By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Everything is still going according to game plan for Harding Academy as they prepare for a Tuesday scrimmage at Jessieville. The third week of practice went off without a hitch for the Wildcats, as finishing touches were the primary focus. With all but one position with a definite starter in place, Harding Academy spent week three smoothing out the few rough edges.
Wildcats coach Tommy Shoemaker, now in his 11th year at Harding Academy, says the main focus of the coaching staff has been to make sure there are no loose ends before the trip to Jessieville.
“Mainly, we’ve been trying to take a few more looks at everyone we’re going to have in the scrimmage next week,” Shoemaker said. “Really, we’re polishing up and making sure that everyone knows where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing. We’ll know a lot more after the scrimmage. We will be able to figure out how much everyone knows.”
With a loaded team in a conference full of rebuilding squads, the Wildcats are poised to have an even easier run through the 2-3A Conference than last year’s undefeated regular-season team. Above anything else this season, Shoemaker wants his kids to stay healthy during the early stages of the season. “I feel good about it,” Shoemaker said. “There will always be some concerns after the scrimmage that we will have to fix, but for the most part, I feel like we’re in pretty good shape and ready to go. Obviously, you don’t want to get anybody hurt, but it will be different going up against someone else.”
The Thursday practice started out with individual drills. Aside from about six linemen working on blocking drills, the rest of the 37 players lined up for passing drills.
Starting junior quarterback Matt Lincoln and backup Seth Keese both looked good in the practice, airing out a number of long passes with pretty consistent accuracy and travel.
The receivers also had a good workout on Thursday, as all receivers and running backs took turns running post routes and clearout patterns during the three-and-a-half hour workout. There were few drops in the first 30 minutes of practice, nearly all of which were products of receivers not securing the ball before running.
Most of the starting positions have been settled with the exception of center, in which sophomores Matt Calhoun and Brandon Kutcher are still fighting for the anchor position.
Shoemaker says that decision may not be made until after next week’s scrimmage.
The Tuesday scrimmage at Jessieville precedes the season opener at Little Rock Christian.
The Wildcats started off the season with a win over the Warriors last year after a late fumble recovery in Christian territory that allowed a last minute touchdown by Harding Academy.
The momentum from that win seemed to carry over for the remainder of the year, a feat that Shoemaker and the Wildcats hope to repeat once again at the end of this month.
Monday, August 20, 2007
SPORTS >>Red Devil volleyball athletes dedicated
By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
The first three weeks of summer volleyball practice have generated much progress for the Jacksonville Lady Red Devils. There are three returning seniors, but it’s the juniors who make up the core of this year’s team. Senior captains Brittany Harrison, Amber Powlaski and Vanessa Brown provide the on-the-court leadership for the Lady Red Devils, along with second-year coach Melissa Reeves.
Last year was a difficult one for Jacksonville, with no conference wins after losing a number of seniors throughout the season. Reeves says there is a lot more dedication from the team in summer workouts this time around.
“We were very young last year,” Reeves said. “We had a whole bunch of sophomores, three juniors and only one senior. It’s the sophomores who are stepping up now as juniors. Those seniors that got a lot of playing time last year as juniors are really coming on strong.”
There are 18 players on the squad, including the three seniors. Also working in Jacksonville’s favor this year is the schedule, with seven home games after last year’s treacherous stint of nine straight road games. The players seemed to have put the struggles of last season behind them, and have kept excitement high at the practices.
“They are a great bunch of kids,” Reeves said. “They listen, they work hard, and they do what you ask them to do. There has been a lot of enthusiasm. We didn’t win any conference games last year, but I hope for us to make a run in there at some point this year. Our hitters have grown over the summer. The first week we were a little shaky, but they got better last week. They have done much better this week.”
Along with the seniors, the Lady Red Devils are getting help from athletes from other sports, including junior basketball standout Tyra Terry, who also started last year, and softball players Raven Pickett and Paula Burr. Jacksonville also picked up a player from Cabot, 6’0” sophomore Jessica Lanier will add a good dose of size to the Lady Red Devils’ lineup. ”
The seniors are enthusiastic about the upcoming season. Harrison, Powlaski and Brown talked to The Leader about their progress during the summer.
“It’s been going good,” Harrison said. “We’ve been working hard, helping the juniors and sophomores work with each other. We have a pretty good squad. Everyone is learning how to move on the floor and cover.” Back row player Powlaski says the team should have more hitting strength this season.
“I think we have more hitters than we did last year,” Powlaski said. “That should make us more competitive.”
Brown, along with Harrison, is a hitter for Jacksonville. Brown says the team has done well despite the sweltering summer heat.
“I hope that we can win more games this year,” Brown said. “Summer practices have gone well, but it’s been tough also. It’s been really hot.” Brown also laid out a typical day at practice for the Lady Red Devils, which begins with arm stretches before going into hitting drills. From there, they split into groups of three to practice sets and kills before a brief water break. After the break, it’s on to team offense and defense practice for the final half of practice.
The Lady Red Devils will start their season on Tuesday with a match against Little Rock Hall at the Devils Den.
Leader sportswriter
The first three weeks of summer volleyball practice have generated much progress for the Jacksonville Lady Red Devils. There are three returning seniors, but it’s the juniors who make up the core of this year’s team. Senior captains Brittany Harrison, Amber Powlaski and Vanessa Brown provide the on-the-court leadership for the Lady Red Devils, along with second-year coach Melissa Reeves.
Last year was a difficult one for Jacksonville, with no conference wins after losing a number of seniors throughout the season. Reeves says there is a lot more dedication from the team in summer workouts this time around.
“We were very young last year,” Reeves said. “We had a whole bunch of sophomores, three juniors and only one senior. It’s the sophomores who are stepping up now as juniors. Those seniors that got a lot of playing time last year as juniors are really coming on strong.”
There are 18 players on the squad, including the three seniors. Also working in Jacksonville’s favor this year is the schedule, with seven home games after last year’s treacherous stint of nine straight road games. The players seemed to have put the struggles of last season behind them, and have kept excitement high at the practices.
“They are a great bunch of kids,” Reeves said. “They listen, they work hard, and they do what you ask them to do. There has been a lot of enthusiasm. We didn’t win any conference games last year, but I hope for us to make a run in there at some point this year. Our hitters have grown over the summer. The first week we were a little shaky, but they got better last week. They have done much better this week.”
Along with the seniors, the Lady Red Devils are getting help from athletes from other sports, including junior basketball standout Tyra Terry, who also started last year, and softball players Raven Pickett and Paula Burr. Jacksonville also picked up a player from Cabot, 6’0” sophomore Jessica Lanier will add a good dose of size to the Lady Red Devils’ lineup. ”
The seniors are enthusiastic about the upcoming season. Harrison, Powlaski and Brown talked to The Leader about their progress during the summer.
“It’s been going good,” Harrison said. “We’ve been working hard, helping the juniors and sophomores work with each other. We have a pretty good squad. Everyone is learning how to move on the floor and cover.” Back row player Powlaski says the team should have more hitting strength this season.
“I think we have more hitters than we did last year,” Powlaski said. “That should make us more competitive.”
Brown, along with Harrison, is a hitter for Jacksonville. Brown says the team has done well despite the sweltering summer heat.
“I hope that we can win more games this year,” Brown said. “Summer practices have gone well, but it’s been tough also. It’s been really hot.” Brown also laid out a typical day at practice for the Lady Red Devils, which begins with arm stretches before going into hitting drills. From there, they split into groups of three to practice sets and kills before a brief water break. After the break, it’s on to team offense and defense practice for the final half of practice.
The Lady Red Devils will start their season on Tuesday with a match against Little Rock Hall at the Devils Den.
SPORTS >>Energy still high at JHS
By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
Like most other teams, the Jacksonville Red Devils trimmed their preseason regimen down to one practice per day this week. The change was mostly due to teachers getting ready for the school year that begins Monday. Jacksonville coach Mark Whatley says the two-a-day grind that kicked off in late July had not worn down the players like it has in years past.
“They fought through all that pretty good,” Whatley said. The effort has been there all summer. I can’t complain about that. We’re going to have to do better with technique than we are right now, but I’ve never had any problems with the effort these guys have given.”
Jacksonville is faced with several players stepping into positions that had been held by multiple-year starters. The process of learning those positions is still underway for the Red Devils, but it’s a process that is showing progress.
“We’re going to have to be a very good technique football team,” Whatley said.
They stated that this year’s team may not have quite the talent level of last year’s, but that’s not the main reason for stressing technique this week.
The main thing is the league you play in,” Whatley said. “You’ve got to trust your technique first and then play football. That’s football 101 right there. You can’t neglect that and expect to be successful.”
The Red Devils clearly exhibited the effort Whatley praised during kick off and kick-off return skeleton drills. Players went full speed up and down the field in those drills, led by lead returner Stanley Appleby.
“Stanley is a unique athlete in that he goes full speed every play,” Whatley said. “We can be running a drill with him and wideout where he’ll know he’s not getting the ball, and he’s going all out. If you had 11 or 12 of like him, you’d have the answer to a lot of problems.”
Whatley and the Red Devil coaching staff are still looking for more interior players to show themselves worthy of a starting spot. The head Devil has stated since two-a-days began that he has enough linemen to have a great unit on one side of the ball or the other, but needs depth to give those players a rest.
Not as many have stepped up yet as he had hoped, but he’s not resigned yet to playing several linemen both ways.
“We still have time,” Whatley said. “The good thing is, and the main reason we haven’t settled on playing a bunch both ways, is that the kids have not settled for being second team. They’re still out there busting their butts trying to earn that playing time, and trying to earn that label as starter. They just haven’t accepted second team yet and that’s a great thing to see.”
Jacksonville has not yet settled on a place kicker. The lack of someone to kick extra points has been a problem for Jacksonville for a couple of years. Several players were given opportunities to win the job this week, but no one has yet been given the duties.
“The biggest thing about kicking extra points is that it has to be important to you,” Whatley said. “I have a pretty good idea of who it’s going to come down to, but we haven’t made the final decision yet.”
Jacksonville’s annual Red-White game is tonight. The Booster Club cookout begins at 5:30. The freshmen team will take the field at 7 p.m. with the varsity following at 8 p.m.
Leader sports editor
Like most other teams, the Jacksonville Red Devils trimmed their preseason regimen down to one practice per day this week. The change was mostly due to teachers getting ready for the school year that begins Monday. Jacksonville coach Mark Whatley says the two-a-day grind that kicked off in late July had not worn down the players like it has in years past.
“They fought through all that pretty good,” Whatley said. The effort has been there all summer. I can’t complain about that. We’re going to have to do better with technique than we are right now, but I’ve never had any problems with the effort these guys have given.”
Jacksonville is faced with several players stepping into positions that had been held by multiple-year starters. The process of learning those positions is still underway for the Red Devils, but it’s a process that is showing progress.
“We’re going to have to be a very good technique football team,” Whatley said.
They stated that this year’s team may not have quite the talent level of last year’s, but that’s not the main reason for stressing technique this week.
The main thing is the league you play in,” Whatley said. “You’ve got to trust your technique first and then play football. That’s football 101 right there. You can’t neglect that and expect to be successful.”
The Red Devils clearly exhibited the effort Whatley praised during kick off and kick-off return skeleton drills. Players went full speed up and down the field in those drills, led by lead returner Stanley Appleby.
“Stanley is a unique athlete in that he goes full speed every play,” Whatley said. “We can be running a drill with him and wideout where he’ll know he’s not getting the ball, and he’s going all out. If you had 11 or 12 of like him, you’d have the answer to a lot of problems.”
Whatley and the Red Devil coaching staff are still looking for more interior players to show themselves worthy of a starting spot. The head Devil has stated since two-a-days began that he has enough linemen to have a great unit on one side of the ball or the other, but needs depth to give those players a rest.
Not as many have stepped up yet as he had hoped, but he’s not resigned yet to playing several linemen both ways.
“We still have time,” Whatley said. “The good thing is, and the main reason we haven’t settled on playing a bunch both ways, is that the kids have not settled for being second team. They’re still out there busting their butts trying to earn that playing time, and trying to earn that label as starter. They just haven’t accepted second team yet and that’s a great thing to see.”
Jacksonville has not yet settled on a place kicker. The lack of someone to kick extra points has been a problem for Jacksonville for a couple of years. Several players were given opportunities to win the job this week, but no one has yet been given the duties.
“The biggest thing about kicking extra points is that it has to be important to you,” Whatley said. “I have a pretty good idea of who it’s going to come down to, but we haven’t made the final decision yet.”
Jacksonville’s annual Red-White game is tonight. The Booster Club cookout begins at 5:30. The freshmen team will take the field at 7 p.m. with the varsity following at 8 p.m.
EDITORIALS>>Huck must review record
One of our encyclopedic services is political advice to Arkansas sons and daughters, an obligation that we take especially seriously when they gambol upon the national stage. On the chance that Mike Huckabee’s second-place showing in the Iowa Straw Poll last week has catapulted him into the ranks of serious candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, we offer some earnest counsel.
He needs to straighten out some untruths about his record as Arkansas governor before the press scavengers and the opposition researchers for Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback start combing the archives.
Recall what happened to Al Gore in 2000. Republican op teams, led by our own Tim Griffin, combed through stories and records looking for conflicts in Gore’s public statements and leaked them to the media. One actually was an untruth, that he had personally attended a disaster program in Texas, but the rest were distortions of what Gore had actually said.
Nevertheless, the hammering developed an image of Gore as a serial liar and exaggerator that he could not shake. We don’t want that to happen to our former governor, and the best way to avoid it is to come forward now, voluntarily, to correct his public misstatements. Many are about his record on taxing and spending in his 10 ½ years as governor.
This one, for instance: The Iowa papers are full of claims by Huckabee that he never raised motor fuel taxes in Arkansas. “Eighty percent of the people of my state voted to do it,” he was quoted in one newspaper as saying last week. A letter to all the television station managers in Iowa made the same claim, that voters at a statewide referendum, not he, raised diesel and gasoline taxes and that defying the voters’ will would have violated his oath of office.
But that never happened. The legislature passed Huckabee’s highway program, which included hikes in gasoline and diesel taxes, and he signed it into law. Voters never got a chance to vote on those taxes. They were allowed to vote whether to apply those taxes on a pay-as-you-go program or to borrow $575 million and build roads sooner. Anyone can look up the law, the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999, Act 1027, and see that the taxes were never subjected to a vote and that they were collected regardless of what happened on the bond election.
He implies that a one-eighth of 1 percent sales tax for the Game and Fish Commission and state parks was imposed by the people and that he had nothing to do with it. Anyone with a computer can check the newspaper archives in October 1996 and read about the governor’s four-day journey in his bass boat down the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Dumas to urge voters to go vote for his conservation tax, which was imposed by a constitutional amendment. If ever a tax belonged to a single individual, it was the conservation sales tax of 1996. He touted it as one of his greatest accomplishments.
He ought to correct the record also about the governor being responsible for only a small part of the appropriation of general and special revenues. (He had nothing to do with the 65 percent increase in state spending on his watch, he said.) In truth, the governor submits a budget for every single state agency and has the veto power if the legislature raises his budgets heedlessly. He never did it. And he needs to explain that he did not force 94 tax cuts through the legislature, and that the big one that he has bragged about, the omnibus income tax law of 1997, was the proposal of his predecessor, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, and it was the Democratic tax bill, not his. That record is nothing to be ashamed of. We commiserate with the governor’s dilemma. Iowa Republicans are supposed to be especially hostile to taxes. The real shame will be to be proved to have been lying. Already, the rich boys at the Club for Growth are pestering him about it, but there is time to come clean honorably before Mitt Romney or Sam Brownback or The New York Times begin brandishing the record. He won’t be able to live it down with a thousand homespun jokes.
While he’s at it, he might want to correct the misstatements in TV interviews about not wanting Wayne Dumond released from prison so that he could kill.
Truth and candor, he will discover, are mighty political weapons if he chooses to wield them. They would separate him from the rest of the crowd in this campaign.
He needs to straighten out some untruths about his record as Arkansas governor before the press scavengers and the opposition researchers for Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback start combing the archives.
Recall what happened to Al Gore in 2000. Republican op teams, led by our own Tim Griffin, combed through stories and records looking for conflicts in Gore’s public statements and leaked them to the media. One actually was an untruth, that he had personally attended a disaster program in Texas, but the rest were distortions of what Gore had actually said.
Nevertheless, the hammering developed an image of Gore as a serial liar and exaggerator that he could not shake. We don’t want that to happen to our former governor, and the best way to avoid it is to come forward now, voluntarily, to correct his public misstatements. Many are about his record on taxing and spending in his 10 ½ years as governor.
This one, for instance: The Iowa papers are full of claims by Huckabee that he never raised motor fuel taxes in Arkansas. “Eighty percent of the people of my state voted to do it,” he was quoted in one newspaper as saying last week. A letter to all the television station managers in Iowa made the same claim, that voters at a statewide referendum, not he, raised diesel and gasoline taxes and that defying the voters’ will would have violated his oath of office.
But that never happened. The legislature passed Huckabee’s highway program, which included hikes in gasoline and diesel taxes, and he signed it into law. Voters never got a chance to vote on those taxes. They were allowed to vote whether to apply those taxes on a pay-as-you-go program or to borrow $575 million and build roads sooner. Anyone can look up the law, the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999, Act 1027, and see that the taxes were never subjected to a vote and that they were collected regardless of what happened on the bond election.
He implies that a one-eighth of 1 percent sales tax for the Game and Fish Commission and state parks was imposed by the people and that he had nothing to do with it. Anyone with a computer can check the newspaper archives in October 1996 and read about the governor’s four-day journey in his bass boat down the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Dumas to urge voters to go vote for his conservation tax, which was imposed by a constitutional amendment. If ever a tax belonged to a single individual, it was the conservation sales tax of 1996. He touted it as one of his greatest accomplishments.
He ought to correct the record also about the governor being responsible for only a small part of the appropriation of general and special revenues. (He had nothing to do with the 65 percent increase in state spending on his watch, he said.) In truth, the governor submits a budget for every single state agency and has the veto power if the legislature raises his budgets heedlessly. He never did it. And he needs to explain that he did not force 94 tax cuts through the legislature, and that the big one that he has bragged about, the omnibus income tax law of 1997, was the proposal of his predecessor, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, and it was the Democratic tax bill, not his. That record is nothing to be ashamed of. We commiserate with the governor’s dilemma. Iowa Republicans are supposed to be especially hostile to taxes. The real shame will be to be proved to have been lying. Already, the rich boys at the Club for Growth are pestering him about it, but there is time to come clean honorably before Mitt Romney or Sam Brownback or The New York Times begin brandishing the record. He won’t be able to live it down with a thousand homespun jokes.
While he’s at it, he might want to correct the misstatements in TV interviews about not wanting Wayne Dumond released from prison so that he could kill.
Truth and candor, he will discover, are mighty political weapons if he chooses to wield them. They would separate him from the rest of the crowd in this campaign.
OBITUARIES >> 08-18-07
Lucile Price
Lucile Price, 93, of London, died August 16 at Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center. She was born Aug. 22, 1913, at London to William Henry and Mina Victoria Hon Becker.
She was a member of West Side Church of Christ. For the past two years Lucile had lived in Stella Manor Nursing Center. In addition to her parents she was preceded in death by her husband, James Burris Price; two brothers, Henry Becker and Dwain Price; a sister, Nadine Dale; and a grandson, Jim Price.
Survivors include two sons, Darwin and wife Glennette Price of London, and Larry Gwyn Price and wife Nancy of Jacksonville; a daughter, Laura and husband Jerry Smith of Monticello; a brother, Joe and wife Ruth Ellen Becker of Russellville.
Also surviving her are four grandsons, Randy and wife Olga Price of Kokomo, In., Tad and wife Brenda Price of Jacksonville, Jerry and wife Stephanie Price of Cabot, and Dr. J. Scott Smith and wife Celena of Searcy; three granddaughters, Joni and husband Mike Kozak of London, Marilee Rodefer of Jacksonville, and Tracy and husband David Roberts of Southlake, Texas; six great-grandsons, David Price of Kokomo, Ind., Trent Roberts, Turner Roberts, Connor Whitted of London, Trey Price of Jacksonville, and Jackson Price of Cabot; seven great-granddaughters, Kaylan Whitted, Lisa Goodman, Mikki Rodefer, Tori Roberts, Sydney Smith, Gentry Smith, and Jaclyn Price; and three great-great-grandchildren, Bailey Jackson, Wyatt Jackson, and Tristen Seiter.
Funeral will be at 2 p.m., Saturday, August 18 at Shinn Chapel with Mr. Dan Lightfoot and Mr. Bruce Grice officiating. Burial will be in Price Cemetery near London.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the West Side Church of Christ, 2300 W. C Street, Russellville, Ark. 72801.
Billy Floyd
Billy Roy Floyd, 68, of Searcy passed away at White County Medical Center Aug. 10. He was born May 10, 1939. He was preceded in death by his parents, Roy “Bud” and Estelle Floyd.
At 18 years of age, he married his high school sweetheart, Sandra Sue Harrison. Together for 48 years, Billy and Sandra had three children, Tina, Ricky and Randy.
Billy’s life example of stability led each of his kids to currently be married for 25 years (Tina to Robert Hudgins), 23 years (Ricky to Kim Stark), and 18 years (Randy to Lu Anne Graves). Each of these couples have three children, giving Billy nine grandchildren; Christina Hudgins, Scott Hudgins, Michael Hudgins, Audra Floyd, Austin Floyd, Abby Floyd, Madeline Floyd, Jacob Floyd and Joshua Floyd.
He attended Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Starting out early as a route driver for Coca-Cola Bottling Company, he progressed to various senior management positions concluding a 35-year career with Coca-Cola. In 1970, Billy completed his executive management certification at Harvard Business School.
Billy and Sandra left Searcy in 1986 with Coca-Cola, living in Little Rock then Shreveport, La., before returning to Searcy in 1996. Not a person for retirement, Billy worked for Yarnell’s Ice Cream for more than five years as a consultant. He concluded his career owning and operating a successful motorsport business, Searcy Yamaha Suzuki Kawasaki Polaris Sales for over seven years.
He was also on various bank boards with First Community Bank. Billy was successful in the various aspects he pursued and will be remembered by the many employees that worked for him as a great leader who cared about them and their families’ well being.
During his life he also was a Sunday school teacher and an ordained deacon of the Baptist faith. Billy was president of several groups, including Sidney Deener PTA, Jaycees, Kiwanis Club, Whitewood Shrine Club and the chamber of commerce.
In 1978 he was named citizen of the year. He was involved with 4-H clubs because he showed cattle as a young 4-H member.
Funeral service was Aug. 13 at First Baptist Church in Searcy with Brother David Crouch and Dr. Dennis Bennett officiating.
Entombment will be at the mausoleum at the Oaklawn Memorial Gardens. Arrangements were by Powell Funeral Home.
Lucile Price, 93, of London, died August 16 at Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center. She was born Aug. 22, 1913, at London to William Henry and Mina Victoria Hon Becker.
She was a member of West Side Church of Christ. For the past two years Lucile had lived in Stella Manor Nursing Center. In addition to her parents she was preceded in death by her husband, James Burris Price; two brothers, Henry Becker and Dwain Price; a sister, Nadine Dale; and a grandson, Jim Price.
Survivors include two sons, Darwin and wife Glennette Price of London, and Larry Gwyn Price and wife Nancy of Jacksonville; a daughter, Laura and husband Jerry Smith of Monticello; a brother, Joe and wife Ruth Ellen Becker of Russellville.
Also surviving her are four grandsons, Randy and wife Olga Price of Kokomo, In., Tad and wife Brenda Price of Jacksonville, Jerry and wife Stephanie Price of Cabot, and Dr. J. Scott Smith and wife Celena of Searcy; three granddaughters, Joni and husband Mike Kozak of London, Marilee Rodefer of Jacksonville, and Tracy and husband David Roberts of Southlake, Texas; six great-grandsons, David Price of Kokomo, Ind., Trent Roberts, Turner Roberts, Connor Whitted of London, Trey Price of Jacksonville, and Jackson Price of Cabot; seven great-granddaughters, Kaylan Whitted, Lisa Goodman, Mikki Rodefer, Tori Roberts, Sydney Smith, Gentry Smith, and Jaclyn Price; and three great-great-grandchildren, Bailey Jackson, Wyatt Jackson, and Tristen Seiter.
Funeral will be at 2 p.m., Saturday, August 18 at Shinn Chapel with Mr. Dan Lightfoot and Mr. Bruce Grice officiating. Burial will be in Price Cemetery near London.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the West Side Church of Christ, 2300 W. C Street, Russellville, Ark. 72801.
Billy Floyd
Billy Roy Floyd, 68, of Searcy passed away at White County Medical Center Aug. 10. He was born May 10, 1939. He was preceded in death by his parents, Roy “Bud” and Estelle Floyd.
At 18 years of age, he married his high school sweetheart, Sandra Sue Harrison. Together for 48 years, Billy and Sandra had three children, Tina, Ricky and Randy.
Billy’s life example of stability led each of his kids to currently be married for 25 years (Tina to Robert Hudgins), 23 years (Ricky to Kim Stark), and 18 years (Randy to Lu Anne Graves). Each of these couples have three children, giving Billy nine grandchildren; Christina Hudgins, Scott Hudgins, Michael Hudgins, Audra Floyd, Austin Floyd, Abby Floyd, Madeline Floyd, Jacob Floyd and Joshua Floyd.
He attended Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Starting out early as a route driver for Coca-Cola Bottling Company, he progressed to various senior management positions concluding a 35-year career with Coca-Cola. In 1970, Billy completed his executive management certification at Harvard Business School.
Billy and Sandra left Searcy in 1986 with Coca-Cola, living in Little Rock then Shreveport, La., before returning to Searcy in 1996. Not a person for retirement, Billy worked for Yarnell’s Ice Cream for more than five years as a consultant. He concluded his career owning and operating a successful motorsport business, Searcy Yamaha Suzuki Kawasaki Polaris Sales for over seven years.
He was also on various bank boards with First Community Bank. Billy was successful in the various aspects he pursued and will be remembered by the many employees that worked for him as a great leader who cared about them and their families’ well being.
During his life he also was a Sunday school teacher and an ordained deacon of the Baptist faith. Billy was president of several groups, including Sidney Deener PTA, Jaycees, Kiwanis Club, Whitewood Shrine Club and the chamber of commerce.
In 1978 he was named citizen of the year. He was involved with 4-H clubs because he showed cattle as a young 4-H member.
Funeral service was Aug. 13 at First Baptist Church in Searcy with Brother David Crouch and Dr. Dennis Bennett officiating.
Entombment will be at the mausoleum at the Oaklawn Memorial Gardens. Arrangements were by Powell Funeral Home.
TOP STORY >>City seen slighted by PCSSD
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
Bishop James Bolden rattled the rafters Tuesday night, apparently realizing for the first time that Maumelle was getting a second new school while the area he represents in the Pulaski County Special School District, Jacksonville, hasn’t had a new school since 1983.
“I don’t like another school being put in Maumelle,” said Bolden. “We’re screwing Jacksonville totally. Why don’t you put up a new building?”
The district’s 10-year facilities master plan, which the board approved in January, includes a new Sylvan Hills Middle School and the Oak Grove High School in Maumelle. The board was asked to approve issuance of second lien bonds worth $4.5 million—$4 million for the schools and another $444,000 to purchase new school buses.
“Maumelle just got a brand new middle school,” said Bolden. “Why not (put the new school) in Jacksonville?
“The board has already voted to do this,” said Superintendent James Sharpe. “This is for Stephens Inc. …They need authority to issue the bonds.”
Pam Roberts, who represents Maumelle, chose that moment to tell other board members how envious those who attended a tri-district breakfast for partners in education were of the wonderful new Maumelle Middle School—“what a fine building we have.”
At that, Bolden flinched, rolled his eyes and grimaced.
“Maumelle already has a new school,” Bolden said. “Go to Jacksonville Middle School, Jacksonville High School—students are freezing in the halls.
“I’m tired of Jacksonville being treated like a stepchild,” he said.
Bolden announced twice at the meeting that he was running for reelection because he wants to continue to work toward a Jacksonville district.
The first new building planned for Jacksonville will replace Arnold Drive Elementary on Little Rock Air Force Base. It is planned for construction in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 at a cost of approximately $15 million. It appeared suddenly on the build list after LRAFB Commander Kip Self and members of the Arkansas congressional delegation got involved.
Later in the meeting, the Pulaski County Special School District stopped short of approving Bolden’s resolution supporting creation of a new Jacksonville district from part of the existing PCSSD.
The members did unanimously direct the district and its attorney, Sam Jones, to pursue unitary school status, at least in the area of student assignment. With some reservation, each board member expressed support for such a district.
But first, the state Department of Education must hire a consultant on achieving unitary status, and that hasn’t happened yet, according to Julie Thompson of the Education Department.
“Right now the attorney general’s office and Department of Education should be meeting with PCSSD and the North Little Rock District regarding pursuit of unitary status, according to state Rep. Will Bond, D-Jacksonville, who authored the legislation aimed at ending the desegregation agreement and court oversight. The law took effect July 31.
Bond said they should also be meeting with all three districts regarding a phase out on the $60 million a year the state pays to support desegregation.
The districts must start by the end of October and must be unitary by June 14, 2008 to qualify for $250,000 to help cover legal expenses.
In other action, the board approved raises and other increases for support staff totaling $1.36 million. That includes a 3.25 percent increase to the base salary schedule, a 3.20 percent step increase and a 3.5 percent longevity increase.
At the July meeting, the board reinstated the Pulaski Association of Support Staff (PASS) as negotiating agent for the support staff and at the August meeting, the board rejected a request for $25,000 to pay Arkansas Educational Consulting to negotiate a new contract with PASS. Board member Mildred Tate objected, saying that in the past, the administration did the negotiation.
Superintendent James Sharpe responded that a new contract would have to be drafted from scratch, but in the end, the board directed Deborah Coley, assistant superintendent for human resources, to work out details of a new contract with PASS.
The board rejected two competing proposals for raises for eligible certified administrators—a $409,000 raise favored by Sharpe and a $307,000 proposal put forward by the personnel policies committee. Jacksonville Boys Middle School Principal Mike Nellums spoke for the second proposal, which would have curtailed raises for some who got raises last year in favor of raises for those who didn’t.
The issue is apparently on hold until an updated report next meeting comparing district compensation with compensation for like jobs at other districts.
The board approved $43,421 to add two multi-age intercessors in multi-age classrooms at Bates and Jacksonville elementaries.
“Due to the success of the multi-age classroom at Harris Elementary, we are expanding the program,” Coley wrote in her proposal.
The board approved mental-health services from Centers for Youth and Families, Professional Counseling Associates, Rivendell, Life Strategies, Inc., Therapeutic Family services, Pathfinder and Youth Home.
Leader senior staff writer
Bishop James Bolden rattled the rafters Tuesday night, apparently realizing for the first time that Maumelle was getting a second new school while the area he represents in the Pulaski County Special School District, Jacksonville, hasn’t had a new school since 1983.
“I don’t like another school being put in Maumelle,” said Bolden. “We’re screwing Jacksonville totally. Why don’t you put up a new building?”
The district’s 10-year facilities master plan, which the board approved in January, includes a new Sylvan Hills Middle School and the Oak Grove High School in Maumelle. The board was asked to approve issuance of second lien bonds worth $4.5 million—$4 million for the schools and another $444,000 to purchase new school buses.
“Maumelle just got a brand new middle school,” said Bolden. “Why not (put the new school) in Jacksonville?
“The board has already voted to do this,” said Superintendent James Sharpe. “This is for Stephens Inc. …They need authority to issue the bonds.”
Pam Roberts, who represents Maumelle, chose that moment to tell other board members how envious those who attended a tri-district breakfast for partners in education were of the wonderful new Maumelle Middle School—“what a fine building we have.”
At that, Bolden flinched, rolled his eyes and grimaced.
“Maumelle already has a new school,” Bolden said. “Go to Jacksonville Middle School, Jacksonville High School—students are freezing in the halls.
“I’m tired of Jacksonville being treated like a stepchild,” he said.
Bolden announced twice at the meeting that he was running for reelection because he wants to continue to work toward a Jacksonville district.
The first new building planned for Jacksonville will replace Arnold Drive Elementary on Little Rock Air Force Base. It is planned for construction in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 at a cost of approximately $15 million. It appeared suddenly on the build list after LRAFB Commander Kip Self and members of the Arkansas congressional delegation got involved.
Later in the meeting, the Pulaski County Special School District stopped short of approving Bolden’s resolution supporting creation of a new Jacksonville district from part of the existing PCSSD.
The members did unanimously direct the district and its attorney, Sam Jones, to pursue unitary school status, at least in the area of student assignment. With some reservation, each board member expressed support for such a district.
But first, the state Department of Education must hire a consultant on achieving unitary status, and that hasn’t happened yet, according to Julie Thompson of the Education Department.
“Right now the attorney general’s office and Department of Education should be meeting with PCSSD and the North Little Rock District regarding pursuit of unitary status, according to state Rep. Will Bond, D-Jacksonville, who authored the legislation aimed at ending the desegregation agreement and court oversight. The law took effect July 31.
Bond said they should also be meeting with all three districts regarding a phase out on the $60 million a year the state pays to support desegregation.
The districts must start by the end of October and must be unitary by June 14, 2008 to qualify for $250,000 to help cover legal expenses.
In other action, the board approved raises and other increases for support staff totaling $1.36 million. That includes a 3.25 percent increase to the base salary schedule, a 3.20 percent step increase and a 3.5 percent longevity increase.
At the July meeting, the board reinstated the Pulaski Association of Support Staff (PASS) as negotiating agent for the support staff and at the August meeting, the board rejected a request for $25,000 to pay Arkansas Educational Consulting to negotiate a new contract with PASS. Board member Mildred Tate objected, saying that in the past, the administration did the negotiation.
Superintendent James Sharpe responded that a new contract would have to be drafted from scratch, but in the end, the board directed Deborah Coley, assistant superintendent for human resources, to work out details of a new contract with PASS.
The board rejected two competing proposals for raises for eligible certified administrators—a $409,000 raise favored by Sharpe and a $307,000 proposal put forward by the personnel policies committee. Jacksonville Boys Middle School Principal Mike Nellums spoke for the second proposal, which would have curtailed raises for some who got raises last year in favor of raises for those who didn’t.
The issue is apparently on hold until an updated report next meeting comparing district compensation with compensation for like jobs at other districts.
The board approved $43,421 to add two multi-age intercessors in multi-age classrooms at Bates and Jacksonville elementaries.
“Due to the success of the multi-age classroom at Harris Elementary, we are expanding the program,” Coley wrote in her proposal.
The board approved mental-health services from Centers for Youth and Families, Professional Counseling Associates, Rivendell, Life Strategies, Inc., Therapeutic Family services, Pathfinder and Youth Home.
TOP STORY >>Special school plans to upgrade
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
The Lonoke Exception School plans about $2.2 million in expansions in Cabot and Lonoke and asked the Quorum Court Thursday night to create a public facilities board through which it could borrow money more economically.
School director Janie Sexton, said banks would only lend her money at relatively high interest rates and for only five years, with a huge balloon payment and uncertain interest rates at the end of that term.
Quorum Court members seemed supportive of the project, but want to study the powers and authority of a public facilities board.
Justice of the Peace Mark Edwards, who had read the public facilities law, found that it could have the power to take land by eminent domain. No county money would be involved, but the quorum court would have to authorize formation of such a board, define its powers and could reserve for itself the power to approve future bond applications.
Sexton said a new Cabot facility would accommodate 90 clients and allow conversion of the existing building or 30 adult clients. It also would have a kitchen so that meals would no longer have to be transported each day from the Lonoke facility.
Expansion would also allow the Lonoke facility to serve more clients.
The court also heard a proposal from the Johanson Group to study the county’s employees, their jobs and experience and propose pay ranges that would be comparable from department to department and also competitive with other employers in the area, using a lot of interviews and a sophisticated computer program that Johanson has developed.
His presentation was at the invitation of the personnel committee, chaired by Jeanette Minton.
The cost of the service would be about $27,000. Discussion of Johanson’s proposal was placed on the agenda for the September meeting.
County Judge Charlie Troutman reported that the refurbishing of quarters for the new, third, Lonoke County Circuit Court was completed for about $32,000. Troutman was authorized to spend $50,000.
He also reported that state Sen. Bobby Glover and state Rep. Lenville Evans had helped get $170,000 for use in completing the courthouse annex. Glover’s share was $110,000.
Troutman said he thought it could be done for about $70,000.
He said the balance could be available to finish the 22-bed expansion of the county jail, estimated to cost $350,000 to $375,000. Sheriff Jim Roberson warned the court that the expansion would require hiring one new employee per jail shift, by law.
Leader senior staff writer
The Lonoke Exception School plans about $2.2 million in expansions in Cabot and Lonoke and asked the Quorum Court Thursday night to create a public facilities board through which it could borrow money more economically.
School director Janie Sexton, said banks would only lend her money at relatively high interest rates and for only five years, with a huge balloon payment and uncertain interest rates at the end of that term.
Quorum Court members seemed supportive of the project, but want to study the powers and authority of a public facilities board.
Justice of the Peace Mark Edwards, who had read the public facilities law, found that it could have the power to take land by eminent domain. No county money would be involved, but the quorum court would have to authorize formation of such a board, define its powers and could reserve for itself the power to approve future bond applications.
Sexton said a new Cabot facility would accommodate 90 clients and allow conversion of the existing building or 30 adult clients. It also would have a kitchen so that meals would no longer have to be transported each day from the Lonoke facility.
Expansion would also allow the Lonoke facility to serve more clients.
The court also heard a proposal from the Johanson Group to study the county’s employees, their jobs and experience and propose pay ranges that would be comparable from department to department and also competitive with other employers in the area, using a lot of interviews and a sophisticated computer program that Johanson has developed.
His presentation was at the invitation of the personnel committee, chaired by Jeanette Minton.
The cost of the service would be about $27,000. Discussion of Johanson’s proposal was placed on the agenda for the September meeting.
County Judge Charlie Troutman reported that the refurbishing of quarters for the new, third, Lonoke County Circuit Court was completed for about $32,000. Troutman was authorized to spend $50,000.
He also reported that state Sen. Bobby Glover and state Rep. Lenville Evans had helped get $170,000 for use in completing the courthouse annex. Glover’s share was $110,000.
Troutman said he thought it could be done for about $70,000.
He said the balance could be available to finish the 22-bed expansion of the county jail, estimated to cost $350,000 to $375,000. Sheriff Jim Roberson warned the court that the expansion would require hiring one new employee per jail shift, by law.
TOP STORY >>Boy injured, stepfather tries suicide
By HEATHER HARTSELL
Leader staff writer
The 2-year-old son of a Little Rock Air Force Base senior airman has been declared brain dead by doctors at Arkansas Children’s Hospital after he was found unresponsive Tuesday while under the care of his stepfather.
Lt. Martin Cass, public information officer for the Jacksonville Police Department, said Friday the family was waiting for relatives to arrive from out-of-town before taking the toddler off life support.
The stepfather, Ausencio Lopez, attempted to take his own life Wednesday by jumping off a Little Rock overpass into traffic.
Jacksonville police were dispatched to Rebsamen Medical Center at approximately 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 2-year-old white male toddler that had been taken there from LRAFB with unknown injuries, according to Cass.
The child was unconscious and unresponsive while in Rebsamen’s emergency room and was then transported to Arkansas Children’s Hospital where he was diagnosed with a closed-head injury with massive cerebral edema, Cass said.
Cass told The Leader that the child had apparently been unconscious and unresponsive for some part of the day.
“Our detectives found that the mom, Sr. Airman Sharilyn Lopez, came home for lunch and the step-father told her the child was taking a nap,” Cass said. “When she came home after work around 6:15 p.m., she showered and was told he was still asleep. She thought it was strange he was still asleep and went in to check on him. She found him on the floor, face-up and unresponsive,” he said.
“She carefully tried to get air into his lungs and called 911,” Cass added.
The boy’s parents, while at Rebsamen, told the officers he had injured himself when he fell out of his bed at home.
But doctors at Children’s Hospital say the injuries the little boy had could not have happened from a 20-inch fall from the bed, Cass said Friday. “Seeing the pictures of this little boy’s injuries makes you appreciate even more the ones you have,” Cass said.
At about 10:35 a.m. Wednesday, Ausencio Lopez climbed the railings of the Battery Street overpass in Little Rock, located next to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and, after slitting his wrists, jumped onto I-630.
According to the Little Rock Police Department, he was on his back on the interstate’s shoulder when they arrived on scene; he was responsive, stated his name and said he could not move.
He was taken to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and according to the police report, his injuries were serious but not life-threatening.
Jacksonville police detectives investigating the toddler’s case went to the hospital Thursday to talk with him, Cass said, but he was in surgery and the detectives do not yet know to what extent he is involved with the toddler’s injuries.
As far as the Jacksonville police are concerned, the case is still classified as suspected child abuse but they won’t know for sure until an autopsy has been performed, Cass said, at which time charges may or may not be filed.
The Jacksonville Police Department is the investigating department on all LRAFB cases when it involves civilians. Because the child is a military dependent, he is considered a civilian, and therefore the case is being worked by the Jacksonville police.
The base’s security forces (police department) investigate cases involving military members.
Leader staff writer
The 2-year-old son of a Little Rock Air Force Base senior airman has been declared brain dead by doctors at Arkansas Children’s Hospital after he was found unresponsive Tuesday while under the care of his stepfather.
Lt. Martin Cass, public information officer for the Jacksonville Police Department, said Friday the family was waiting for relatives to arrive from out-of-town before taking the toddler off life support.
The stepfather, Ausencio Lopez, attempted to take his own life Wednesday by jumping off a Little Rock overpass into traffic.
Jacksonville police were dispatched to Rebsamen Medical Center at approximately 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 2-year-old white male toddler that had been taken there from LRAFB with unknown injuries, according to Cass.
The child was unconscious and unresponsive while in Rebsamen’s emergency room and was then transported to Arkansas Children’s Hospital where he was diagnosed with a closed-head injury with massive cerebral edema, Cass said.
Cass told The Leader that the child had apparently been unconscious and unresponsive for some part of the day.
“Our detectives found that the mom, Sr. Airman Sharilyn Lopez, came home for lunch and the step-father told her the child was taking a nap,” Cass said. “When she came home after work around 6:15 p.m., she showered and was told he was still asleep. She thought it was strange he was still asleep and went in to check on him. She found him on the floor, face-up and unresponsive,” he said.
“She carefully tried to get air into his lungs and called 911,” Cass added.
The boy’s parents, while at Rebsamen, told the officers he had injured himself when he fell out of his bed at home.
But doctors at Children’s Hospital say the injuries the little boy had could not have happened from a 20-inch fall from the bed, Cass said Friday. “Seeing the pictures of this little boy’s injuries makes you appreciate even more the ones you have,” Cass said.
At about 10:35 a.m. Wednesday, Ausencio Lopez climbed the railings of the Battery Street overpass in Little Rock, located next to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and, after slitting his wrists, jumped onto I-630.
According to the Little Rock Police Department, he was on his back on the interstate’s shoulder when they arrived on scene; he was responsive, stated his name and said he could not move.
He was taken to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and according to the police report, his injuries were serious but not life-threatening.
Jacksonville police detectives investigating the toddler’s case went to the hospital Thursday to talk with him, Cass said, but he was in surgery and the detectives do not yet know to what extent he is involved with the toddler’s injuries.
As far as the Jacksonville police are concerned, the case is still classified as suspected child abuse but they won’t know for sure until an autopsy has been performed, Cass said, at which time charges may or may not be filed.
The Jacksonville Police Department is the investigating department on all LRAFB cases when it involves civilians. Because the child is a military dependent, he is considered a civilian, and therefore the case is being worked by the Jacksonville police.
The base’s security forces (police department) investigate cases involving military members.
TOP STORY >>Building schools in Cabot resumes
By HEATHER HARTSELL
Leader staff writer
As one building project is completed, Cabot Public Schools move forward with their next big project – rebuilding Cabot Junior High North, which was lost to a fire last August.
At this time last year the district was working on a solution to where the roughly 1,200 displaced JHN students would attend class after the Aug. 10, 2006 electrical fire destroyed the eight-year-old school, but Friday the school board learned reconstruction could possibly begin in late September.
Assistant superintendent Jim Dalton told the board during a committee meeting that the state had approved the footprint for the new two-story structure, the dirt work had already been started and the building plans were ready to go.
Dalton met with Doug Eaton, director of the Arkansas Department of Education’s Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission, after the committee meeting to get his blessing on the designs.
“He was easy to work with and didn’t see a problem getting his part done in the next two weeks,” Dalton said after the meeting.
Once Eaton’s part is complete, construction of the 134,000 square-foot campus could start by Sept. 27 and would take 18 months to complete.
The total projected cost to rebuild CJHN is $18.5 million. The estimated cost for the district will be about $10 million the district received in January from Great American Insurance Company of Ohio, the district’s insurance company, and the $5.2 million in catastrophic funding received through the state’s facilities division.
Architect Steve Elliot, of Lewis, Elliott and Studer, Inc. in Little Rock, designed the new school, as well as Cabot High School and the new Stagecoach Elementary School, and delivered the 150 pages of plans during the committee meeting.
He said after the state gives their final approval, within two weeks of bids being accepted for the construction, one would be able to see the building started.
“Just about the time they finish the dirt work we’ll be ready to start construction,” Elliot said.
The new CJHN will be rebuilt on the hill with facilities capable of holding 1,200 students. There will be 51,850-square-foot classrooms to meet the new building standards, increasing the classroom size by 100-square feet. It will have a sprinkler system, meet the indoor air-quality standards and have a larger cafeteria to hold more students.
The design also has places available to add more space down the road if needed but not that much, Dalton said. The design utilizes current parking and buildings. The vocational building, multi-purpose building and physical-education building were left intact after the fire destroyed the rest of the campus. Junior High North students attended classes last year in trailers set up between the tennis courts and CJHN gym at a cost of $40,000 a month in rent for the more than 30 trailers.
Beginning Monday, CJHN students will attend school on the north end of the high school campus. Ninth-graders will attend classes at the end of the north wing of the high school building, which is closest to the current JHN principal’s complex. Seventh- and eighth-graders will attend class in K, S, and the old high school media center and 15 portable classrooms.
Leader staff writer
As one building project is completed, Cabot Public Schools move forward with their next big project – rebuilding Cabot Junior High North, which was lost to a fire last August.
At this time last year the district was working on a solution to where the roughly 1,200 displaced JHN students would attend class after the Aug. 10, 2006 electrical fire destroyed the eight-year-old school, but Friday the school board learned reconstruction could possibly begin in late September.
Assistant superintendent Jim Dalton told the board during a committee meeting that the state had approved the footprint for the new two-story structure, the dirt work had already been started and the building plans were ready to go.
Dalton met with Doug Eaton, director of the Arkansas Department of Education’s Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission, after the committee meeting to get his blessing on the designs.
“He was easy to work with and didn’t see a problem getting his part done in the next two weeks,” Dalton said after the meeting.
Once Eaton’s part is complete, construction of the 134,000 square-foot campus could start by Sept. 27 and would take 18 months to complete.
The total projected cost to rebuild CJHN is $18.5 million. The estimated cost for the district will be about $10 million the district received in January from Great American Insurance Company of Ohio, the district’s insurance company, and the $5.2 million in catastrophic funding received through the state’s facilities division.
Architect Steve Elliot, of Lewis, Elliott and Studer, Inc. in Little Rock, designed the new school, as well as Cabot High School and the new Stagecoach Elementary School, and delivered the 150 pages of plans during the committee meeting.
He said after the state gives their final approval, within two weeks of bids being accepted for the construction, one would be able to see the building started.
“Just about the time they finish the dirt work we’ll be ready to start construction,” Elliot said.
The new CJHN will be rebuilt on the hill with facilities capable of holding 1,200 students. There will be 51,850-square-foot classrooms to meet the new building standards, increasing the classroom size by 100-square feet. It will have a sprinkler system, meet the indoor air-quality standards and have a larger cafeteria to hold more students.
The design also has places available to add more space down the road if needed but not that much, Dalton said. The design utilizes current parking and buildings. The vocational building, multi-purpose building and physical-education building were left intact after the fire destroyed the rest of the campus. Junior High North students attended classes last year in trailers set up between the tennis courts and CJHN gym at a cost of $40,000 a month in rent for the more than 30 trailers.
Beginning Monday, CJHN students will attend school on the north end of the high school campus. Ninth-graders will attend classes at the end of the north wing of the high school building, which is closest to the current JHN principal’s complex. Seventh- and eighth-graders will attend class in K, S, and the old high school media center and 15 portable classrooms.
TOP STORY >>Charter school backed by many parents
By HEATHER HARTSELL
AND GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader staff
About 40 concerned Jacksonville parents, business people and Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce members joined forces Friday night at city hall and agreed they want Mayor Tommy Swaim and the city council to support a broadly based steering committee to go further with the process of starting open-enrollment charter schools.
To open a charter school, a petition must first be filed with the state Board of Education a year in advance before classes can start. That means a possible Jacksonville charter school — it would be tax-supported with private funds — could be open as early as August 2009.
The public was urged to complete an online community-needs assessment to establish local support, interest and needs for the area.
Several parents at the meeting were enthusiastic about the proposed charter school.
“How do we get the ball rolling?” asked a parent in the audience.
Former state Rep. Mike Wilson, who is spearheading the charter school initiative, told her the city should get behind the project and get local officials to promote it.
“We taxed ourselves to build a new library and an education center,” said Wilson, who predicted that the charter school would not only get off the ground but would complement an independent Jacksonville school district when it separates from the Pulaski County Special School District.
According to Dr. Caroline Proctor, executive director of Arkansas Charter School Resource Center at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, she has received about 40-50 of the eight-page surveys throughout the week and was quite impressed with them.
“Everybody seems to be for a middle school and high school — half of them are for an elementary school,” Proctor said.
“All of them wanted teachers to be paid for performance, and it was 50/50 on going an extended school day (7 a.m.–5 p.m.) and 50/50 on going year-round,” she added.
Proctor said charter schools were a way to give all parents the same choice of where and what type of school they want their children to go to. “The communities (with charter schools) have crafted schools that bring something in they see they need or want in the community,” Proctor said.
“The surveys help when you form committees and you begin to talk. Having kids and being business people, you’ll all have an idea of how you want a charter school to look,” she said.
Charter schools are publicly funded and are not private or religious schools.
Mike Scoles, a consultant to Arkansas Charter School Resource Center at UA who teaches statistics at the University of Central Arkansas, said test results in Pulaski County are below the state average and continue to drop as students get older.
“Those who can afford it have always had a choice,” he said. “With charters, the rest of us have a choice.”
Wilson said, “It is a type of school that promotes and should promote better learning for our kids, a more rigorous curriculum with goals and accountability and discipline in those schools that we all expect and would like to have.
“It would be open to any child in the community or outside the community and even across county lines,” Wilson added.
“At this point, none of us know what the community would like in the way of a charter school – elementary, middle school, high school, or some kind of combination of all those – but they are all possibilities we should and will explore,” Wilson said.
“The community is strong and deep in education and we can keep on doing it,” he added.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they had 3,000 applicants,” said Chuck Baclawski after the meeting.
Mark Perry said, “It’s not going to be for everybody. But if you think it’s going to be for your kids, it would give them an option. It’s going to be a neat project. It’s going to happen.”
Perry thought the meeting clarified some misconceptions about charter schools.
“A lot of people think it’s a private school,” he said. “It’s not. It’s a public school.”
He predicted that students would “come from all over,” including Cabot, Sherwood and other communities.
Pat Griggs wondered about athletic programs, which are modest when compared with large public schools.
Proctor said charter schools usually field soccer teams, since they’re the easiest to organize.
AND GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader staff
About 40 concerned Jacksonville parents, business people and Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce members joined forces Friday night at city hall and agreed they want Mayor Tommy Swaim and the city council to support a broadly based steering committee to go further with the process of starting open-enrollment charter schools.
To open a charter school, a petition must first be filed with the state Board of Education a year in advance before classes can start. That means a possible Jacksonville charter school — it would be tax-supported with private funds — could be open as early as August 2009.
The public was urged to complete an online community-needs assessment to establish local support, interest and needs for the area.
Several parents at the meeting were enthusiastic about the proposed charter school.
“How do we get the ball rolling?” asked a parent in the audience.
Former state Rep. Mike Wilson, who is spearheading the charter school initiative, told her the city should get behind the project and get local officials to promote it.
“We taxed ourselves to build a new library and an education center,” said Wilson, who predicted that the charter school would not only get off the ground but would complement an independent Jacksonville school district when it separates from the Pulaski County Special School District.
According to Dr. Caroline Proctor, executive director of Arkansas Charter School Resource Center at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, she has received about 40-50 of the eight-page surveys throughout the week and was quite impressed with them.
“Everybody seems to be for a middle school and high school — half of them are for an elementary school,” Proctor said.
“All of them wanted teachers to be paid for performance, and it was 50/50 on going an extended school day (7 a.m.–5 p.m.) and 50/50 on going year-round,” she added.
Proctor said charter schools were a way to give all parents the same choice of where and what type of school they want their children to go to. “The communities (with charter schools) have crafted schools that bring something in they see they need or want in the community,” Proctor said.
“The surveys help when you form committees and you begin to talk. Having kids and being business people, you’ll all have an idea of how you want a charter school to look,” she said.
Charter schools are publicly funded and are not private or religious schools.
Mike Scoles, a consultant to Arkansas Charter School Resource Center at UA who teaches statistics at the University of Central Arkansas, said test results in Pulaski County are below the state average and continue to drop as students get older.
“Those who can afford it have always had a choice,” he said. “With charters, the rest of us have a choice.”
Wilson said, “It is a type of school that promotes and should promote better learning for our kids, a more rigorous curriculum with goals and accountability and discipline in those schools that we all expect and would like to have.
“It would be open to any child in the community or outside the community and even across county lines,” Wilson added.
“At this point, none of us know what the community would like in the way of a charter school – elementary, middle school, high school, or some kind of combination of all those – but they are all possibilities we should and will explore,” Wilson said.
“The community is strong and deep in education and we can keep on doing it,” he added.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they had 3,000 applicants,” said Chuck Baclawski after the meeting.
Mark Perry said, “It’s not going to be for everybody. But if you think it’s going to be for your kids, it would give them an option. It’s going to be a neat project. It’s going to happen.”
Perry thought the meeting clarified some misconceptions about charter schools.
“A lot of people think it’s a private school,” he said. “It’s not. It’s a public school.”
He predicted that students would “come from all over,” including Cabot, Sherwood and other communities.
Pat Griggs wondered about athletic programs, which are modest when compared with large public schools.
Proctor said charter schools usually field soccer teams, since they’re the easiest to organize.
TOP STORY >>Teachers prepare their classrooms
By HEATHER HARTSELL
Leader staff writer
The wait is over for Cabot Public Schools as its newest elementary school is ready to welcome students Monday for the start of school.
An open house will be held from 2–3:30 p.m. Sunday at Stagecoach Elementary School at Campground and Stagecoach roads, to give students and parents a preview of the school and meet teachers.
Faculty received word Aug. 10 that their new $6.6 million school was ready for them to move in and quickly began occupying the building.
“I found out about 1 p.m. Friday that we could have the school to get moved in,” Principal Pam Waymack said Monday while giving a Leader reporter a tour of the new campus.
She credited the hard work of contractors and school custodians for the timely move.
“They’ve done a lot,” Waymack said. “Some were here at 7 a.m. on Saturday hard at work.”
Superintendent Dr. Tony Thurman gave credit to the district’s construction, maintenance, custodial and technology crews for making it happen.
“This has been another very challenging summer moving Junior High North to the high school campus and getting Stagecoach ready to open,” Thurman said.
Cabot’s crews have also worked on general maintenance at all schools in the district this summer including replacing flooring in areas at Westside Elementary and Northside Elementary.
“Our directors do amazing work. L.B. Capps is in charge of maintenance and construction, Bill Holden is in charge of custodial and Kendal Wells is in charge of technology.
“These directors do great work and have great crews that work with them to make things happen for our students, teachers and community,” Thurman said.
Thurman is no stranger to a ‘ready, but not really ready’ school building as he opened Cabot High School last August without the building completely finished. He knows all too well what Waymack will have to deal with come Monday.
“Starting a new school is much like building a house and moving in for the first time,” Thurman said. “There will be things that need to be changed, things not working like they should and general maintenance items that need to be checked. It will be a continuous work in progress,” he said.
Thurman said they are also working on having the $23,000 of new playground equipment ready as quickly as possible, but “have been focused on being ready for instruction on the first day of classes.”
“The teachers have been very patient and Ms. Waymack has done a great job getting things ready to go,” Thurman added.
On Monday, about a dozen of the 30 classrooms were well underway to being transformed into creative educational environments while others still had bare walls.
“They’ve (the teachers) really worked hard to have got in on Friday (August 10) and already have so much up on the walls around the school,” Waymack said.
The teachers weren’t the only ones in the 76,395-square-foot building. Painters, electricians and school custodians were also hard at work finishing up loose ends.
Chuck Coleman with Rowe Painting was applying a second coat of paint to a classroom doorframe. Painting began the middle of May with Coleman’s three-person team – himself, his wife Kathy and their son.
According to Cole-man, second coats on doorframes, some exterior painting and finishing up in the offices once all the cabinetry was installed was all they had left to complete.
The 4,851-square-foot air-conditioned gymnasium was acting as a temporary holding area for desks, chairs and cafeteria tables until classrooms were ready for them. The 4,284-square-foot cafeteria, which has a full kitchen, was receiving a final floor waxing.
The 1,976-square-foot media center had its bookshelves lining the walls and reading tables set up around the room, but was waiting for its $70,000 in new books to be placed on the shelves. Computer instructor Pam Gray was decorating her lab room as she waited for her computers to be delivered later in the week. There will be 30 student stations in the lab.
All the classrooms are media-savvy with ceiling-mounted projectors. This new technology replaces the older overhead projectors and the PC to TV converters other schools have, Waymack said.
PC to TV converters enable teachers to show the information on their computer on the classroom television; however, the ceiling projectors are linked directly to the teacher’s computer and project that image, document or Web site onto the classroom’s dry-erase board, cutting out the need for a television in the room.
It can also be used to project an image, like a flashcard or map, onto the dry-erase board using a projector arm with a camera at the end. Stagecoach also has separate classroom areas for music, art, science, speech and gifted and talented. There is also a professional- technology center with computer access for the teachers’ use.
Many of the Stagecoach teachers were at other schools within Cabot last year; for some, this is their first year to teach or their first year in Cabot. But the general consensus among the teachers on coming to Stagecoach was one of excitement for all Stagecoach offers.
Teachers have walls full of storage space, large classrooms and brand new equipment and desks, not to mention the luxury of a brand new school. First-grade teacher Sarah Taylor came to Stagecoach from Ward Central Elementary where she had taught for the past three years.
“It’s just new,” she said in comparing the two schools; “we have more space and more storage here too,” she said.
Christy Lyons, a fourth-grade teacher, felt lucky to be at Stagecoach.
“It was well worth the wait and I am fortunate to be here,” she said. Lyons has spent the last three years as an academic coach at Northside Elementary and is very excited to be back in the classroom. “I missed the kids and was ready to get back – it’s what excites me the most,” she added.
Science teacher Peggy Self just wished she had her room completed.
“I wish I could just blink and it be done,” Self said. Excited about being at Stagecoach, she switched gears after teaching eight years at Cabot Middle School North because “it was time for a change.”
To accommodate the opening of Cabot’s newest elementary school, the district was rezoned in May to include the following attendance areas for Stagecoach Elementary:
Campground Road and the Pinewood and Autumnwood subdivisions, residents behind The Cabot Patch daycare, South Stagecoach Road up to its intersection with Honeysuckle Lane, CR 302 at Dogwood Lane, Burgess Lane at Hwy. 321, Mt. Tabor Road at Sandhill Road, and stops at the Cabot district boundary, butting up against the Carlisle, Des Arc and Lonoke school districts.
Leader staff writer
The wait is over for Cabot Public Schools as its newest elementary school is ready to welcome students Monday for the start of school.
An open house will be held from 2–3:30 p.m. Sunday at Stagecoach Elementary School at Campground and Stagecoach roads, to give students and parents a preview of the school and meet teachers.
Faculty received word Aug. 10 that their new $6.6 million school was ready for them to move in and quickly began occupying the building.
“I found out about 1 p.m. Friday that we could have the school to get moved in,” Principal Pam Waymack said Monday while giving a Leader reporter a tour of the new campus.
She credited the hard work of contractors and school custodians for the timely move.
“They’ve done a lot,” Waymack said. “Some were here at 7 a.m. on Saturday hard at work.”
Superintendent Dr. Tony Thurman gave credit to the district’s construction, maintenance, custodial and technology crews for making it happen.
“This has been another very challenging summer moving Junior High North to the high school campus and getting Stagecoach ready to open,” Thurman said.
Cabot’s crews have also worked on general maintenance at all schools in the district this summer including replacing flooring in areas at Westside Elementary and Northside Elementary.
“Our directors do amazing work. L.B. Capps is in charge of maintenance and construction, Bill Holden is in charge of custodial and Kendal Wells is in charge of technology.
“These directors do great work and have great crews that work with them to make things happen for our students, teachers and community,” Thurman said.
Thurman is no stranger to a ‘ready, but not really ready’ school building as he opened Cabot High School last August without the building completely finished. He knows all too well what Waymack will have to deal with come Monday.
“Starting a new school is much like building a house and moving in for the first time,” Thurman said. “There will be things that need to be changed, things not working like they should and general maintenance items that need to be checked. It will be a continuous work in progress,” he said.
Thurman said they are also working on having the $23,000 of new playground equipment ready as quickly as possible, but “have been focused on being ready for instruction on the first day of classes.”
“The teachers have been very patient and Ms. Waymack has done a great job getting things ready to go,” Thurman added.
On Monday, about a dozen of the 30 classrooms were well underway to being transformed into creative educational environments while others still had bare walls.
“They’ve (the teachers) really worked hard to have got in on Friday (August 10) and already have so much up on the walls around the school,” Waymack said.
The teachers weren’t the only ones in the 76,395-square-foot building. Painters, electricians and school custodians were also hard at work finishing up loose ends.
Chuck Coleman with Rowe Painting was applying a second coat of paint to a classroom doorframe. Painting began the middle of May with Coleman’s three-person team – himself, his wife Kathy and their son.
According to Cole-man, second coats on doorframes, some exterior painting and finishing up in the offices once all the cabinetry was installed was all they had left to complete.
The 4,851-square-foot air-conditioned gymnasium was acting as a temporary holding area for desks, chairs and cafeteria tables until classrooms were ready for them. The 4,284-square-foot cafeteria, which has a full kitchen, was receiving a final floor waxing.
The 1,976-square-foot media center had its bookshelves lining the walls and reading tables set up around the room, but was waiting for its $70,000 in new books to be placed on the shelves. Computer instructor Pam Gray was decorating her lab room as she waited for her computers to be delivered later in the week. There will be 30 student stations in the lab.
All the classrooms are media-savvy with ceiling-mounted projectors. This new technology replaces the older overhead projectors and the PC to TV converters other schools have, Waymack said.
PC to TV converters enable teachers to show the information on their computer on the classroom television; however, the ceiling projectors are linked directly to the teacher’s computer and project that image, document or Web site onto the classroom’s dry-erase board, cutting out the need for a television in the room.
It can also be used to project an image, like a flashcard or map, onto the dry-erase board using a projector arm with a camera at the end. Stagecoach also has separate classroom areas for music, art, science, speech and gifted and talented. There is also a professional- technology center with computer access for the teachers’ use.
Many of the Stagecoach teachers were at other schools within Cabot last year; for some, this is their first year to teach or their first year in Cabot. But the general consensus among the teachers on coming to Stagecoach was one of excitement for all Stagecoach offers.
Teachers have walls full of storage space, large classrooms and brand new equipment and desks, not to mention the luxury of a brand new school. First-grade teacher Sarah Taylor came to Stagecoach from Ward Central Elementary where she had taught for the past three years.
“It’s just new,” she said in comparing the two schools; “we have more space and more storage here too,” she said.
Christy Lyons, a fourth-grade teacher, felt lucky to be at Stagecoach.
“It was well worth the wait and I am fortunate to be here,” she said. Lyons has spent the last three years as an academic coach at Northside Elementary and is very excited to be back in the classroom. “I missed the kids and was ready to get back – it’s what excites me the most,” she added.
Science teacher Peggy Self just wished she had her room completed.
“I wish I could just blink and it be done,” Self said. Excited about being at Stagecoach, she switched gears after teaching eight years at Cabot Middle School North because “it was time for a change.”
To accommodate the opening of Cabot’s newest elementary school, the district was rezoned in May to include the following attendance areas for Stagecoach Elementary:
Campground Road and the Pinewood and Autumnwood subdivisions, residents behind The Cabot Patch daycare, South Stagecoach Road up to its intersection with Honeysuckle Lane, CR 302 at Dogwood Lane, Burgess Lane at Hwy. 321, Mt. Tabor Road at Sandhill Road, and stops at the Cabot district boundary, butting up against the Carlisle, Des Arc and Lonoke school districts.
Friday, August 17, 2007
EDITORIALS>>Huck must review record
One of our encyclopedic services is political advice to Arkansas sons and daughters, an obligation that we take especially seriously when they gambol upon the national stage. On the chance that Mike Huckabee’s second-place showing in the Iowa Straw Poll last week has catapulted him into the ranks of serious candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, we offer some earnest counsel.
He needs to straighten out some untruths about his record as Arkansas governor before the press scavengers and the opposition researchers for Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback start combing the archives.
Recall what happened to Al Gore in 2000. Republican op teams, led by our own Tim Griffin, combed through stories and records looking for conflicts in Gore’s public statements and leaked them to the media. One actually was an untruth, that he had personally attended a disaster program in Texas, but the rest were distortions of what Gore had actually said.
Nevertheless, the hammering developed an image of Gore as a serial liar and exaggerator that he could not shake. We don’t want that to happen to our former governor, and the best way to avoid it is to come forward now, voluntarily, to correct his public misstatements. Many are about his record on taxing and spending in his 10 ½ years as governor.
This one, for instance: The Iowa papers are full of claims by Huckabee that he never raised motor fuel taxes in Arkansas. “Eighty percent of the people of my state voted to do it,” he was quoted in one newspaper as saying last week. A letter to all the television station managers in Iowa made the same claim, that voters at a statewide referendum, not he, raised diesel and gasoline taxes and that defying the voters’ will would have violated his oath of office.
But that never happened. The legislature passed Huckabee’s highway program, which included hikes in gasoline and diesel taxes, and he signed it into law. Voters never got a chance to vote on those taxes. They were allowed to vote whether to apply those taxes on a pay-as-you-go program or to borrow $575 million and build them sooner. Anyone can look up the law, the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999, Act 1027, and see that the taxes were never subjected to a vote and that they were collected regardless of what happened on the bond election.
He implies that a one-eighth of one percent sales taxes for the Game and Fish Commission and state parks were imposed by the people and that he had nothing to do with it. Anyone with a computer can check the newspaper archives in October 1996 and read about the governor’s four-day journey in his bass boat down the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Dumas to urge voters to go vote for his conservation tax, which was imposed by a constitutional amendment. If ever a tax belonged to a single individual, it was the conservation sales tax of 1996. He touted it as one of his greatest accomplishments.
He ought to correct the record also about the governor being responsible for only a small part of the appropriation of general and special revenues. (He had nothing to do with the 65 percent increase in state spending on his watch, he said.) In truth, the governor submits a budget for every single state agency and has the veto power if the legislature raises his budgets heedlessly. He never did it. And he needs to explain that he did not force 94 tax cuts through the legislature, and that the big one that he has bragged about, the omnibus income tax law of 1997, was the proposal of his predecessor, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, and it was the Democratic tax bill, not his.
That record is nothing to be ashamed of. We commiserate with the governor’s dilemma. Iowa Republicans are supposed to be especially hostile to taxes. The real shame will be to be proved to have been lying. Already, the rich boys at the Club for Growth are pestering him about it, but there is time to come clean honorably before Mitt Romney or Sam Brownback or The New York Times begin brandishing the record. He won’t be able to live it down with a thousand homespun jokes.
While he’s at it, he might want to correct the misstatements in TV interviews about not wanting Wayne Dumond released from prison so that he could kill.
Truth and candor, he will discover, are mighty political weapons if he chooses to wield them. They would separate him from the rest of the crowd in this campaign.
He needs to straighten out some untruths about his record as Arkansas governor before the press scavengers and the opposition researchers for Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback start combing the archives.
Recall what happened to Al Gore in 2000. Republican op teams, led by our own Tim Griffin, combed through stories and records looking for conflicts in Gore’s public statements and leaked them to the media. One actually was an untruth, that he had personally attended a disaster program in Texas, but the rest were distortions of what Gore had actually said.
Nevertheless, the hammering developed an image of Gore as a serial liar and exaggerator that he could not shake. We don’t want that to happen to our former governor, and the best way to avoid it is to come forward now, voluntarily, to correct his public misstatements. Many are about his record on taxing and spending in his 10 ½ years as governor.
This one, for instance: The Iowa papers are full of claims by Huckabee that he never raised motor fuel taxes in Arkansas. “Eighty percent of the people of my state voted to do it,” he was quoted in one newspaper as saying last week. A letter to all the television station managers in Iowa made the same claim, that voters at a statewide referendum, not he, raised diesel and gasoline taxes and that defying the voters’ will would have violated his oath of office.
But that never happened. The legislature passed Huckabee’s highway program, which included hikes in gasoline and diesel taxes, and he signed it into law. Voters never got a chance to vote on those taxes. They were allowed to vote whether to apply those taxes on a pay-as-you-go program or to borrow $575 million and build them sooner. Anyone can look up the law, the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999, Act 1027, and see that the taxes were never subjected to a vote and that they were collected regardless of what happened on the bond election.
He implies that a one-eighth of one percent sales taxes for the Game and Fish Commission and state parks were imposed by the people and that he had nothing to do with it. Anyone with a computer can check the newspaper archives in October 1996 and read about the governor’s four-day journey in his bass boat down the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Dumas to urge voters to go vote for his conservation tax, which was imposed by a constitutional amendment. If ever a tax belonged to a single individual, it was the conservation sales tax of 1996. He touted it as one of his greatest accomplishments.
He ought to correct the record also about the governor being responsible for only a small part of the appropriation of general and special revenues. (He had nothing to do with the 65 percent increase in state spending on his watch, he said.) In truth, the governor submits a budget for every single state agency and has the veto power if the legislature raises his budgets heedlessly. He never did it. And he needs to explain that he did not force 94 tax cuts through the legislature, and that the big one that he has bragged about, the omnibus income tax law of 1997, was the proposal of his predecessor, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, and it was the Democratic tax bill, not his.
That record is nothing to be ashamed of. We commiserate with the governor’s dilemma. Iowa Republicans are supposed to be especially hostile to taxes. The real shame will be to be proved to have been lying. Already, the rich boys at the Club for Growth are pestering him about it, but there is time to come clean honorably before Mitt Romney or Sam Brownback or The New York Times begin brandishing the record. He won’t be able to live it down with a thousand homespun jokes.
While he’s at it, he might want to correct the misstatements in TV interviews about not wanting Wayne Dumond released from prison so that he could kill.
Truth and candor, he will discover, are mighty political weapons if he chooses to wield them. They would separate him from the rest of the crowd in this campaign.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
EDITORIALS>>Cooking with gas
Gov. Beebe’s style of leadership is both frustrating and reassuring. He comes to awareness about the public good glacially, month by month and year by year, but he always gets there.
So there he was last week promising to lead an effort to require big energy companies to pay a modest severance tax on the gas they siphon from the Arkansas earth and pipe to the industrial centers to the east. When he took office in January he said that was not on his agenda. Weeks ago he said a severance tax actually was a moral imperative but that he was unwilling to lead the suicide effort to combat the political power of the energy companies. It takes a three-fourths vote in each house of the legislature to pass severance taxes and most other business taxes.
Last week, Beebe let it be known that he was talking to the gas executives and telling them they must settle on a severance tax that was comparable to those in other states and help him pass it in the legislature in 2009. If not, he said, he would lead a petition drive to put it on the 2010 ballot as an initiated act. Backroom consensus building was Beebe’s forte in two decades in the state Senate and his leverage is even better in the governor’s office. We have no doubt he can do it.
But 2010? Why wait three-and-a-half years when it could be done easily next year? Find a settlement and offer it to the legislature at a special session whenever one is called or put it on the 2008 ballot.
The settlement should be simple to reach. Severance taxes on natural resources run generally from 5 to 7.5 percent of the fair market value of gas at the wellhead.
Five percent of wellhead value should be a rock-bottom rate. Our current rate (a fixed three-tenths of a penny on each 1,000 cubic feet) is an almost infinitesimal fraction of the lowest rate in other states. If we are competing with other states, our biggest competitor is Texas, from which comes much of the gas that we consume. If the producers there pass on the tax to consumers, we are paying the 7.5 percent tax in our monthly gas bill. Why shouldn’t factories in the Ohio River Valley contribute something to our public schools and colleges when they burn our shale gas?
They should, of course, just as we support the schools of Wyoming when we pay our monthly electricity bills.
Wyoming charges a whopping severance tax on its coal, which is shipped to Arkansas and used to generate much of our electricity. Arkansas alone sends its vanishing natural resources abroad virtually free, apropos a colony rather than a state. There is another consideration. The gas severance tax would enable Beebe to take the other 3 percent of state sales tax off groceries. Generations would rise up and call him blessed.
— Ernie Dumas
So there he was last week promising to lead an effort to require big energy companies to pay a modest severance tax on the gas they siphon from the Arkansas earth and pipe to the industrial centers to the east. When he took office in January he said that was not on his agenda. Weeks ago he said a severance tax actually was a moral imperative but that he was unwilling to lead the suicide effort to combat the political power of the energy companies. It takes a three-fourths vote in each house of the legislature to pass severance taxes and most other business taxes.
Last week, Beebe let it be known that he was talking to the gas executives and telling them they must settle on a severance tax that was comparable to those in other states and help him pass it in the legislature in 2009. If not, he said, he would lead a petition drive to put it on the 2010 ballot as an initiated act. Backroom consensus building was Beebe’s forte in two decades in the state Senate and his leverage is even better in the governor’s office. We have no doubt he can do it.
But 2010? Why wait three-and-a-half years when it could be done easily next year? Find a settlement and offer it to the legislature at a special session whenever one is called or put it on the 2008 ballot.
The settlement should be simple to reach. Severance taxes on natural resources run generally from 5 to 7.5 percent of the fair market value of gas at the wellhead.
Five percent of wellhead value should be a rock-bottom rate. Our current rate (a fixed three-tenths of a penny on each 1,000 cubic feet) is an almost infinitesimal fraction of the lowest rate in other states. If we are competing with other states, our biggest competitor is Texas, from which comes much of the gas that we consume. If the producers there pass on the tax to consumers, we are paying the 7.5 percent tax in our monthly gas bill. Why shouldn’t factories in the Ohio River Valley contribute something to our public schools and colleges when they burn our shale gas?
They should, of course, just as we support the schools of Wyoming when we pay our monthly electricity bills.
Wyoming charges a whopping severance tax on its coal, which is shipped to Arkansas and used to generate much of our electricity. Arkansas alone sends its vanishing natural resources abroad virtually free, apropos a colony rather than a state. There is another consideration. The gas severance tax would enable Beebe to take the other 3 percent of state sales tax off groceries. Generations would rise up and call him blessed.
— Ernie Dumas
EDITORIALS>>When second is first
Mike Huckabee’s campaign for president, which was on life support, got a shot of adrenalin Saturday — or was it morphine? He finished second behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Iowa Straw Poll, a hokey stunt by the Iowa Republican Party to raise money.
Huckabee declared that his showing — 18 percent of the roughly 14,300 people who participated — elevated him from the second to first tier of Republican candidates. The national media did reward him with some unprecedented attention, even a front-page story in The New York Times about his campaign jokes, which have been the hallmark of his campaign.
Although three of the four major contenders ducked the Iowa taffy pull altogether, Huckabee threw everything into it. Unable to raise money and stuck in the low single digits in national polls and even in Iowa, the former governor saw it as his only chance to obtain lift-off before the late-winter primaries that seem likely to settle everything. He has criss-crossed Iowa relentlessly promoting himself rather than the dour Sam Brownback of neighboring Kansas as the best choice of evangelical conservatives. He barely edged Brownback for the second spot.
Having nearly exhausted his pitiful campaign chest, the straw poll was do or die for Huckabee, and he survived. Now he must somehow realize the payoff: money. If the rich people who bankroll the candidates cannot be convinced that he is a serious contender, he will limp into the real Iowa caucus vote and the primaries with nothing to sustain him but his stale campaign humor.
He upended Brownback by less than 400 votes and that was thanks to an outfit called Fairtax.org, which has raised $5 million to tout a national sales tax during the presidential campaign. Huckabee jumped on their bandwagon early and the fair-taxers supplied the cavalry for his straw vote. It supplied buses and tickets to get sales tax supporters to the Ames campus to vote for Huckabee.
His common effort with the fair-tax fruitcakes got him into the coveted second spot in the straw poll and saved his campaign, but it will not help him in the larger campaign. The so-called Fair Tax, which has been around for nearly two decades, would replace federal income and payroll taxes with a national sales tax that would produce the same amount of federal revenues.
The fair-taxers say that would be 30 percent on every $1 purchase (or 23 percent of the final price after taxes), although tax economists say it would have to be much higher, up to 67 percent, to offset the loss of taxes in the mammoth black market that would develop. The idea of adding 67 percent, or even 30 percent, to your mortgage when you buy a new house, or to the price a new car, the doctor’s bill, a sack of groceries or the babysitter will not appeal to many voters.
The Fair Tax would send the resilient American economy into a tailspin and set up a tax-collection leviathan that would make the IRS look like a charity raffle.
Huckabee ought to be careful about embracing such silliness or it will imperil his chances of landing on the ticket with Romney or Rudy Giuliani, who will be looking for Southern balance. Stupidity is not balance. His record of progressive reform and willingness to raise taxes for good causes might be.
Huckabee declared that his showing — 18 percent of the roughly 14,300 people who participated — elevated him from the second to first tier of Republican candidates. The national media did reward him with some unprecedented attention, even a front-page story in The New York Times about his campaign jokes, which have been the hallmark of his campaign.
Although three of the four major contenders ducked the Iowa taffy pull altogether, Huckabee threw everything into it. Unable to raise money and stuck in the low single digits in national polls and even in Iowa, the former governor saw it as his only chance to obtain lift-off before the late-winter primaries that seem likely to settle everything. He has criss-crossed Iowa relentlessly promoting himself rather than the dour Sam Brownback of neighboring Kansas as the best choice of evangelical conservatives. He barely edged Brownback for the second spot.
Having nearly exhausted his pitiful campaign chest, the straw poll was do or die for Huckabee, and he survived. Now he must somehow realize the payoff: money. If the rich people who bankroll the candidates cannot be convinced that he is a serious contender, he will limp into the real Iowa caucus vote and the primaries with nothing to sustain him but his stale campaign humor.
He upended Brownback by less than 400 votes and that was thanks to an outfit called Fairtax.org, which has raised $5 million to tout a national sales tax during the presidential campaign. Huckabee jumped on their bandwagon early and the fair-taxers supplied the cavalry for his straw vote. It supplied buses and tickets to get sales tax supporters to the Ames campus to vote for Huckabee.
His common effort with the fair-tax fruitcakes got him into the coveted second spot in the straw poll and saved his campaign, but it will not help him in the larger campaign. The so-called Fair Tax, which has been around for nearly two decades, would replace federal income and payroll taxes with a national sales tax that would produce the same amount of federal revenues.
The fair-taxers say that would be 30 percent on every $1 purchase (or 23 percent of the final price after taxes), although tax economists say it would have to be much higher, up to 67 percent, to offset the loss of taxes in the mammoth black market that would develop. The idea of adding 67 percent, or even 30 percent, to your mortgage when you buy a new house, or to the price a new car, the doctor’s bill, a sack of groceries or the babysitter will not appeal to many voters.
The Fair Tax would send the resilient American economy into a tailspin and set up a tax-collection leviathan that would make the IRS look like a charity raffle.
Huckabee ought to be careful about embracing such silliness or it will imperil his chances of landing on the ticket with Romney or Rudy Giuliani, who will be looking for Southern balance. Stupidity is not balance. His record of progressive reform and willingness to raise taxes for good causes might be.
TOP STORY >>Group exploring jail tax options
By JEFFREY SMITH
Leader staff writer
Because Pulaski County voters turned down a dedicated quarter-cent sales tax last year for the jail, county officials are looking for ways to maximize the resources they have now, according to Allen Kerr, District 3 justice of the peace, who is chairing a public safety subcommittee.
The county needs the additional money to expand, rehabilitate and operate the county detention center, used by all cities and towns in the county, but until the public is ready, officials are implementing some of the 16 recommendations of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Task Force to managing funds and the jail more efficiently and with greater transparency, he said.
“You can’t take 15 years of wrong decisions and fix them overnight, you slowly have to chip away at it,” Kerr said.
The task force, chaired by former UALR Chancellor Charles Hathaway, suggested two comprehensive, expensive audits, one of the county’s finances, and the other of jobs and personnel.
Kerr’s subcommittee will make recommendations to the ways and means committee, which in turn can recommend ordinances to the entire quorum court.
At a subcommittee meeting Monday night, participants, including half-a-dozen quorum court members, suggested that the county sequester funds for public safety and make those financial and personnel audits a high priority, even though it will cost the county about $500,000.
Sheriff Doc Holladay said, “We want to close the North Little Rock jail facility, but would need to filter the prisoners into another facility. It’s a terrible excuse for a holding facility.”
He plans on repairing the roof at the regional detention center, which has needed repair for many years. The public safety subcommittee was expected to make recommendations to the ways and means committee Tuesday.
“The county is responsible for the courts, the jail, and public safety. We are working to do a better job at this,” Doug Reed, Justice of Peace District 1, said.
“We are brainstorming to get this problem into a positive motion,” Kerr said, “and to come up with solutions with the city and the county.” Committee members said the public should be able to review and understand the county’s annual reports.
Hathaway said, “The reports by the county treasurer, available to the public, need to be changed from the special language used by accountants and written at an eighth-grade reading level, simplified into understandable terms.”
An idea of using digital camera or video conferencing could save money on transporting detainees to court, and avoid exposing the public to potential danger, however a member at the meeting said some judges won’t allow video monitoring and want the prisoners brought before them in court.
Because some prevention, intervention and treatment programs work better than others, Hathaway recommended a national expert available from the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence out of Colorado, who can evaluate the programs. Then funds can be focused on the programs that do work.
Leader staff writer
Because Pulaski County voters turned down a dedicated quarter-cent sales tax last year for the jail, county officials are looking for ways to maximize the resources they have now, according to Allen Kerr, District 3 justice of the peace, who is chairing a public safety subcommittee.
The county needs the additional money to expand, rehabilitate and operate the county detention center, used by all cities and towns in the county, but until the public is ready, officials are implementing some of the 16 recommendations of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Task Force to managing funds and the jail more efficiently and with greater transparency, he said.
“You can’t take 15 years of wrong decisions and fix them overnight, you slowly have to chip away at it,” Kerr said.
The task force, chaired by former UALR Chancellor Charles Hathaway, suggested two comprehensive, expensive audits, one of the county’s finances, and the other of jobs and personnel.
Kerr’s subcommittee will make recommendations to the ways and means committee, which in turn can recommend ordinances to the entire quorum court.
At a subcommittee meeting Monday night, participants, including half-a-dozen quorum court members, suggested that the county sequester funds for public safety and make those financial and personnel audits a high priority, even though it will cost the county about $500,000.
Sheriff Doc Holladay said, “We want to close the North Little Rock jail facility, but would need to filter the prisoners into another facility. It’s a terrible excuse for a holding facility.”
He plans on repairing the roof at the regional detention center, which has needed repair for many years. The public safety subcommittee was expected to make recommendations to the ways and means committee Tuesday.
“The county is responsible for the courts, the jail, and public safety. We are working to do a better job at this,” Doug Reed, Justice of Peace District 1, said.
“We are brainstorming to get this problem into a positive motion,” Kerr said, “and to come up with solutions with the city and the county.” Committee members said the public should be able to review and understand the county’s annual reports.
Hathaway said, “The reports by the county treasurer, available to the public, need to be changed from the special language used by accountants and written at an eighth-grade reading level, simplified into understandable terms.”
An idea of using digital camera or video conferencing could save money on transporting detainees to court, and avoid exposing the public to potential danger, however a member at the meeting said some judges won’t allow video monitoring and want the prisoners brought before them in court.
Because some prevention, intervention and treatment programs work better than others, Hathaway recommended a national expert available from the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence out of Colorado, who can evaluate the programs. Then funds can be focused on the programs that do work.
TOP STORY >>Well water to stabilize city’s rates
By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer
Water rates doubled in Cabot about four years ago to pay for improvements to the system and lay the 30-inch line to connect to Central Arkansas Water at a cost of about $30 million.
But the commission that now runs the water and sewer systems says customers need not fear another rate hike for eight to 10 years because the state has granted a request to keep using the well field long after it was supposed to close down.
Cabot’s original permit to take water from its wells between Beebe and Lonoke said the wells were to be shut down in 2010 when the city connected to lines that were supposed to come from Greers Ferry Lake through the Lonoke / White Water Project.
That project faltered after Cabot pulled out in favor of CAW, although it has been revamped and could still be completed sometime in the future with Cabot as one of its members.
In the meantime, Cabot asked Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, which issued the city’s permit to take water from its wells, to increase the allowable amount from 3 million gallons a day to 6 million gallons through 2030.
That request was denied, but Natural Resources has agreed to allow the city to take up to 6 million gallons a day until the connection to CAW is completed in 2010 and 3 million gallons a day until 2023.
After the cutoff point, the wells can still be used for emergency backup.
The decision from Natural Resources is a favorable one for ratepayers because it means Cabot WaterWorks will be able to supply much of its own water even after the connection is made to CAW.
That means the rates that were increased to pay for the connection to CAW won’t have to go up again to actually pay for the water.
But even though water rates are expected to stay the same for years to come Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission says sewer rates will have to go up in the near future to pay for improvements to the collection system.
City residents voted to extend a one-cent sales tax in great part to pay for a $10 million sewer treatment plant without raising rates.
The new plant, scheduled for completion by the end of the year, should take care of city sewage for the next 20 years. But the sewer collection system is not keeping up with the city’s growth and commission has hired an engineer to develop plans to remedy the situation.
Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission have been in full control of the water and sewer departments, which they named Cabot WaterWorks, for less than two years.
The five-member commission takes pride in the fact that although their discussion is often lively, they have always come together in the end and never had a vote that wasn’t unanimous.
Don Keesee, the banker who often took on the role of devil’s advocate during discussions, was also the member who most frequently talked with pride about the commission’s solidarity.
Interviewed by phone Tuesday, Keesee, who resigned from the commission this month to become president of Regions Bank in Springdale and Fayetteville, said he had never served with a group that he respected more.
“They’re ethical and moral and they are there for the citizens,” Keesee said.
“There were never any personal agendas. It’s unbelievable how far they’ve come and what it’s done.
With its combined experience in business, banking and engineering, Keesee called the commission “a beautiful marriage of abilities.”
Keesee said after he accepted the position with Regions, he had to leave for northwest Arkansas almost immediately.
The commission has decided to advertise to find someone of comparable ability to replace him.
Leader staff writer
Water rates doubled in Cabot about four years ago to pay for improvements to the system and lay the 30-inch line to connect to Central Arkansas Water at a cost of about $30 million.
But the commission that now runs the water and sewer systems says customers need not fear another rate hike for eight to 10 years because the state has granted a request to keep using the well field long after it was supposed to close down.
Cabot’s original permit to take water from its wells between Beebe and Lonoke said the wells were to be shut down in 2010 when the city connected to lines that were supposed to come from Greers Ferry Lake through the Lonoke / White Water Project.
That project faltered after Cabot pulled out in favor of CAW, although it has been revamped and could still be completed sometime in the future with Cabot as one of its members.
In the meantime, Cabot asked Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, which issued the city’s permit to take water from its wells, to increase the allowable amount from 3 million gallons a day to 6 million gallons through 2030.
That request was denied, but Natural Resources has agreed to allow the city to take up to 6 million gallons a day until the connection to CAW is completed in 2010 and 3 million gallons a day until 2023.
After the cutoff point, the wells can still be used for emergency backup.
The decision from Natural Resources is a favorable one for ratepayers because it means Cabot WaterWorks will be able to supply much of its own water even after the connection is made to CAW.
That means the rates that were increased to pay for the connection to CAW won’t have to go up again to actually pay for the water.
But even though water rates are expected to stay the same for years to come Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission says sewer rates will have to go up in the near future to pay for improvements to the collection system.
City residents voted to extend a one-cent sales tax in great part to pay for a $10 million sewer treatment plant without raising rates.
The new plant, scheduled for completion by the end of the year, should take care of city sewage for the next 20 years. But the sewer collection system is not keeping up with the city’s growth and commission has hired an engineer to develop plans to remedy the situation.
Cabot Water and Wastewater Commission have been in full control of the water and sewer departments, which they named Cabot WaterWorks, for less than two years.
The five-member commission takes pride in the fact that although their discussion is often lively, they have always come together in the end and never had a vote that wasn’t unanimous.
Don Keesee, the banker who often took on the role of devil’s advocate during discussions, was also the member who most frequently talked with pride about the commission’s solidarity.
Interviewed by phone Tuesday, Keesee, who resigned from the commission this month to become president of Regions Bank in Springdale and Fayetteville, said he had never served with a group that he respected more.
“They’re ethical and moral and they are there for the citizens,” Keesee said.
“There were never any personal agendas. It’s unbelievable how far they’ve come and what it’s done.
With its combined experience in business, banking and engineering, Keesee called the commission “a beautiful marriage of abilities.”
Keesee said after he accepted the position with Regions, he had to leave for northwest Arkansas almost immediately.
The commission has decided to advertise to find someone of comparable ability to replace him.
TOP STORY >>Rezoning gets board approval
By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
After more than an hour of discussion and debate in front of a standing room only crowd Monday night at city hall, the Jacksonville Planning Commission, by a 4 to 3 vote, approved a rezoning that would allow an 80-lot subdivision to be built near Loop Road and Northeastern Avenue.
But turned down the developer’s basic sketch plan for the area because there were still too many concerns and questions about the plan that needed to be addressed.
Commissioners voted to rezone the 19.5 acres from R-0 (single family homes with 70x120 foot lots) to R-1 (single family homes with 60x100 foot lots).
The smaller lots would allow the developer to put in about 15 more homes and would allow him to build garden or patio-style homes, which have less yard to maintain than a normal home.
“I have no intentions of leaving the land undeveloped,” said the developer Jack Wilson right before the commission voted.
The rezoning must now go through the city council for final approval.
The commission and the packed-in-tight audience had concerns with traffic, train noise and the size of the homes.
Wilson told commissioners that in his other subdivisions in other cities he had $400,000 homes across the street from $225,000 homes and 4,000-square-foot homes across from 1,625-square foot homes.
The minimum size of the homes he proposed to build in the new subdivision was 1,500 square feet, smaller than the surrounding Foxwood homes.
“The minimum is 1,500 square feet, but we will build what the market wants,” he said.
Wilson also promised to build a 10 to 12 foot berm with timber growth on top to buffer the subdivision and current residents from the train noise.
Charles Evans, one of the spokesmen for the large group of residents, told the commissioners, “We are here at your mercy. The only people who will benefit from this subdivision is the developer and real estate people. Why does it have to be rezoned? Why not let it stay large lots and match the rest of Foxwood?”
Evans also expressed concerns about the traffic. “There are two schools in the area and traffic is already bad. This subdivision will add at least 150 more cars.”
Dan Broughton, another concerned resident, read a copy of a letter that he and his wife wrote and gave to each commissioner. He touched on traffic concerns, safety of the neighborhood kids, train noise and property values. “Smaller lots and smaller houses will detract from the larger lots and houses already in existence in the Foxwood subdivision and lower the value of existing homes,” he said.
Numerous residents suggested that Wilson add more street in and out of the subdivision and put the major entrances on Loop Road.
Wilson replied, “I’m appalled the way they want to treat the people buying the homes. Having entrances off a commercial highway is dangerous for seniors.”
Commissioner Bart Gray Jr., in making the recommendation to approve the rezoning, said this was a good opportunity for the city, but even though he was for the rezoning, felt the developer needed to come back with a better plan before he could vote for the sketch plan.
Commissioners Gray, Susan Dollar, John Herbold and Tom Evans voted to approve the rezoning, while commissioners Art Brannen, Chad Young and Alderman Bill Howard voted no.
Commissioners also denied plans that were presented for an additional 10 to 12 homes off Edinburgh because traffic concerns had not been addressed like the commissioners had asked the developer to do.
Jim Moore, vice president of the Stonewall Property Owners Association, told the commissioners in his efforts to get the plan denied, “You guys are supposed to protect us. Edinburgh is a small feeder street and cannot handle the construction equipment or projected traffic.”
Developer Jim Peacock told the commission that there were at least 11 other subdivisions with just one way in and out like his proposed Edinburgh Subdivision, all with the same size street as Edinburgh, and all apparently working fine.
Last month, Peacock brought a plan before the council that called for a mix of single-family homes and multi-family units for the land he owns. Commissioners asked him to bring it back with only the single family homes and to address the traffic concerns. He brought back a plan for single-family homes, but no changes or suggestions for traffic flow.
In other commission business:
Commissioners approved a three-lot sketch plat for the Besancon Property off Red Fox Lane.
The commission approved the sketch plat for Delaney Heights, a new single-family home subdivision east of Laurel Street and adjacent to Graham Road.
Commissioners approved the final plat of Wendi’s Corner which will allow a house to be built on two lots behind Western Sizzlin.
Commissioners approved the final plat of the Northlake Subdivision, Phase X-C.
The commission approved the final plats of lots 1 and 2 of the Jacksonville Commerce Subdivision off General Samuels, which will give the city a better chance to sell the property to industrial or commercial enterprises.
Commissioners turned down a request from Marshall Road Pharmacy to extend the building until a variance from the Board of Adjustments could received.
Leader staff writer
After more than an hour of discussion and debate in front of a standing room only crowd Monday night at city hall, the Jacksonville Planning Commission, by a 4 to 3 vote, approved a rezoning that would allow an 80-lot subdivision to be built near Loop Road and Northeastern Avenue.
But turned down the developer’s basic sketch plan for the area because there were still too many concerns and questions about the plan that needed to be addressed.
Commissioners voted to rezone the 19.5 acres from R-0 (single family homes with 70x120 foot lots) to R-1 (single family homes with 60x100 foot lots).
The smaller lots would allow the developer to put in about 15 more homes and would allow him to build garden or patio-style homes, which have less yard to maintain than a normal home.
“I have no intentions of leaving the land undeveloped,” said the developer Jack Wilson right before the commission voted.
The rezoning must now go through the city council for final approval.
The commission and the packed-in-tight audience had concerns with traffic, train noise and the size of the homes.
Wilson told commissioners that in his other subdivisions in other cities he had $400,000 homes across the street from $225,000 homes and 4,000-square-foot homes across from 1,625-square foot homes.
The minimum size of the homes he proposed to build in the new subdivision was 1,500 square feet, smaller than the surrounding Foxwood homes.
“The minimum is 1,500 square feet, but we will build what the market wants,” he said.
Wilson also promised to build a 10 to 12 foot berm with timber growth on top to buffer the subdivision and current residents from the train noise.
Charles Evans, one of the spokesmen for the large group of residents, told the commissioners, “We are here at your mercy. The only people who will benefit from this subdivision is the developer and real estate people. Why does it have to be rezoned? Why not let it stay large lots and match the rest of Foxwood?”
Evans also expressed concerns about the traffic. “There are two schools in the area and traffic is already bad. This subdivision will add at least 150 more cars.”
Dan Broughton, another concerned resident, read a copy of a letter that he and his wife wrote and gave to each commissioner. He touched on traffic concerns, safety of the neighborhood kids, train noise and property values. “Smaller lots and smaller houses will detract from the larger lots and houses already in existence in the Foxwood subdivision and lower the value of existing homes,” he said.
Numerous residents suggested that Wilson add more street in and out of the subdivision and put the major entrances on Loop Road.
Wilson replied, “I’m appalled the way they want to treat the people buying the homes. Having entrances off a commercial highway is dangerous for seniors.”
Commissioner Bart Gray Jr., in making the recommendation to approve the rezoning, said this was a good opportunity for the city, but even though he was for the rezoning, felt the developer needed to come back with a better plan before he could vote for the sketch plan.
Commissioners Gray, Susan Dollar, John Herbold and Tom Evans voted to approve the rezoning, while commissioners Art Brannen, Chad Young and Alderman Bill Howard voted no.
Commissioners also denied plans that were presented for an additional 10 to 12 homes off Edinburgh because traffic concerns had not been addressed like the commissioners had asked the developer to do.
Jim Moore, vice president of the Stonewall Property Owners Association, told the commissioners in his efforts to get the plan denied, “You guys are supposed to protect us. Edinburgh is a small feeder street and cannot handle the construction equipment or projected traffic.”
Developer Jim Peacock told the commission that there were at least 11 other subdivisions with just one way in and out like his proposed Edinburgh Subdivision, all with the same size street as Edinburgh, and all apparently working fine.
Last month, Peacock brought a plan before the council that called for a mix of single-family homes and multi-family units for the land he owns. Commissioners asked him to bring it back with only the single family homes and to address the traffic concerns. He brought back a plan for single-family homes, but no changes or suggestions for traffic flow.
In other commission business:
Commissioners approved a three-lot sketch plat for the Besancon Property off Red Fox Lane.
The commission approved the sketch plat for Delaney Heights, a new single-family home subdivision east of Laurel Street and adjacent to Graham Road.
Commissioners approved the final plat of Wendi’s Corner which will allow a house to be built on two lots behind Western Sizzlin.
Commissioners approved the final plat of the Northlake Subdivision, Phase X-C.
The commission approved the final plats of lots 1 and 2 of the Jacksonville Commerce Subdivision off General Samuels, which will give the city a better chance to sell the property to industrial or commercial enterprises.
Commissioners turned down a request from Marshall Road Pharmacy to extend the building until a variance from the Board of Adjustments could received.
FROM THE PUBLISHER >>My father: A witness to 20th Century
When my father passed away at the age of 85 late in the afternoon on Aug. 5, one of the doctors at the emergency room at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami called my brother Steve with the terrible news.
Our mother was with our father, who’d been transported to the hospital an hour earlier by ambulance, but she couldn’t convey the news to either one of her sons, so the doctor called Steve, who called me, and we called the rest of our families with the shocking news.
Ferenc Feldman had been in failing health for years, but he’d survived one crisis after another, all the way back to his youth in rural Hungary, where the Nazis had rounded up his family and killed them in Auschwitz. But they couldn’t kill my father, and later he took his young family out of communist Hungary as the Soviet army reoccupied the country.
He rebuilt his life in America, which is why it was shocking that his body finally gave out decades after fascist brutes couldn’t crush him.
We mourned for a week in our parents’ apartment and said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, which is not about death, but a reaffirmation of life and religious faith that kept my father alive in Nazi death camps and communist jail cells.
The World War II generation is passing quickly, and those who survive are well into their 80s and 90s. My father’s cousin, Rudy, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, is 92, and his brother, Sidney, a veteran of the Pacific theater, died a couple of years ago at the age of 85.
They were born in America after their fathers (my grandfather’s brothers) left Hungary around the First World War, but for those who stayed behind in Europe, there was death and destruction.
My brother made these notes after our father passed away as we sat shiva:
“It is hard to imagine a more unlikely place for great world events to unfold than the Nyirseg (birch tree) region of eastern Hungary. It is a sleepy backwater even today, and it was even more removed from the wider world when our father was born there in the summer of 1922. You would have thought that this out-of-the-way corner of the globe would have shielded its inhabitants from the world’s miseries, yet our father suffered twice from the 20th century’s ugliest and most brutal political movements—Nazism and communism.
“In 1943, when he was just 21, our father and his cousin Imre, together with all able-bodied young Jewish men in Hungary, were impressed into labor battalions attached to the Hungarian army. Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. Conditions varied depending on the whims of battalion commanders, but as the Second World War progressed, and as the Russian army moved closer and closer to Hungary, the forced laborers’ situation deteriorated. Our father’s battalion was dispatched to a mountainous region of the Ukraine to dig ditches. The battalion had to spend a night on the freezing mountainside; the young men huddled together, not knowing which of them would awaken in the morning.
“As the Russians moved even closer from the east, the labor battalions were moved farther west. By the bitterly cold winter of 1945, our father’s group was put on forced march from western Hungary to central Austria. Those who fell by the icy roadside were shot by the Germans. By late April, our father’s group had reached the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp. He, his cousin and the other prisoners (including, as chance would have it, my future father-in-law) were liberated on May 5th at the nearby sub-camp of Gunskirchen. Our father and his cousin were the only members of their extended family in Europe to survive the Holocaust.
“Despite that bloody history, our father decided to return home. He soon met a young Jewish woman, also a survivor who had lost her entire family. They married in 1947; my brother was born the next summer and I was born in early 1954.
“In Hungary in the late 1940s and early 1950s, our parents had to live under a second delusional, totalitarian political system: communism. Faced with the anti-religious ideology of communism, our parents had to practice their Judaism quietly. Many others abandoned their faith entirely, with many not even telling their children they were Jewish.
“By October 1956 Hungarians could no longer stand the repressive communist regime and mounted a major uprising. Statues of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were toppled, and Russian tanks withdrew from the country — only to return in a few days. Our parents became frightened and packed what they could and with a handful of other families hired a guide to lead them across the border to Austria. It was December 21, 1956, and the group had to trudge through heavy snow; my father carried me on his back.
“After more than four years in various refugee camps, we came to America. We settled in Chicago, where our father had two uncles and an aunt who had left Europe before the Second World War. Here, our parents were at last free from religious persecution. They raised their two sons and worked at various jobs until they were able to start their own business caring for elderly people—an ordinary immigrant story until you recall what our parents had to survive just to get here.
“On the day before he died, our father was in his favorite place, after his home, at Sabbath services in his synagogue. During his lifetime, he had seen many of the great events of the 20th century: the destruction of Europe’s Jews, communist repression and the Jewish national rebirth represented by the vibrant and flourishing State of Israel. Among the last words he heard in the synagogue were from the Book of Isaiah, perhaps the most magisterial book in the Hebrew Bible: “For God will comfort Zion, he will comfort all her ruins. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like God’s garden. Joy and gladness will be found there, thanksgiving and the sound of music.” (Isaiah 51:3)
It is said that tears clean the souls of the dead as they pass to another life. That’s where Ferenc Feldman is resting now. May his memory be a blessing.
Our mother was with our father, who’d been transported to the hospital an hour earlier by ambulance, but she couldn’t convey the news to either one of her sons, so the doctor called Steve, who called me, and we called the rest of our families with the shocking news.
Ferenc Feldman had been in failing health for years, but he’d survived one crisis after another, all the way back to his youth in rural Hungary, where the Nazis had rounded up his family and killed them in Auschwitz. But they couldn’t kill my father, and later he took his young family out of communist Hungary as the Soviet army reoccupied the country.
He rebuilt his life in America, which is why it was shocking that his body finally gave out decades after fascist brutes couldn’t crush him.
We mourned for a week in our parents’ apartment and said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, which is not about death, but a reaffirmation of life and religious faith that kept my father alive in Nazi death camps and communist jail cells.
The World War II generation is passing quickly, and those who survive are well into their 80s and 90s. My father’s cousin, Rudy, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, is 92, and his brother, Sidney, a veteran of the Pacific theater, died a couple of years ago at the age of 85.
They were born in America after their fathers (my grandfather’s brothers) left Hungary around the First World War, but for those who stayed behind in Europe, there was death and destruction.
My brother made these notes after our father passed away as we sat shiva:
“It is hard to imagine a more unlikely place for great world events to unfold than the Nyirseg (birch tree) region of eastern Hungary. It is a sleepy backwater even today, and it was even more removed from the wider world when our father was born there in the summer of 1922. You would have thought that this out-of-the-way corner of the globe would have shielded its inhabitants from the world’s miseries, yet our father suffered twice from the 20th century’s ugliest and most brutal political movements—Nazism and communism.
“In 1943, when he was just 21, our father and his cousin Imre, together with all able-bodied young Jewish men in Hungary, were impressed into labor battalions attached to the Hungarian army. Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. Conditions varied depending on the whims of battalion commanders, but as the Second World War progressed, and as the Russian army moved closer and closer to Hungary, the forced laborers’ situation deteriorated. Our father’s battalion was dispatched to a mountainous region of the Ukraine to dig ditches. The battalion had to spend a night on the freezing mountainside; the young men huddled together, not knowing which of them would awaken in the morning.
“As the Russians moved even closer from the east, the labor battalions were moved farther west. By the bitterly cold winter of 1945, our father’s group was put on forced march from western Hungary to central Austria. Those who fell by the icy roadside were shot by the Germans. By late April, our father’s group had reached the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp. He, his cousin and the other prisoners (including, as chance would have it, my future father-in-law) were liberated on May 5th at the nearby sub-camp of Gunskirchen. Our father and his cousin were the only members of their extended family in Europe to survive the Holocaust.
“Despite that bloody history, our father decided to return home. He soon met a young Jewish woman, also a survivor who had lost her entire family. They married in 1947; my brother was born the next summer and I was born in early 1954.
“In Hungary in the late 1940s and early 1950s, our parents had to live under a second delusional, totalitarian political system: communism. Faced with the anti-religious ideology of communism, our parents had to practice their Judaism quietly. Many others abandoned their faith entirely, with many not even telling their children they were Jewish.
“By October 1956 Hungarians could no longer stand the repressive communist regime and mounted a major uprising. Statues of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were toppled, and Russian tanks withdrew from the country — only to return in a few days. Our parents became frightened and packed what they could and with a handful of other families hired a guide to lead them across the border to Austria. It was December 21, 1956, and the group had to trudge through heavy snow; my father carried me on his back.
“After more than four years in various refugee camps, we came to America. We settled in Chicago, where our father had two uncles and an aunt who had left Europe before the Second World War. Here, our parents were at last free from religious persecution. They raised their two sons and worked at various jobs until they were able to start their own business caring for elderly people—an ordinary immigrant story until you recall what our parents had to survive just to get here.
“On the day before he died, our father was in his favorite place, after his home, at Sabbath services in his synagogue. During his lifetime, he had seen many of the great events of the 20th century: the destruction of Europe’s Jews, communist repression and the Jewish national rebirth represented by the vibrant and flourishing State of Israel. Among the last words he heard in the synagogue were from the Book of Isaiah, perhaps the most magisterial book in the Hebrew Bible: “For God will comfort Zion, he will comfort all her ruins. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like God’s garden. Joy and gladness will be found there, thanksgiving and the sound of music.” (Isaiah 51:3)
It is said that tears clean the souls of the dead as they pass to another life. That’s where Ferenc Feldman is resting now. May his memory be a blessing.
TOP STORY >>Dog ban rejected in Ward
By HEATHER HARTSELL
Leader staff writer
Ward City Council decided Monday not to follow the trend of banning pit bulls as neighboring cities had, but instead voted to keep their animal ordinance, which includes a section on vicious/dangerous dogs.
Alderman Charles Gastineau made the motion to do away with the prepared ordinance banning specific breeds, saying the city didn’t need it.
“We have a dangerous dog ordinance, let it do its job. I’m not for breed specific banning and don’t think we need this,” Gastineau told the council.
The motion passed 4-1, the only opposing vote by Maurice Jackson.
Alderman Jeff Shaver agreed the city didn’t need to ban specific breeds, noting that the city currently does not have the facilities to enforce such a ban.
“If the animal ordinance is strong enough, and ours is, it will cover vicious dogs,” Shaver said. “There will always be a dog hated by certain people because of its viciousness,” he added.
Gastineau believes ordinances put in place by cities such as Sherwood, Jacksonville, Cabot and Lonoke are “knee-jerk reactions” to attention-grabbing incidents that have recently occurred.
Ward’s animal ordinance, enforced by animal control officer Jason Ellerbee, includes a section on vicious dogs. As stated in the ordinance, the term vicious dog means any member of the canine family that has exhibited fierce or vicious behavior towards a person, has attacked a person or another animal with such severity as to cause physical injury or property damage, or is the offspring of a domestic dog and an innately wild animal.
The behavior of the dog is not considered vicious if it was provoked or teased. According to the ordinance, if the animal control officer deems a dog vicious, the owner is notified and the dog is taken into custody; it won’t be released until owner requirements are met or unless ordered by the court. The owner also has the right to appeal the decision before a committee of peers as set forth in the ordinance.
To release the animal, the owner has to sign a written agreement stating that unless or until the dog is deemed no longer vicious, it will be controlled in a manner consistent with the ordinance when inside the Ward city limits.
If determined to be truly vicious, the owner must have “insurance of warranty bond on said canine in an amount no less than $100,000 if they wish to maintain the animal” and follow the rules on controlling the dog.
If the dog is not picked up within five days after a decision has been reached, animal control may humanely destroy the vicious dog. If it’s not vicious and not picked up, the dog can be adopted or destroyed in accordance with the ordinances, rules and regulations of Ward and the animal control department that generally apply to all impounded dogs.
The council listened to Bill Seidenschwarz, a dog lover and owner who lives near Cocklebur Road, who told the council he is now taking care of upwards of 30 dogs at his home that the owners can no longer keep because of the banning.
“I’ve had messages in my mailbox, pictures – ‘I’ve had this dog since it was six-weeks-old. I love it but I can’t keep it. Will you please take it?” he said, adding, “They call me at all hours of the night and bring dogs by.”
“I spend about $800 a month out of my pocket to take care of them. I do this because this breed deserves to be taken care of and someday, somewhere, somebody will understand its not a bad dog,” Seidenschwarz said.
He informed the council that there is no breed of dog recognized by any registry as pit bull.
“There never has been, never will be. It’s a nickname given to dogs by people who don’t know of what they speak,” he said.
Seidenschwarz continued, telling the council it’s a people problem. “We need someone to educate the public on how to care for a dog, how to feed it, how to contain them,” he said. “We need a common sense, logical approach to it,” Seidenschwarz added.
“You can follow what your sister cities have done or you can step forward and do what is right,” he told the council in closing.
Roger Schnyer, a Lonoke County resident representing Responsible Owners of Arkansas Dogs, also addressed the council and supplied them with a list of dog breeds banned throughout the United States.
On that list, compiled by Responsible Dog Owners of the Western States (RDOWS), of which Schnyer is the Arkansas director, are such breeds as the Alaskan Malamute, Blue Heeler, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Bulldog, German Shepherd, Great Dane, Labrador Retriever, Mastiff, Pug and Saint Bernard, just to name a handful of the 75 breeds on the list. The complete list can be found on RDOWS’ Website, www.povn.com/rdows. According to Schnyer, the Responsible Dog Owners of Arkansas have filed a lawsuit against Lonoke and are working on a suit against Jacksonville because of their breed-specific bans.
“Their ordinances are unconstitutional six times over,” he said, offering his services for free to show the city what a constitutional dog ordinance can do and keep Ward off the list of cities being sued over unconstitutional ordinances.
“I’ll come here any time, at my expense, to sit down with you and go over what can be a constitutional law that will cover all aspects of raising a dog, breeding a dog, feeding a dog, housing a dog and everything that will stand constitutional muster. I’m here to help you, not hurt you,” Schnyer said, “Don’t pass breed-specific legislation because it’s not constitutional and it won’t hold up.”
Mayor Art Brooke told those present that the city had done its homework on the issue and realized a breed specific ban had some negatives, specifically the cost to the city to enforce the ban.
“We’ve put out the best product we can to represent the people of Ward and the animal owners,” Brooke said. “If people took care of their animals we wouldn’t even be talking about this,” he added.
Brooke had obtained area breed-specific ordinances passed recently. “Sherwood has had an ordinance in place for 20 years and had no problems until pit bulls became an issue but they still don’t have a problem because their ordinance has held up,” Brooke said.
While an ordinance was still being discussed, the mayor said the city had been trying to make a good ordinance that owners could live with and keep their pets, but at the same time take care of the citizens of Ward.
Leader staff writer
Ward City Council decided Monday not to follow the trend of banning pit bulls as neighboring cities had, but instead voted to keep their animal ordinance, which includes a section on vicious/dangerous dogs.
Alderman Charles Gastineau made the motion to do away with the prepared ordinance banning specific breeds, saying the city didn’t need it.
“We have a dangerous dog ordinance, let it do its job. I’m not for breed specific banning and don’t think we need this,” Gastineau told the council.
The motion passed 4-1, the only opposing vote by Maurice Jackson.
Alderman Jeff Shaver agreed the city didn’t need to ban specific breeds, noting that the city currently does not have the facilities to enforce such a ban.
“If the animal ordinance is strong enough, and ours is, it will cover vicious dogs,” Shaver said. “There will always be a dog hated by certain people because of its viciousness,” he added.
Gastineau believes ordinances put in place by cities such as Sherwood, Jacksonville, Cabot and Lonoke are “knee-jerk reactions” to attention-grabbing incidents that have recently occurred.
Ward’s animal ordinance, enforced by animal control officer Jason Ellerbee, includes a section on vicious dogs. As stated in the ordinance, the term vicious dog means any member of the canine family that has exhibited fierce or vicious behavior towards a person, has attacked a person or another animal with such severity as to cause physical injury or property damage, or is the offspring of a domestic dog and an innately wild animal.
The behavior of the dog is not considered vicious if it was provoked or teased. According to the ordinance, if the animal control officer deems a dog vicious, the owner is notified and the dog is taken into custody; it won’t be released until owner requirements are met or unless ordered by the court. The owner also has the right to appeal the decision before a committee of peers as set forth in the ordinance.
To release the animal, the owner has to sign a written agreement stating that unless or until the dog is deemed no longer vicious, it will be controlled in a manner consistent with the ordinance when inside the Ward city limits.
If determined to be truly vicious, the owner must have “insurance of warranty bond on said canine in an amount no less than $100,000 if they wish to maintain the animal” and follow the rules on controlling the dog.
If the dog is not picked up within five days after a decision has been reached, animal control may humanely destroy the vicious dog. If it’s not vicious and not picked up, the dog can be adopted or destroyed in accordance with the ordinances, rules and regulations of Ward and the animal control department that generally apply to all impounded dogs.
The council listened to Bill Seidenschwarz, a dog lover and owner who lives near Cocklebur Road, who told the council he is now taking care of upwards of 30 dogs at his home that the owners can no longer keep because of the banning.
“I’ve had messages in my mailbox, pictures – ‘I’ve had this dog since it was six-weeks-old. I love it but I can’t keep it. Will you please take it?” he said, adding, “They call me at all hours of the night and bring dogs by.”
“I spend about $800 a month out of my pocket to take care of them. I do this because this breed deserves to be taken care of and someday, somewhere, somebody will understand its not a bad dog,” Seidenschwarz said.
He informed the council that there is no breed of dog recognized by any registry as pit bull.
“There never has been, never will be. It’s a nickname given to dogs by people who don’t know of what they speak,” he said.
Seidenschwarz continued, telling the council it’s a people problem. “We need someone to educate the public on how to care for a dog, how to feed it, how to contain them,” he said. “We need a common sense, logical approach to it,” Seidenschwarz added.
“You can follow what your sister cities have done or you can step forward and do what is right,” he told the council in closing.
Roger Schnyer, a Lonoke County resident representing Responsible Owners of Arkansas Dogs, also addressed the council and supplied them with a list of dog breeds banned throughout the United States.
On that list, compiled by Responsible Dog Owners of the Western States (RDOWS), of which Schnyer is the Arkansas director, are such breeds as the Alaskan Malamute, Blue Heeler, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Bulldog, German Shepherd, Great Dane, Labrador Retriever, Mastiff, Pug and Saint Bernard, just to name a handful of the 75 breeds on the list. The complete list can be found on RDOWS’ Website, www.povn.com/rdows. According to Schnyer, the Responsible Dog Owners of Arkansas have filed a lawsuit against Lonoke and are working on a suit against Jacksonville because of their breed-specific bans.
“Their ordinances are unconstitutional six times over,” he said, offering his services for free to show the city what a constitutional dog ordinance can do and keep Ward off the list of cities being sued over unconstitutional ordinances.
“I’ll come here any time, at my expense, to sit down with you and go over what can be a constitutional law that will cover all aspects of raising a dog, breeding a dog, feeding a dog, housing a dog and everything that will stand constitutional muster. I’m here to help you, not hurt you,” Schnyer said, “Don’t pass breed-specific legislation because it’s not constitutional and it won’t hold up.”
Mayor Art Brooke told those present that the city had done its homework on the issue and realized a breed specific ban had some negatives, specifically the cost to the city to enforce the ban.
“We’ve put out the best product we can to represent the people of Ward and the animal owners,” Brooke said. “If people took care of their animals we wouldn’t even be talking about this,” he added.
Brooke had obtained area breed-specific ordinances passed recently. “Sherwood has had an ordinance in place for 20 years and had no problems until pit bulls became an issue but they still don’t have a problem because their ordinance has held up,” Brooke said.
While an ordinance was still being discussed, the mayor said the city had been trying to make a good ordinance that owners could live with and keep their pets, but at the same time take care of the citizens of Ward.
TOP STORY >>PCSSD splitting district distant action
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader staff writer
Following a loud and emotional consideration of Bishop James Bolden’s proposed resolution in support of a stand-alone Jacksonville School District Tuesday night, the Pulaski County Special School District board instead regrouped to unanimously direct the district’s attorney to pursue unitary status, at least in the area of student assignment.
In a related issue a public hearing has been set for 6 p.m. Friday at Jacksonville City Hall to gather public input about a new math and science charter school for the area.
A designation of unitary status is a prerequisite to getting out from under the 20-year-old court-enforced desegregation agreement and to any consideration of a Jacksonville School District.
A unitary school system is one in which the school district has eliminated the old racially segregated dual school system.
Until District Judge Bill Wilson releases PCSSD from the agreement for achieving unitary status, there can be no Jacksonville district.
Not even Bolden liked the wording of the resolution he brought before the board, but he was essentially asking for the board members to endorse the concept of a Jacksonville district.
With caveats and conditions, each board member did express support for such a district.
Charlie Wood said he believed Jacksonville had the right to have its own district, but he wanted to make sure it was not at the expense of his Sherwood constituents. Noting that the people of Sherwood might want their own district, Wood said he as “a little afraid of letting Jacksonville out there first.”
Danny Gilliland, who represents northern Pulaski County, said he favored a Jacksonville district as long as North Pulaski High School and its feeder schools were included.
Board President Gwen Williams said she favored the idea, but had “conditions.”
“I will support Dr. Bolden,” said Mildred Tatum.
Debby Murphy said she supported the idea in principal, but wanted to table the motion and come back with more information and better wording. Superintendent James Sharp said if Bolden was seeking assurance that the district would not stand in the way of a Jacksonville district, he had it.
Leader staff writer
Following a loud and emotional consideration of Bishop James Bolden’s proposed resolution in support of a stand-alone Jacksonville School District Tuesday night, the Pulaski County Special School District board instead regrouped to unanimously direct the district’s attorney to pursue unitary status, at least in the area of student assignment.
In a related issue a public hearing has been set for 6 p.m. Friday at Jacksonville City Hall to gather public input about a new math and science charter school for the area.
A designation of unitary status is a prerequisite to getting out from under the 20-year-old court-enforced desegregation agreement and to any consideration of a Jacksonville School District.
A unitary school system is one in which the school district has eliminated the old racially segregated dual school system.
Until District Judge Bill Wilson releases PCSSD from the agreement for achieving unitary status, there can be no Jacksonville district.
Not even Bolden liked the wording of the resolution he brought before the board, but he was essentially asking for the board members to endorse the concept of a Jacksonville district.
With caveats and conditions, each board member did express support for such a district.
Charlie Wood said he believed Jacksonville had the right to have its own district, but he wanted to make sure it was not at the expense of his Sherwood constituents. Noting that the people of Sherwood might want their own district, Wood said he as “a little afraid of letting Jacksonville out there first.”
Danny Gilliland, who represents northern Pulaski County, said he favored a Jacksonville district as long as North Pulaski High School and its feeder schools were included.
Board President Gwen Williams said she favored the idea, but had “conditions.”
“I will support Dr. Bolden,” said Mildred Tatum.
Debby Murphy said she supported the idea in principal, but wanted to table the motion and come back with more information and better wording. Superintendent James Sharp said if Bolden was seeking assurance that the district would not stand in the way of a Jacksonville district, he had it.
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