at neighbors and police. A police sniper later shot the man through a kitchen window.

For the second time, Leader senior staff writer John Hofheimer won for his series of exclusive reports on the housing privatization program at Little Rock Air Force Base. His reporting has received national recognition and led to the dismissal of the previous contractor for failing to build or remodel homes on the base and pay subcontractors.

• The Pulaski County Special School District replaced Deputy Superintendent Beverly Ruthven with former Cabot principal and administrator June Elliott.

Ruthven resigned after she was passed over for the interim superintendent’s job in favor of Rob McGill shortly after the board forced the resignation of then-Superintendent James Sharpe.

“I’ve done all I can do for Pulaski County Special School District. Now I’m looking for other opportunities,” Ruthven said.

Elliott, a Cabot resident, has a long history of teaching and administration in the Cabot district.

Elliott has several certifications, including that of district administrator, and has completed all course work on a PhD. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, and has taught master’s level courses at Arkansas State University.

• The South Bend Volunteer Fire Department purchased two new water-tanker trucks. The trucks enable the department to better serve the areas in their district that are not connected to city water.

The department is responsible for protecting rural Lonoke County from Jacksonville city limits to Basankan Road (Gun Club Road) between Cabot and Graham Road. New equipment is always a cause for celebration at a department with such a huge territory to protect.

About a third of the South Bend district uses well water. In those areas, the firefighters do not have access to fire hydrants.

The new trucks carry 1,850 gallons of water and can pump 375 gallons per minute.

• “If I’m going to jail, then this is worth it,” Alderman Bob Stroud said as he made a motion that Jacksonville Advertising and Promotion use $100,000 to help the city get its own school district.

At the request of the nonprofit group, Jacksonville Education Foundation, the commission voted unanimously to transfer the money to the city’s public facilities board, which could then use it for the new district.

Former state Rep. Will Bond, an attorney, speaking for the foundation, told the commission that no one would go to jail but he couldn’t promise there wouldn’t be a lawsuit.

“There is no better promotion for the city than getting its own school district,” said Bond.

• Lisa Otey, wife of Little Rock Air Force Base commander Col. Gregory Otey, told school officials and others that she had pulled two of her three children out of Pulaski County Special School District since the family arrived in January, calling the facilities “no better than schools in Eastern Europe—in East Germany before the wall fell down.”

Otey was one of about 20 people who took advantage of a town meeting at Bayou Meto Elementary School to tell district officials their thoughts on whether or not those in that attendance zone would prefer to continue their affiliation with PCSSD, to affiliate with the proposed—but not inevitable—Jacksonville district or to split that affiliation down the length of state Hwy. 107.

District boundaries had been pretty well agreed-upon with the exception of the Bayou Meto attendance zone.

• Four C-130s returning to the Little Rock Air Force Base from McChord AFB, Wash., were loaded down with trophies that Team

Little Rock won during the weeklong air rodeo competition.

Team Little Rock came home with two best overall awards and seven C-130 awards. The 19th Airlift Wing won best overall C-130 team and best overall aerial port team in the rodeo competition.

The wing’s aerial port crew won for the best C-130 engine running off-load team and the best C-130 in-transit visibility team.

Team Little Rock maintenance team picked up three awards. The best C-130 maintenance team award went to the 19th Airlift Wing, J-model. They also brought home the best C-130 pre-flight team.

The best C-130 post-flight team was the 314th Airlift Wing, H-model.

Another award the 19th Airlift Wing won was best C-130 short field landing crew. The 314th was also recognized for having the best back-landing combat off-load crew.

• Nearly 12 inches of rain fell in July, with six days having rainfall of more than an inch. All the rain also kept the temperatures down for most of the month, making July the coolest July since 1968, according to the National Weather Service.

The six days with an inch or more of rain and three days with two or more inches were record setters.

Since Jan. 1, the area had seen 43.05 inches of rain, based on NWS records, and 13.38 inches above the norm. Just since June 1 the area had 15.27 inches of rain, close to eight inches above the norm.

AUGUST

• In a five-and-a-half-hour special meeting, the Pulaski County Special School District board approved the boundaries for a proposed Jacksonville school district that will include the Bayou Meto attendance zone, the city of Jacksonville and a smaller unincorporated area that runs east along Military Road into Lonoke County.

The board also voted to cease all negotiation on the topic of Jacksonville’s detachment from PCSSD until the federal district court declares the district unitary—that is, desegregated.

“We just got hosed,” said Daniel Gray, a member of the Jacksonville Education Foundation.

“They just shut us down,” Gray said. “They don’t want to talk to us ever—not until the district achieves unitary status. Once we’re unitary, there’s no need to even talk to them,” Gray said. “That’s why working diligently and in good faith is important.”

• Cabot Junior High North approached completion. In mid-August teachers were allowed inside the school to begin setting up their rooms for the start of the school year. The new $13.5 million, two-story, 127,282-square-foot building replaces the junior high that burned down in 2006. Three years since the fire, teachers have been holding classes in portable classrooms and in buildings at the high school campus.

• Excessive summer rain forced the new Lighthouse Academy charter school to open Aug. 17 in Second Baptist Church on North James Street instead of its new $4 million facility off North First Street.

• The Jacksonville City Council agreed to chip in $150,000 if the parks department gets a 50/50 state grant to add 16 acres to Dupree Park. The parks department wants to buy and develop the acreage just to the east of the park’s playground.

Once the land is purchased, plans call for the department to move the skate park to that location and expand it for the skateboarders. A nature trail and other improvements including a special-needs ball field are also planned.

• Beebe’s new 91,000-square-foot, $10 million Early Childhood Center was opened in August on South Holly and will house up to 600 students.

Much of the structure, including the cafeteria, indoor play area and library, is set on the concrete slab of a defunct sewing factory.

The facility has art and music rooms, a 3,000-square-foot tornado shelter, a stage in the cafeteria and a smart board in every classroom. It was built with small children in mind, down to the low water fountains and toilets.

The state paid $6.3 million for the new facility, leaving the school district to pay $3.7 million by restructuring bonds instead of raising taxes.

• Pulaski County Special School District board member Bill Vasquez of Jacksonville, calling himself the man of the hour, led the charge Tuesday night against reviving talks with the city on its own district.

By a 4-3 vote, the board opted not to repeal its vote from the last meeting and reopen negotiations on the separation of the proposed Jacksonville school district. “The school buildings in Jacksonville belong to PCSSD. The area belongs to PCSSD, and the decision and ability to separate belongs to PCSSD,” he said.

Vasquez added that there’s also nothing in the law that prevents PCSSD from handling everything on its own.

• Maj. Gen. Kip L. Self, commander of the Air Force Expeditionary Center, Air Mobility Command, at Fort Dix, N.J., was promoted to director of operational planning, policy and strategy, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, at the Pentagon’s Air Force headquarters in Washington. Self served as commander of the 314th Airlift Wing and was installation commander at Little Rock Air Force Base from September 2005 to May 2007.

• Funding problems continued for the 15-year-old Lonoke White Water Project that is supposed to connect communities in the central part of the state to Greer’s Ferry Lake. Project participants were told that Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, which was expected to distribute the federal loan money to pay for much of the project, would not bend the rules to make it happen.

The Lonoke White Public Water Authority, which plans to build the project, can’t borrow money because it has no customers of its own. Only existing systems with existing customers are eligible. And the plan to take on someone else’s customers in name only is not acceptable. The only way the project can get funding is if some of the larger water providers in the group agree to take on the responsibility of borrowing the money.

The $45 million project is for long-term state water planning and not in response to an existing public health problem, a requirement to receive Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) money.

• What two fishermen thought might be a body in Paradise Park lake turned out to be a colony of aquatic animals that is a distant relative to coral and jellyfish.

Jacksonville Police Capt. Charlie Jenkins said the police got a call about a possible body and quickly responded and blocked off the park. “It didn’t take us long to determine it was not a human body, but we didn’t know what it was,” he said.

The police, with help from the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, got the “body” out of the water, took pictures and sent them to the Arkansas Game and Fish.

Mark Oliver, a fisheries biologist, verified that the ”body” was a freshwater bryozoan. “They are pretty abundant in Arkansas,” Oliver said, “and are usually found in our big lakes.” The biologist said bryozoans run in size from an inch or so up to many feet in size. “This one was about the size of a basketball,” Oliver said.

• “No kids should go to school in these type of conditions,” said Tim Clark, president of the Pulaski County Special School District Board as he toured Jacksonville Elementary School in August with principal Sonia Whitfield, Mayor Gary Fletcher and Jim Durham, the city’s director of administration. Fletcher had invited the school board president to see for himself how wretched conditions were at the 44-year-old school.

Clark called interim Super-intendent Rob McGill, who had taught at Jacksonville Elementary School, to see the problems for himself: Shower curtains and bed sheets separating classrooms, dangerous electrical outlets and protruding objects sticking out of floors, where youngsters could easily trip. Clark was upset at the appalling conditions at the school. “Is this the worst school in Jacksonville?” he asked.

“The middle school is much worse,” Durham told him.

• Calling the offer the most generous any state has made in ending a desegregation agreement, state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel proposed phasing out the state’s desegregation funding to the tune of $392 million over seven years.

In letters sent to attorneys for Pulaski County Special School District, Little Rock School District and North Little Rock School District, McDaniel wrote that the state currently subsidizes $68.8 million a year as part of the desegregation agreement.

• A Lonoke County jury found an Austin motorcyclist guilty of negligent homicide and second-degree battery in connection with the death of a Cabot man and injury to his wife as the couple walked from a Cabot football game during halftime September 2008.

The jury recommended and imposed the maximum sentence upon Larry Dalhaus, 40.

Dalhaus was sentenced to 10 years for the homicide with a $10,000 fine and three years and $10,000 for the battery. The sentences will run consecutively.

Jeff and Rebecca Marvin, Cabot residents, were among a group of pedestrians in the crosswalk leaving the game when Dalhaus struck them. He was driving east on Hwy. 38 and passed vehicles on the left that had stopped in the northbound lane waiting for pedestrians to cross.

SEPTEMBER

• “We got a lot of good news in the last few days,” Lonoke businessman Bill Ryker said of a second Lonoke I-40 interchange tying Hwy. 89 on the west side of town to the interstate.

“The Federal Highway Administration said they agree with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department on the choice of “Alternative 1” and now its time for the final plans and construction, he said.

Cong. Marion Berry joined Arkansas senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor in getting $5.4 million for engineering, right of way and some construction, Ryker said, but now the project needs about another $4 million to complete.

• For all the salacious detail of what her superior officer told Officer Beverly Hughes he dreamt about her, Hughes’ Sherwood Civil Service Commission appeal of her termination ultimately was not about the sexual harassment to which she was subjected, but about whether or not she refused to answer one particular question during a subsequent polygraph exam. The hearing stretched over several sessions, and in the end, Hughes got her job back, along with a financial settlement.

• Cabot was the first city mentioned as a possible location for a new fairground after the state fair board ran an ad in late June asking for proposals from cities and private landowners. But it was removed from the running soon after city officials expressed interest.

Mayor Eddie Joe Williams initially said in June that the economic impact to the area would make relocating the fair to Cabot a worthwhile venture. He had been contacted several weeks earlier about Cabot’s interest in becoming the new home for the state fair and he believed Cabot was interested.

But Williams’ comments were before anyone looked into the prospect further. Karen Davis, the mayor’s operations director, said later that the short answer to whether Cabot would submit a proposal by the Sept. 15 deadline was “no.”

Davis said the city’s interpretation of the request for proposals is that the board is looking for donated land complete with infrastructure. And that would be far too costly for Cabot to even consider.

• The Jacksonville branch of the NAACP sent a letter to Pulaski County Special School District Board President Tim Clark charging racial bias in the disciplining of teachers, among other complaints.

In his letter, R.L. Aaron, chairman of legal redress for the group, charged that Clark “allowed (Teachers’ Union President Marty Nix) to blatantly direct comments toward us as the NAACP without objection,” that President Barack Obama was referred to disrespectfully as “Obama” and that parent Bonnie McDonald was “silenced” when she charged the district with racism and complained that the president’s speech to school children was not mandatory and was aired in only a handful of PCSSD schools.

• In September the F-105 Thunder Chief on display on the south side of the Jacksonville Museum of Military History was dedicated and at the same time museum officials expressed hope that the fighter would be joined by a C-130 in 2010. Warren Dupree, of the museum, said that there is a C-130 at Little Rock Air Force Base with the museum’s name on it if Lockheed-Martin will commit to the funding. “We’ve sent the letters of request to them and should know by next year,” Dupree said.

• Scott Landrum, chief executive officer of North Metro Medical Center, resigned. Family obligations following the death of Landrum’s father necessitated his resignation, hospital officials said. Landrum served as administrator of the hospital since 2007. His resignation was effective immediately.

Hospital board chairman Mike Wilson said that he and the board were pleased with what Landrum accomplished to lessen the hospital’s financial difficulties. “He did what we think is an excellent job, and he leaves with the best wishes from the board.”
Don Cameron, the chief operating officer for Allegiance Health Management, which manages the hospital, has served as CEO until a permanent hire is found.

• Two Jacksonville police officers were honored by the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police as the 2009 Police Officer of the Year. Sgt. Brett Hibbs and officer John Alberson were recognized during the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police 42nd annual convention banquet at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs.

The officers were selected for the award from a group of candidates from other law enforcement agencies around the statE.

Jacksonville Police Chief Gary Sipes nominated Hibbs and Alberson for the award.

He said the officers were nominated for their actions during the five-hour standoff in the Foxwood neighborhood in August 2008.

• The Cabot Medical Clinic changed ownership. The board of directors for North Metro Medical Center, then-owner of the clinic building at 2037 W. Main St., accepted a purchase offer from the physicians group that practices at the Cabot location. The board unanimously voted in favor of accepting $1.44 million for the building.

• Sherwood renamed the old North Hills golf course property “The Greens at North Hills.” The city council unanimously approved a resolution renaming the property, which stated that the “best use of the property for the benefit of our citizens is a golf course,” and that the new name “conveys the beauty of the facility as well as conveys that a special place has been created in the city’s park system for the benefit of all.”

• September 28 was the first day for lottery ticket sales in Arkansas and lottery fever had local players scratching like mad when the state scholarship lottery tickets went on sale.

Many people who won money from the scratch-off tickets turned right around and put their winnings towards the purchase of additional lottery tickets.