What's Next??

Well, my family now has been the victim of a second hurricane this season.  First my Aunt’s house in New Orleans was flooded by Katrina with probably 2 feet of water and now my brother’s house in Naples, Florida is damaged by Hurricane Wilma.  How many families have 2 people effected by two separate hurricanes in the same year?  What are the odds?

Fortunately, my brother’s house has fared much better than my Aunt’s.  His roof sustained a little bit of damage that was easily covered by a roofing tarp until it can be repaired.  My Aunt is starting to argue with the insurance company that has her flood insurance because they are claiming the mold damage in her house is not due to flooding but condensation.

To top things off, she got rear ended last night in New Orleans by a drunk driver and it took over 2 hours for the NOPD to finally show up, work the accident and arrest the guy for drunk driving….  What next?

Here we go again.....

Well now the city leaders of Little Rock once again come to the taxpayers and citizens of our fair city with their hands out.  While I understand the need to fund public safety issues, I just don’t trust these morons to do the right thing.

One of the worst arguments that I can think of for supporting this tax initiative is to put Little Rock “in line” with other cities’ tax rates.  This is the bogus reasoning used for Central Arkansas Water to raise water rates in the city of Little Rock to better “match” the rates paid by North Little Rock customers.

I can think of more examples of where they have not lived up to promises as opposed to what they have done as promised.

Right now the only example of doing things that they have promised is with the current bond issue program.  It appears that they are following through on the public works projects that they did promise when the voters agreed to extent an existing tax and bond program.

However, I think it was pretty stupid when the city’s Public Works department claimed that they could collect garbage cheaper than a contractor but they had to raise rates by $4/month in order to do it in-house.  I just understand the logic behind this.

The people that run this city are pretty clueless in my opinion.  If you look at what North Little Rock has done with their city, they are doing a much better job running their city.  For example, Alltel Arena was built in their community, they will be getting the new ballpark for the Arkansas Travelers and they finished their portion of the River Trail years ahead of Little Rock.

While I know that public safety issues are of great importance, I know the county jail needs funding along with funds to hire more police and firefighters, I just don’t trust the city board of directors to what is right and be good stewards of the funds entrusted to them by the public.

Arkansas Taxpayer Dollars at Work???

A story in today’s Arkansas Democrat Gazette highlights the problem of grade inflation on Arkansas public schools.  Apparently, students who completed the ACT test had potential inflated grades in 2002, 2003 and 2004 according to a research at the University of Arkansas.  About 50% of the graduating seniors were identified as needing remedial work in either math or english based on their ACT scores.

A study by the College Board in 2004 indicated that although students are taking more difficult courses and are obtaining higher grade point averages, there has not been an increase in SAT scores to correspond with it.

I think it’s pretty ironic that this study is released on the heels of the final arguments of the re-opened Lake View case.  Although funding for public education was increased by over $400 million per year, the public school districts in the state of Arkansas says that still is not enough.

Is this what we are getting for that extra funding?  Why can’t we have accountability with the public school districts to actually deliver on improved education of our students with the extra funding?

I don’t mind paying taxes or even increased taxes IF the money is used responsibly.  The problem is that I don’t trust the school superintendents or school boards of the state of Arkansas to be good stewards of these public funds.