Its Friday!

Arkansas Public Smoking Ban…
Apparently, the statewide ban on public smoking which goes into effect on July 21st but the rules and regulations as dictated by the state Board of Health will not be approved until July 27th at the earliest.

Once they are approved, they have to be forwarded to the Governor for his approval and then sent to the Secretary of State and put into effect 10 to 15 days later.

Nothing like government being on top of things….

University Mall Woes
It looks like a couple of city directors will be traveling to Indianapolis to visit with the folks at Simon properties over the state of University Mall.

Simon (who also own McCain Mall in North Little Rock) has let University Mall fall into severe disrepair and has an occupancy rate of less than 50%. I will admit the last time I was in that mall which was probably late last year, it was pretty crappy. Most of the stores in the mall are crap especially when compared to Park Plaza mall that is essentially across the street. The only reason I was there was to find an outfit for my Grandmother at MM Cohn because they seem to carry a lot of clothes that people from her generation seem to like.

I think Simon has let this mall go to crap because they are pissed about the whole Summit Mall fiasco. Several years ago, they tried to ram-rod through the approval to build a new mega-mall in west little rock and tried to claim at the same time that University or Park Plaza would not lose any tenants. Of course, several of the upscale retailers did state that if Summit Mall was built, they would move there and not open a second location.

An upscale shopping center (its supposed to have a Williams & Sonoma, Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware) is going in very close to University Mall so I don’t see why Simon just doesn’t either rehab University or raze it and build something even better in its place. I know it would be cheaper to follow the Wal-Mart method and build at a new location and abandon the old one but Mid-town Little Rock is going through a revival right now and I think this would tie in very nicely…

Budget Surplus Take 2…
I am very pleased to read today that Governor Huckabee says that not refuding at least part of the budget surplus is inexcusable. Apparently a Los Angeles Times report from June indicated that many other states ended the year with a budget surplus as well.

I guess my big question is how much of a rebate would that be for each taxpayer? I saw a blurb on the local news today that was estimating an average rebate of $140 per taxpayer. I guess if they are going to this route, I would like to see it in the form of a tax credit so the bums who are not paying their taxes can't their their money unless they file a tax return...