WC Observer Editorial June 16,2011

Editorial: As West Fork Turns

Posted on 22. Jun, 2011 by admin in City News, Columns, Commentary, Editorials, News, Opinion, West Fork

 

They say the popularity of TV soap operas is waning; two long-running shows were recently canceled. Some suggest the decline is due to a rise in popularity of facebook games while others say it is due to the end of the middle class which means fewer stay-at-home moms – they’re all at work.

We have another spin: The demise of soaps could be blamed on the rise of weekly community newspapers all across the country. Using West Fork as an example, these small-town papers may be pulling soap viewers away from TV fiction to read about the real-life episodic drama unfolding at the nearest city hall. (We’re making this up.)
But city hall offers quality drama with real characters and it seems like every week provides the reader with new twists, turns and turmoil. It’s easy to get confused, particularly because of the interweaving timelines and overlapping characters.

Maybe this will help:

There are two main plots to follow at West Fork City Hall (scores of subplots), the city audits and the financial crisis with the water department. The audit story actually began years ago when the auditor for the city became ill and the council tried to put the audits off until he recovered. In 2007, the State told the city to get the audits caught up, but after four years, the city remains five years in arrears on a mandatory financial audit.  Last year, to their credit, the city council had two years of audits completed with a private CPA firm, but that only got the city through 2005.
In Dec. 2010, Mr. “B”(city business manager at the time) signed a contract with the same firm to perform audits for 2007-2010 worth $28,000 without a budget adjustment.  The contract somehow never came up in conversation and the new mayor and her city council didn’t know about the contract for months.  Never mind that the city ordinances call for a $10,000 limit on what the business manager can contract for.

Meanwhile in January, the council authorized the city’s new Mayor Hime to get five years of audits done free by the State, but apparently they never took the task on because they learned of the CPA contract before the mayor or the council.  Last week, the state’s auditing committee sent certified letters to the mayor and council members telling them to come to Little Rock for a little talk. To get ready for that meeting, the council held a special meeting last week and decided they were caught between a rock and a hard place and should just honor the contract at $28,000.  They had to authorize the use of reserve funds to fund the cost since only $9,000 was ever budgeted for audits this year.

​It’s hard to know when the water story begins.  What is known is that the utility had $225,000 when 2006 began and somehow over the past five years, ​went through all of that and siphoned off money from two bond reserves to fund operations.  They were spending more than they were taking in, but the council never knew.  The three member water commission didn’t even meet for 18 months between 2009 and the summer of 2010. Seems that in addition to a leaky budget, the utility has also battled unaccounted water loss, which averaged 30.5 percent in 2010 and topped 42 percent in February of this year.  Add to that a recession and you can see where this is headed.
Then came Friday the 13th, May 13, 2011 when there was no money in the bank account for pay day. That’s when $10,000 was transferred from the general fund to the water department and here’s the kicker.  Neither t​he mayor, nor the council knew or approved the transfer.  The money was transferred by City Treasurer /Water Dept. Secretary Kristie Drymon after she was directed to do so by Mr. “B” (yes, the same one). Their lawyer said the transfer wasn’t legal, but when the council held a special meeting to retroactively approve the transfer, they also got hit up for an additional $15,000 loan and said a 14 percent rate increase would be needed to fix the mess.  Did we mention that neither Drymon or Bartholomew thought to bring up the looming financial crisis just three days before when making their monthly reports at the monthly city council meeting?

As in any good soap, new cast members are emerging.  Former West Fork mayor, Virgil Blackmon was appointed just days before the Friday the 13th transfer.  His first meeting was a special water commission meeting which saw him championing a rate increase.  Ironically, the only guy who’s spent any time on the commission, Greg Tabor, tried to put the brakes on the rate increase and wanted to address the utility’s expenses.  Considering $200,000 in salaries for two part time and two full time employees, he might be on to something.

There was a public meeting scheduled prior to the regular council meeting.

The over-arching theme in all this revolves around the same old suspects – lack of accountability, lack of transparency in government, disregard for the rule of law, and plain old fiduciary neglect by a lot of people. Somebody was asleep at the switch and nobody noticed. This could be a train wreck. ​

Like any serial drama, each week leaves us wondering what will happen next.

Will anybody be held accountable for anything? Will there be a big surprise for the council at Little Rock? Will the water commission have the guts to make some tough choices before asking its water customers to cough up 14 percent more each month?  Will any new policies and procedures come out of ​these messes?  Does somebody know something nobody else knows about something?

Whatever happens the Washington County Observer will be there reporting the news.

​Stay tuned; details every Thursday.

 

West Fork’s Fireworks Ordinance

CHAPTER 7.32

 FIREWORK

Sections:

7.32.01            Regulated

7.32.02            Penalty

 7.32.01  Regulated  It shall be unlawful for any person to shoot or set fire to any firecrackers, Roman candles or any other fireworks within the corporate limits of the city excepting during the hours of 9:00 a.m. through midnight on July 3^rd and from 9:00 a.m. to midnight on Independence Day, July 4^th , of each year.

  Fireworks booths shall not be located within seventy-five (75) feet of any business in order to prevent fire hazard.

 The sale of fireworks in the city limits of West Fork, Arkansas, shall be permitted from June 25^th through July 5^th .  (Ord. No. 369, Sec. 1.)

  7.32.02  Penalty  Any person violating any of the provisions of this chapter shall, upon conviction, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be fined in a sum not less than One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) nor more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00).  (Ord. No. 369, Sec. 2.)

 

The Zepher is Returning

The West Fork Zephyr will begin making regular posts in a few days. Stay tuned.

 

West Fork City Government

Quick Council Meeting

Harris Votes No

The West Fork City Council held what may have been their shortest meeting ever last Tuesday night.  Council members John Foster, Richard Drymon and John Richard were absent.  No citizen spoke during Public Forum, department reports were brief and except for Councilmember Harris’s only opposing vote on a 2009 Budget Adjustment Resolution the meeting was routine.

Mayor Throgmorton explained that the budget adjustment resolution was for minor items in the 2009 budget that included expenses related to the ice storm.  Councilmember Harris explained his No vote saying he hadn’t had an opportunity to look at it prior to the meeting. City Treasures Kristi Drymon indicated where the numbers appeared in the information provided councilmembers. The motion passed 4-1.

Parks Department director Stephen Sprick reported on the condition of the ball fields and said baseball sign-ups will start January 30th. He shared the news of his election as vice president of the baseball league.   He also reported the lights at the tennis courts are now working properly.

Police Chief Nelson roported that authorities have arrested several juveniles involved in recent area  burglaries. He also reported that Sgt. Nelson will be back to full duty Feb. 1.

Business Manager Butch Bartholomew reported that several recommendations by the Arkansas Department of Labor relating to occupational safety have been corrected. Some fire extinguishers were installed in the city shop and electricial breakers were labeled in the police building.

 City Attorney Rusty Hudson updated the council on the ungoing legal entanglement involving the property at 280 McKnight St.     Depositions are forthcoming for the federal trial in May and the circuit court case is in appeal over the issue of attorney’s fees.

Librarian Joan Bachman reported on the library’s circulation and other statistics and noted that the library continues to grow in both in the number of books and in patronage.

Court clerk Pauletta Welch issued her report. Fire Chief McCorkle was absent.   

The mayor announced that West Fork Public Schools is having a contest to design an new logo.  She also noted that the councilmember’s packet contained an undated Phone List.

The meeting started at 6:30 and adjourned at 7 pm.

 

Nature

New Columnist joins Team

The Zephyr is honored to introduce local naturalist, historian and writer Joseph C. Neal  to its readers.   Joe column, “Western Arkansas Bird Notes “  will appear every other week  in the new Washington County Observer. 

WESTERN ARKANSAS BIRD NOTES

 1/6/2010

Joseph C. Neal

My friend Joe Woolbright from Siloam Springs holds forth mornings at a café named Kathy’s Corner. He is more of the liberal persuasion, but his table mates tend toward Rush. So, with the coming of ice & snow in the past few weeks, folks all around Joe at the table have driven the icy-snowy roads to Kathy’s, bringing with them questions like, “Well Woolbright, I guess that finishes off the global warming idea” etc. Joe points out that climate change is not about a single event or year. It’s about long term trends. In terms of his breakfast friends, he might as well just go out and howl at the cold moon.

Birds are indicators of a changing climate. We now find birds here regularly that once spent the winter south of the Ozarks. On the recently concluded Fayetteville Christmas Bird count, for example, we found 13 Ruby-crowned Kinglets, an unheard-of event until the 1980s.

I think about this when I’m out birding. On January 4 I walked the perimeter of Chesney Prairie Natural Area near Siloam Springs. I found American Tree Sparrows in several spots during the afternoon, including one flock of at least 30 birds. They flushed up & brightly decorated a barbed wire fence and the weeds and little bushes holding it up. I also drove county roads around Chesney. Much of the landscape is ice/snow covered & frozen, so many of the field birds have turned to open roadsides, where there is ample food spilled from poultry feed trucks. Savannah Sparrows in 1s, 2, and flocks were along & on the road, joined by White-crowned Sparrows, Harris’s Sparrows, and others. Lots of meadowlarks have joined the roadside feast. In order to separate Eastern & Western Meadowlarks, I kept trying to look at malar areas behind the bill (more yellow on Westerns, for example), but my fingers got too stiff to comfortably use the binoculars. It is a good opportunity, though, if your fingers can take it.

In one spot I found 25 Horned Larks, similarly employed chasing down waste grain. These birds were along a private road into an egg production facility. I was watching them from an open & obviously public road, looking for Lapland Longspurs among them. Soon, two business-like, stiff-faced youngish gentlemen drove out from the egg plant, parked right snug up behind me & requested that I state my business. I would have thought my binoculars would have sufficed, but then they could also be used for spying…

Finally, I have received two emails with photographs from friends in Madison County with two unusual birds at their feeder. The first is a possible Spotted Towhee (a western bird unusual here) and the second a pair of Rusty Blackbirds, from the far north, where they nest in the Boreal Forest.

 

Community News News

Weekly Newspaper

Hits South Washington County

February 4

Next month, West Fork and neighboring towns, Greenland and Winslow, will once again, have a weekly newspaper.  West Fork Zephyr Executive Editor, Steve Winkler and Features Editor, Susan McCarthy have formed Seventyone South Publishing, Limited Liability Company (SSPLLC) and plan to begin publishing a weekly newspaper early next month, but it won’t be under the name, West Fork Zephyr.

Winkler and McCarthy will be reviving the name of the Washington County Observer, a successful, locally published newspaper that served southern Washington County for 27 years, but printed its final issue December 30, 1999.    Winkler says the Washington County Observer was the gold standard for community journalism and hopes to bring back in-depth local news coverage.  The new Washington County Observer will serve the cities of West Fork, Greenland, and Winslow, as well as surrounding communities of Brentwood, Hogeye, Strickler, Bug Scuffle, Blackburn, Sunset, Wyola, and Devil’s Den State Park, an area with approximately 4000 households.  The paper will cover city council, school, civic, church, sports, community and social news, announcements, and coming events in the three-town area.

The paper will be published every Thursday beginning February 4, 2010.  McCarthy says the paper will be mailed free to every residence in the coverage area during the first four weeks of publishing in hopes of generating community support and subscribers.  A one-year subscription will cost $26 and the paper will be delivered via US mail.  The paper will also be available in news racks in various locations in Greenland, West Fork, and Winslow.  All current subscriptions to the West Fork Zephyr will be automatically transferred at no additional cost and will be honored for a full year from the original subscription date. 

Steve Winkler will continue to serve as Editor in Chief and Susan McCarthy will assume the role of Managing Editor.  Betty Hutcheson, who started the original Washington County Observer August 24, 1972, with her late husband, Harold, will serve as the paper’s Editor Emeritus.  Winkler has been consulting with Hutcheson for months, scouring back issues of the Washington County Observer and discussing how to bring forth many of the paper’s attributes to the new paper.  Several contributing columnists will be featured, including Zephyr columnist Steven Worden who writes about matters of faith in “Fire on the Mountain”. Naturalist and co-author of Arkansas Birds: Their Distribution and Abundance, Joseph C. Neal will also be a regular columnist.   McCarthy is planning to visit both West Fork and Greenland schools in coming weeks in hopes of tapping students to write school news, which will be featured in every issue.  The paper is also recruiting “correspondents” in the various smaller communities to report on the everyday lives of ordinary people in the readership area.

Both Winkler and McCarthy have long-time ties to West Fork.  Ironically, Winkler operated a produce market, Hawker Trading Company, more than 35 years ago in the same building that will house the Washington County Observer.  McCarthy grew up in West Fork, daughter of John and Dorothy Carney, and graduated from West Fork High School in 1981. 

The duo has published the West Fork Zephyr since June, 2009, which started as an on-line newspaper at www.westforkzephyr.com and then expanded to include a monthly printed newsletter.  Winkler said the experience has made him realize what a need there is for in-depth community news, adding, ”Towns with a local newspaper are a better place to live.”

 

City Government

Agenda

CITY OF WEST FORK
COUNCIL MEETING
January 12, 2010 6:30PM
 
Call to order of regular council meeting
 
Opening invocation-
 
Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America
 
Approval of Agenda and attached Department Reports as mailed
 
Approval of Minutes from December 8, 2009 as mailed
 
Public Forum
 
REPORTS:
 
A.     Court Report – Pauletta Welch
B.     Library Report – Joan Bachman
C.     Park Report – Stephen Sprick
D.    Police Report – Chief Nelson
E.     Fire Report – Chief McCorkle
F.     Business/Utility Report – Butch Bartholomew
 
UNFINISHED BUSINESS:
 
A. 
 
NEW BUSINESS:
 
            A.  Resolution 2010-01:  Budget Adjustment
 
 
Mayor’s Comments
 
Adjourn.

 

Public Service Announcment

 

Fire on the Mountain

Congratulations on Your Promotion, Major

Most people view the Salvation Army as just another United Way agency, a Christmas toy-depot of last resort, often personified by a boozy-looking bell-jangling annoyance, studiously ignored by harried last-minute shoppers. 

Even the official representatives of the Salvation Army seem to be unmistakably non-upper class: beefy guys with grizzled beards in antique uniforms, lugging around brass instruments on which they blare old British hymns in rousing “Holiness meetings,” replete with the traditional “altar call.”  Embarrassingly anachronistic, Salvation Army Officers serve mainly as uncomfortable, but fortunately seasonal, reminders of our obligation to the underclass.

But, while other agencies fall over each other to meet the needs of the “worthy” poor:  single mothers, the elderly, and the disabled, the Good Ol’ Salvation Army quietly carries out its charge to serve those whom Blessed Mother Teresa called “Christ in His most distressing disguise:”  the alcoholic, the crackhead, the huffer, the meth monster, the crazy.

The Salvation Army also targets younger people with its urban Community Centers, offering recreation and spiritual direction in a proactive attempt to divert young people from a rampaging self-destructive course of life before it gains momentum.  “It is not very easy,” as one conceded about a committed alcoholic, “to turn a pickle back into a cucumber, once it has become a pickle.”  But, even this seemingly sensible social service approach can crumble in the darkness of an alley in a neighborhood of the marginalized, the desperate, and the strung-out.

As a testament to the hazards of working with disordered people in their own neighborhoods, recently in North Little Rock two men murdered Major Phillip Wise on Christmas Eve.  Killed in a dark alley outside the Community Center, he had paused to pick up his wife before travelling on home to West Virginia to spend Christmas with his family. 

What could be less in keeping with “the holiday spirit,” than for two men to shoot a cheerful and burly tuba-toting clergyman in front of his own children on Christmas Eve, minutes away from a joyful drive home to family and friends?  Possibly killed by some members of the community that he was serving?  But, for the Army and for Christianity in general, the tragic and the senseless are ever-present in ordinary life and death.

In stark contrast to the consumer culture of the Mall and the rejoicing over weekend receipts, the reality of the tragically misshapen lives in our communities reasserts itself once again.  But fortunately, Christianity seems to be most powerfully vibrant when faced with cruel and unfathomable mystery:   bell-ringers’ schedules and seasonal social services thrown into confusion by a shockingly depraved and twisted explosion of pain.  Maybe this is the true spirit of the season:  suffering and disorder disrupting commercialized sentimentality.

This paradoxical and mysterious quality of pain and its redemption can even be seen in the Salvation Army’s customary reticence to grieve overly-much over the death of a Salvationist.  In the Salvation Army subculture, death is a “Promotion to Glory” with the sure certainty that Major Wise is now gazing on the Face of God. 

And just as in Vachel Lindsey’s famous poem, “General William Booth Enters into Heaven,” (1916) Major Wise similarly came into heaven leading his own,                                                                       

Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank,                                                                                                                 
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale –
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail: –
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death –
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

-Steven Worden

 

Editorial

Happy New Year