In Your Dreams

I usually rely on blog commentary from the Northwest Arkansas Crime Report to keep abreast of the entries in the police blotter, but they are on vacation. The following True Crime report is from today's Northwest Arkansas Times.

"Brandon George Smith, 22, of 1724 Live Oak, No. 7, in Fayetteville was arrested June 5 on a felony charge of fourth-degree sexual assault. Smith allegedly had sex with a 15-yearold girl. She later became pregnant. Smith told police that he was asleep when the incident occurred and didn’t know about it until the victim told him."

Lowballing the Bulldogs

The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees made their move today and revealed their idea of what paying a "premium" price for Fayetteville High School would be -- they will bid $50 million, which is $12 million less than the school district's appraisal. They would get the money by jacking up student tuition disguised as fees by $10 per credit hour, or $1,240 per student for the next 30 years and by issuing more bonds added to the institution's tremendous debt amassed in the last ten years.

The question now is whether Bobby New will fall for this lowball offer, or whether the Fayetteville School Board will realize that it makes more sense to rebuild on the current campus. The real question for the future is whether they have enough street cred to ever pass a millage, a very doubtful proposition with this group and in these times.

Business Everlasting

Why do you think Fairview Memorial Gardens is a member of the Chamber of Cowbirds? What do they get in return for their dues of several hundreds of dollars annually? Okay, you could ask that of most businesses that join, but, really, what are the benefits to the residents and plot owners in our largest local cemetery?

The Cowbirds say their mission is "promoting a strong business climate in Fayetteville and by facilitating positive community interaction that will result in continued economic development and enhanced quality of life." Economic development and quality of life are probably not among the top goals of the Fairview residents, but who knows? Certainly not much interest in the "continuing pursuit to promote tourism and relocation throughout our region," unless you'd be Tony Alamo's ex-wife.

Benefits of Cowbird membership are, according to their own website, great networking opportunities at Fayetteville Chamber Young Professionals Business After Hours events," and the exciting opportunity to have "breakfast with the Chamber and tell us about you and your business at Business Before Hours." Paying dues "is a great way to excel your business, gain key contacts and knowledge through fellow chamber members to further enhance your business and to attend invaluable networking events." I doubt that those were the tipping points for a cemetery to join. Maybe it was the chance for "Ground Breakings and Ribbon Cuttings for your new business," especially the groundbreaking part.

Anyway, it just served as a reminder that the Cowbirds see an opportunity for getting dues even from a cemetery, and that Fairview Memorial Gardens is really just a business. The corporate charter for Fairview Memorial Gardens, Inc. was dissolved back in 1993, and it was acquired by Equity Corporation International Cemetery Services of Arkansas and then through merger with the scandal-riven Service Corporation International in 1999. Who knows what corporation owns it now and gives the devil his dues?

Vote the Garden Party Ticket

No, you won't see Katherine Mansfield or Vaclav Havel reading from their work, but you'll still have a grand time enjoying not one, but two, magnificent garden tours tomorrow. The OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology is at it again with the Annual Peace Gardens Tour, and the Flower, Garden and Nature Society of Northwest Arkansas is sponsoring its Through the Garden Gate tour. The combo will showcase a dozen area gardens for your viewing pleasure.

Start your Saturday at the Farmers' Market on the Fayetteville Square, where you can enjoy our new public gardens for free while browsing and buying local plants, flowers, produce, and crafts. Tickets for both garden tours will also be for sale there. The OMNI Peace Garden tour is from 10-3, and for $10 you can visit six gardens ranging from a tiny flower-filled downtown front yard, to a bamboo grove garden, to a country wildlife habitat. More details here.

Through the Garden Gate tickets will get you a tour of six gardens, including a French courtyard, a 100-year old residence, two naturalistic water features, several butterfly and bird havens, tropical vignettes, 10-feet tall tomato plants and several hundred roses. The fare is $15, you can ramble from 9-5, and a portion of the proceeds goes to support our fine Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.

So much to experience and do this weekend, but make time for our Garden Party. "You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself."

Fair and Balanced

It seems that most of the discussion about Fayetteville's Government Channel has been about the unilateral decision of Dr. Susan Thomas, Ph.D. to suspend the production and cablecasting of forums on local issues of public concern. That edict applied to all forums requested by elected Aldermen as well as private citizens.

City Attorney Kit Williams is quoted in the Northwest Arkansas Times as saying the problem is that any forums on the Government Channel programming should be "fair and balanced," but that government is prohibited from deciding what or who is fair and balanced. Baloney. The Fairness Doctrine of the FCC, from 1949 until abolished under Ronald Reagan, said private broadcasters had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission also held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. The government made the call as to whether they did so.

Williams also said something else very interesting. He said the Government Channel should "just be a purveyor of unvarnished information, just what the government is doing, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent." Right. What that does not address is who will be the designated Decider of what information is offered up. Who would decide to replay an excerpt of a city council meeting from more than a year ago? What objective standard would suggest that it was now in demand or even of current interest?

Would a Mayor dominate the Government Channel then try to claim that major financial problems are due to a "failure to communicate"? Would a Mayor or his Public Relations Adviser schedule a replay of events which made him look like an idiot?

Would they load up programming to support elections on taxes they wanted to raise and starve discussions about city ballot issues they opposed? Who, for example, would hog all the space on the City Website for one side of the issue and run a saturation schedule of 30 programs in the two days before the September 2006 sales tax election to "educate" the voters? Or, who would decide that in the two days before the April 2007 election on road impact fees, which the Mayor opposed, to program only three showings of a balanced forum requested by an alderman to present and discuss both sides of the issue?

The Telecommunications Board has the responsibility to recommend a new Government Channel Policy for consideration by the City Council. Can it craft a policy to guard against an administration that would abuse that public resource for blatant political purposes? Would the Council approve it? Would the Mayor veto it?

[Click on schedule to enlarge]

Legislative Advice Worth Heeding

State Senator Sue Madison has always been able to make that fine distinction between supporting the University of Arkansas and blindly doing the bidding of the administrators at that institution. She has single-handedly secured millions in capital funding for essential academic programs, and she has boldly spoken out on issues where she thinks the administrators could do better -- saving staff jobs, supporting neglected academic programs, and standing up for students -- and the administrators resented it every time.

Today, Senator Madison has once again taken a stand on principle and asked the UA Board of Trustees to do the right thing, or rather, not to do the wrong thing, which would be to purchase the Fayetteville High School. She points out that the property is not needed for academic purposes and will certainly cost far more than $59 million to remodel and maintain. She was gracious enough not to mention what it would do to the University's image among legislators and how that would most certainly reduce any enthusiasm for increased state funding in the future.

"You are being asked to consider purchasing the Fayetteville High School property for $59,000,000. Throughout State government budgets are being cut and vacant positions go unfilled. This is the time to exercise great restraint in expending public resources and making large commitments of future funds," wrote Senator Madison in the letter reprinted below from the Arkansas Times Blog.

"The University of Arkansas has undertaken many construction projects during the past eleven years and our bonded debt has increased dramatically. Several properties have been purchased, and many new non-classroom buildings have been constructed. Yet, tuition is raised every year and faculty and staff salaries remain depressed.

"The Fayetteville High School property is not adjacent to the teaching or research areas of the campus, and the announced purchase price is only a fraction of the cost. The buildings are not suitable for immediate use and will need considerable retro-fitting at additional expense. Debt service and maintenance of the property will preclude addressing more pressing and central educational needs for many years tocome.

"Please consider the burden this property will be on our students, the campus, and Arkansas tax payers. We do not need this property, and I ask that you decline the offer to purchase it."

The UA Board meets this Friday. It is likely that Jim Lindsey, an exemplar of the board's commitment to intellectual excellence and concern for students' financial burdens, will get his way. They will vote to buy the 40 acres for tailgate party pavillions and send the bill to students for the next 30 years.

Mission Accomplished

That nest of pathological liars, serial spinmeisters, and media manipulators in the Bush White House have nothing on our local leaders when it comes to peddling sows' ears as silk purses. It is almost comical that Mayor Dan Coody, B.S., and Dr. Susan Thomas, Ph.D., are staging a Cowbird ribbon-cutting photo opportunity to celebrate the flowing of effluent into the Illinois River watershed, part of the ill-fated the $186 million debacle aka the Wastewater System Improvement Project that we were told would cost $120 million and be operational three years ago..

According to the official city press release, this is just a warm-up event for a Grand Opening scheduled in August closer to the filing deadline for mayoral candidates. This fine work of bureaucratic fiction also makes the fantastic claim that the plant was finished two days ahead of schedule. The usually stenographic reporting from The Morning News cannot reprint that fable and has to note it comes "after a decade of delays and cost increases."

According to TMN, Mayor Coody is a skilled time-shifter who tried to tell the reporter the project has been on time and within budget since the city took control of the project from an earlier consultant in 2005. We should all pretend that Coody didn't get us to pass a sales tax increase for construction bonds in 2001, a month before he signed the original Memorandum of Understanding with the state. He would also have us ignore the three separate Amendments to the MOA he signed in 2003 and 2004, extending the deadlines for completion because of delays by his staff and his hand-picked out-of-state consulting firm. He now says he had no idea, at that point in time, what his administration was doing with our tax money for public works.

It was finally in 2005 that Coody told his consultants that he had "concerns about the progress" of the sewer project. He also told them that he had "repeated the goals of this administration of keeping this project on time and on budget." In 2006, he told the Water and Sewer Committee, "All things considered, this project’s gone smoothly." In 2007, Coody told the City Council that it was not a debacle and that the "only hiccup that we've had is the missed estimates on time and money," the two essential goals he had set for his administration.

This pattern of failure and fibbing is clearly documented on ExcessFayetteville, and it was objectively reported in the Northwest Arkansas Times back in 2006 when we were forced to again raise regressive sales taxes to cover his $63-$68 million cost overrun on the mismanaged project. But now he wants us to forget about it and come watch him and the Cowbirds cut the ribbon at 3 p.m. on June 12th. They should instead cut the crap right now..

Double Bonus for Benton County Citizens

Fayetteville officials might spend less time trying to curtail balanced public discussion about important issues on the Government Channel and a bit more time thinking about what might make life more pleasant or productive for average citizens in the community. Not everything has to be about Dan Coody trying to control communication or claim credit.

Rogers citizens will get free access to wireless internet this week in a three-block downtown area from Centennial Park to Frisco Park, says Rufus Ramey, the director of information technology for the city, accommodating about 30 users at any one time using basic network functions such as checking e-mail, following eBay auctions and reading news. The network access will be provided by Main Street Rogers and AT&T, which awarded a $1,000 grant to cover service for more than a year. Bentonville has had free Wi-Fi available on the downtown square since last year.

The Bentonville Farmers' Market on the downtown square also announced some good news. It is joining numerous markets across the state that participate in the Women, Infants, and Children Farmers Market Nutrition Program. Vouchers are provided by the Arkansas Department of Health to provide fresh, nutritious, unprepared fruits and vegetables from farmers markets to women and children who are nutritionally at risk, and to expand the awareness and use of farmers markets. Rogers and Siloam Springs farmers' markets already participate in the program. Brenda Compton of Downtown Bentonville Inc., also said patrons may now purchase farm-fresh eggs at the farmers' market.

Two thumbs up for good ideas and the effort to make them work.

Literati On a Stick

The big surprise last week was the billboard ban adopted 4-3 by the Springdale City Council. It was a victory for Kathy Jaycox, Jesse Core, Philip Taldo, and common sense over Mike Overton, Jeff Watson, Bobby Stout, and Cowbird Perry Webb. They get to keep the 59 existing billboards already littering the scenic byways until they rot, but there will be no more.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette expressed support for the four progressive votes on the Council. "It’s as mind-boggling as if Fayetteville voted to cut down all its trees. ...It’s a new day for Springdale. Together, the ban on billboards and restrictions on other signs amount to a down payment on a continuing makeover. Springdale’s gotten serious about improving its looks."

The ban was not the only surprise. The Morning News, usually the most sensible of the local newspapers, said, "Cluttering the roadside with signs of all shapes and sizes is unattractive and doesn't guarantee commercial growth. But we're not sure an outright ban is the way to go. ...We're not suggesting the city return to it's earlier days when a business could locate anywhere regardless of zoning. But we do suggest city leaders stop fussing about signs and concentrate on ideas to get Springdale moving forward ...."

What's up with that? Maybe the editors at The Morning News didn't get the memo. Not long after the 1993 sellout by the Donrey Media Chain that brought the paper a new corporate cage with the Stephens Media Chain, the new owners dumped the Donrey Outdoor division on Clear Channel in 1999. Maybe they are still holding the note, maybe there is some newspaper axiom about never questioning any advertising expenditure, or maybe the Morning News editors in Springdale just like billboards. Anyway, just kinda queer.

Developers Campaign to Pressure Aldermen

It would be difficult to miss the full-page color campaign advertisement in today's Northwest Arkansas Times attempting to put political pressure on the Fayetteville City Council to ignore existing zoning ordinances, the objections of neighbors, the recommendation of the City's planning staff, and the considered vote of the Planning Commission. The ad says it is paid for by Partners for a Better Fayetteville, a fictitious front group that is not registered as a lobbying or political action committee and gets zero hits on Google. People who spend big money to influence public policy for personal financial gain need to register and disclose; otherwise, get yourself a free blog where you can be anonymously inconsequential.

Developer Clint McDonald wants to put 112,000 square feet (a football field is 48,000 square feet) of mini-storage units smack dab in the middle of a residential area, and he wants you to lobby the "Alderpersons" on his behalf so he can. He is proposing a mixed use development called Bridgedale Plaza, which might be fine, but the mega-storage business ain't. Oh, but he says the storage units are low-impact and environmentally-friendly. Right, about like putting lipstick on a pig.

I guess if Developer McDonald moved one of those formaldehyde-soaked FEMA trailers in next door to you, put it up on cinder blocks, and threw a solar panel on the roof for hot water, he would call that LEED-certified affordable housing and expect you to do a little dance of joy and thanksgiving. You can find the zoning regulations on mini-storage units in Chapter 162, Unit 38 of the Unified Development Code, right between Mobile Homes (Unit 37) and Junk Yards (Unit 39).

The Fayetteville Planning Commission denied approval for the project on March 24th. Three days later McDonald calls a meeting of developers, including Hank Broyles of Aspen Ridge fame, to have a bitch session at the Chamber of Cowbirds office to complain about the Planning Commission and the city planning staff. Mayor Coody was not at the meeting, but he told a reporter he agreed that the process can become a political game when it reaches the City Council if residents oppose such a project in their neighborhood. "But there is no way that should be laid off on staff," he added. Blame the City Council for that and everything else.

In late April, Mayor Dan Coody changed his tune and suggested the possibility of changing how the city looks at the storage units. That seems to have given McDonald and the developers encouragement that they could bring pressure on the City Council to get their way. That political ad today wasn't cheap, and you can make sure it has some effect. Get in touch with your Aldermen before Tuesday and let them know if you want them to cave in to political pressure, ignore the objections of neighbors, discount the planning staff recommendation, overturn the Planning Commission, and roll over for the developers. Here's the link.