We're Number One!

The national Center for College Affordability and Productivity recently proclaimed that the University of Arkansas was ranked No. 1 in the nation -- in the ratio of total athletic expenses to total instructional expenditures. Based on data reported by the U.S. Department of Education, the UA's total athletic expenses equal 56.5 percent of total instructional expenditures (as reported through the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data Source—IPEDS). The University of Alabama was ranked second nationally at 50.2%. Other Southeast Conference schools in the Top Ten were No. 7 Auburn (40.8%), No. 8 Ole Miss (35.8%), and No. 9 LSU (33.8%).

Vanderbilt University, which defeated Ole Miss and Auburn and recently defeated Boston College in the Music City Bowl, is ranked last in the nation when it comes to athletic spending as a percentage of educational spending at 6.4%. Vanderbilt also has a 4-year graduation rate of 85% and is ranked the No. 18 university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, highest in the SEC and somewhat ahead of Arkansas.

"Collegiate athletics are certainly a staple of American culture, and as avid sports fans ourselves we would not wish to see them disappear. There is nothing quite like waking up on a Saturday morning to watch College Gameday over breakfast, or rooting on the basketball team as they push toward the NCAA tournament," the Report concludes. "However, the instruction of students, who are paying huge tuition bills, should be the academy’s primary focus. ...We need to refocus our attention on what is truly important to a university, and our budgets need to reflect that commitment to education."

Jackass of the Year Awards

Bob Caudle of The Morning News sometimes reminds us that we are not worthy to be poking fun at politicians in the same market. This is the sixth year for Caudle's prestigious recognition of people who have "performed acts during the year that at one time or the other has made you want to personally shake their hoof for being so foolish." Rather than appropriately hanging our head in shame, we will act like a jackass and share some extensive excerpts about local municipal officials found in his column today announcing the 2008 Jackass of the Year awards.

Dapper Dan Coody: Former mayor of Fayetteville who leaves the city with an over-budget sewer plant, a hole in the ground where a hotel was supposed to go and a project called SouthPass, which is a partnership between the city and the developers who developed the hole in the ground. This is why you don’t lend your credit card to your wife just before a divorce.

Fayetteville City Attorney Kit Williams: Advised the mayor and city council that the hole in the ground shouldn’t be held against the developers when considering SouthPass. Are developers and lawyers like snakes? They just don’t bite each other out of professional courtesy?

Rogers Mayor Steve Womack: Honored annually to insult real jackasses. (Sadly, he’s still the best mayor in Northwest Arkansas.)

Outgoing Springdale Mayor Jerre Van Hoose: Had to announce his retirement so anyone would notice.

Springdale Vice Mayor Patsy Christie: Actually, she’s the director of the Planning and Community Development Department. In her defense, SOMEBODY had to run the city for the past six years.

Lowell Mayor Perry Long: It cost around $5,000 of taxpayers’ money, but the city got its stagecoach back from Cowboy Ray Dotson of Springdale. Dotson then bought his own stagecoach and plans to roll it through a parade in the city of Lowell. It’s too bad we don’t have a psychiatric school in Northwest Arkansas. These two and their stagecoaches would be a real study.

Thanks, Bob, for the mirth and for not including this blog among the honorees. Keep up the good fun.

Business as Usual Must Stop

It might be a solution, but the process is a serious problem. It is the same attitude that got the city into the SouthPass contract without understanding the community investment, political and financial. It is the approach that left us with a big hole that is to become an impervious surface parking lot. It is an echo of those officials and bureaucrats who bought and made us pay for a multi-million dollar incinerator with no place to put it. It is the arrogance of power in city administration that must end.

The Northwest Arkansas Times reports today that Gary Dumas, Director of Operations for the City of Fayetteville and former Mayor Coody's Dick Cheney, plans to propose that all parking near Dickson Street -- including the Walton Arts Center lot, the UA lot on West Street, the Mansfield Properties LLC (Greg House et al) lot by the train station, and the massive expanse owned by University Baptist Church -- be converted to paid parking lots operated by the city. Dumas plans to make tickets for violators in the $40 to $50 range. He told the Times that he's been meeting privately with the parking lot owners to negotiate details of the contract that would put the city in charge of cleaning the private lots, collecting revenue from the machines, patrolling the private lots, and enforcing violations for a 10% commission on parking fees.

Maybe that is a good idea, maybe not, but it is a bassackwards way to make policy decisions. A proposal to move to paid city parking was considered and voted down by the City Council just three years ago, but somehow Dumas is ignoring that and off instigating major policy changes on his own. He says he will probably have one more private meeting with the parking lot owners before he presents the final contract to the City Council, maybe in February, and he doesn't plan on meeting with Dickson Street business owners to discuss details of the contract before he presents it to the City Council. So this is essentially a contract being negotiated by Gary Dumas and the lot owners without consultation with affected businesses and citizens and without authorization from the Council.

There is a difference between individual initiative and imperial edicts. We thought the new Jordan administration was going to put a stop to this arrogant approach to public policy. Ignoring the views of affected citizens is not leadership, and taking the time to publicly discuss such ideas at town hall meetings is not indecision. Mayor Jordan needs to put a leash on Herr Dumas and any other city employees who don't understand that simple concept.

Curtain Call

City employees are laughing about Dan Coody's latest pranks on Mayor Jordan. All of those national awards to the city that were so proudly displayed on the walls at city hall and were enumerated on Coody's campaign website have mysteriously gone missing, so Jordan won't be able to point them out to official visitors to our city. Even funnier in a cheap slapstick sort of way, when Coody removed all of the furniture from the mayor's office, he also made off with the window blinds. The window blinds!

Mayor Jordan said during his campaign that he would conduct public business in the sunshine. We doubt that he meant or knew that he would be doing so literally in the sunshine. That Dan is such a joker.

Benton County Bigot Quote of the Day

"The lawsuit filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court has 29 adults and children as plaintiffs. On the other hand, Initiated Act 1 was approved by an overwhelming number of Arkansas voters. I was one of those voters and I ask those of you who voted to pass this measure, are we going to sit still and allow 29 people, the ACLU and a judge to override the vote of the majority? I hope not.

"The lawsuit argues Initiated Act 1 violates federal and state constitutional rights to equal treatment and due process. There are set guidelines and laws that we must adhere to. ...Twenty-nine adults and children are opposed, not to Initiated Act 1 in itself, but to the guidelines that must be followed to adopt or serve as foster parents, and we the voters, set those guidelines in the November general election.

"I appeal to the voters of Arkansas, Christians and non-Christians alike, whether you voted due to a moral sense of duty and obligation or simply what you deemed as a common good for the state in passing Initiated Act 1, let your voice continue to be heard. Let's stand together for the good of our state. We spoke in November. Let's continue to speak.

"I close with this last statement, we should all thank God for a man like Jerry Cox, president of Arkansas Family Council, who has and is fighting for Initiated Act 1. Pray for him."

-- Bob Dunning, "Supports Initiated Act 1," Letter to The Morning News

Train Wreck a'Coming

"Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan rang the warning bell during his first day in office," reports the Northwest Arkansas Times, telling his transition team that the pension funds for the city's retired police officers and fire fighters are underfunded by millions of dollars. City Attorney Kit Williams wrote to Mayor Dan Coody in a memo dated last April 28, even before the stock market went south, that the city was facing "the train wreck of the total depletion of the pension fund's assets" within 10 years if nothing was done to correct the problem. Since then, the City has done nothing.

There likely will be other major problems discovered. Like the neglected or mismanaged pension fund, they will require difficult decisions between raising taxes or reducing benefits and services. Or hiding the problem from the public and doing nothing. Mayor Jordan can offer no easy solution to the retired police officers and fire fighters, but being honest about the problem is a good start on his first day in office.

Someone Call the Orderlies

It is no longer amusing. Three months ago, Tontitown Mayor Joe Edgmon filed a harassment complaint with the Washington County Sheriff's Office against Tontitown Alderman Henry Piazza. He has now filed complaints with the state Ethics Commission and the Washington County Prosecuting Attorney's office against Tontitown Water and Sewer Executive Director Mick Wagner, who is paid $2 a year. Edgmon alleges that Wagner lobbies the City Council on water and sewer issues and violates Internal Revenue Service rules about contract labor.

Mayor Edgmon, who just last month vetoed an ordinance to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, has also filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutor alleges that Wagner has failed to comply three times with Edgmon's requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Edgmon previously filed two Freedom of Information Act complaints with the prosecutor against Planning Commission Chairman David Bolinger and City Attorney Mark Dossett.

In November 2007, the Tontitown City Council declared they had No Confidence in Edgmon by a 5-1 vote. By now, it should be damn near unanimous on the Council and among the citizens.

Thanks and Best Wishes, Dan

There was a nice piece in the newspaper today that let former Mayor Dan Coody take his leave and say goodbye. He was able to recount some of the changes that had occurred since 2000, and he did influence many of them to some degree. Coody also came as close to apologizing as we can ever expect for the sewer plant debacle and the unfortunate decision on the Wilson Spring wetland.

Coody did some good things while in office, and he was even better at articulating what he wished to do. All of that was good for our city. We are generous of spirit today, so we won't burst his fantasy that one of "the biggest accomplishments of his administration" was "the SouthPass development, which gained the city a free 200 acres for a regional park." We won't even mention that the city has yet to receive the warranty deed to that 200 acres, that it does not have the $39 million to cover the projected cost, that it is still waiting on the $1 million park contribution promised by the developers, or that all it has so far at SouthPark is a leaking landfill.

Ex-Mayor Coody now says he's finally ready to go back to the simple life of building a new house and vacationing with his wife. Those were the same plans he said he wanted to pursue in 2007 when he announced that he would not run for re-election as Mayor in 2008. On reflection after unsuccessfully trying to defend his record and ending up with a tattered image and an $11,000 campaign debt, he probably thinks voluntary retirement would have been the wiser choice.

According to the article, "Coody is looking forward to relaxing now. He said he has no plans to run for any sort of office, despite word that he could go after a Ward 1 on the Fayetteville City Council seat or a state representative seat in 2010." You can take him at his word.

Out with the Old

The Northwest Arkansas Times today named Lioneld Jordan as its Newsmaker of the Year. It had an even-handed news story and the least-snide editorial commentary about Jordan in memory. It might signal a brief honeymoon, but we expect the Times to be much more enthusiastic in its watchdog role during the Jordan administration instead of the cheerleading sycophant role it relished during the Coody administration.

Jordan is set to take the Oath of Office tomorrow morning at the Washington County Courthouse. He will then spend the morning trying to find a city surplus desk and chairs or some curtains for his office, assuming that former Mayor Dan Coody follows through on his promise to vacate the office and take all of his fine personal furnishings with him. They were still there yesterday when we stopped by to say goodbye.

We wish them both well, Jordan and Coody. We hope that Jordan is able to follow through on his campaign promises and to bring some fiscal sanity to the management of our city. We hope that Coody will find a job suited to his talents that will keep him busy and distract him from his meddling efforts to undermine the success of the Jordan administration.

Here's to 2009

There is a chance that we will have something to say later today if the coffee and aspirin work. I suspect that someone put something in my drinks last night at the Iconoclast office party.