Christmas Time is (nearly) Here

Charlie Brown live and in action this Saturday night; Chad Gardner and the Maumelle City Council report; Maumelle Charter and CAC meet on the basketball court plus more sports and headlines

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Dec 08, 2022

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Death toll climbs up

The total number of dead Arkansans this past week was 39.

Last week, it was 19, and the week before that it was 17.

The total number of dead Arkansans is now at 12,603.

Covid toolkit
There’s now a one-stop shop to learn about vaccination sites and other Covid related information. Click here to learn more.

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If you don’t want to get sick and die, there’s some things you can do:
Get vaccinated
Get boosted
Wear a mask
Avoid crowds

The Headlines

ICYMI: Happy birthday to us
Upcoming meetings: The North Little Rock City Council will meet next Monday night while the North Little Rock A&P Commission will meet next Tuesday afternoon.
Upcoming events: White Christmas has begun at Argenta Community Theater and to buy tickets, click here.

Deadline for A Very Merry Maumelle nears

Now in its fourth year, A Very Merry Maumelle holiday decorating competition has returned for this holiday season.

The home has to be nominated before noon this Wednesday, Dec. 14, with judging and awards to follow on the evening of Friday, Dec. 16.

Winning homes will receive a sign.

For more information, or to nominate a home, click here.

A Christmas project still worth doing

Christmas is coming fast, so it is time to remember the reason for the season and help others.

Kelli Reep, director of communications at Methodist Family Health, said the facility’s annual Angel Tree program is back.

Indeed, if you click here, you’ll see three options to pick from.

Choose a child’s list (all items on the list can be purchased for $150 or less) and purchase the items on that list
Pick and choose items to send
Contribute to the Methodist Family Health Foundation, which provides for the necessities of the children and families in our care throughout the year.

It is important to remember that if you pick a list, Amazon does the delivery and that could be delayed depending on logistics and such.

Maumelle: City Council report

CHAD GARDNER

The theme for this week’s meeting… delays and more delays. The council had a relatively brief agenda this week, but it turned into an hour-long meeting with a whole lot of talk, and very little action.

Toby Keith would not have enjoyed this night.

Starting off the City Council meeting Monday night, we returned to unfinished business of appointing a new civil service commissioner to fill a vacancy.

There is urgency to this appointment since the Civil Service Commission will hold a termination hearing for a police officer next month. The hope was that this would have been filled already so that the new commissioner can be seated and attend training with the commission on procedures for the upcoming hearing. After no candidate received 5 votes at the previous council meeting in November, this appointment was deferred to this week’s meeting. However, there were two council members absent from the meeting and one member recused themselves from the appointment vote. That only left 5 council members who were voting so we all had to be unanimous in our vote between the two candidates (Sam Williams or Kelley Hughes). After three rounds of voting and discussion, including a plea from the Civil Service Chairman to please appoint someone, no candidate received five votes and the Mayor is not allowed to cast a vote for an appointment.

So yet again, this appointment has been delayed until a third council meeting.

I can’t promise we’ll reach the elusive five vote total at our next council meeting either. The council has been one member short for about a year and a half, so if there are additional absences or recusals from votes, it becomes increasingly difficult for various measures to pass.

Stay tuned. We may, or may not, have an appointment made at the next meeting.

Moving onto new business, the council voted on an ordinance which would have doubled the business registration fees in the city of Maumelle. This measure failed by a 4-4 vote of the council. I was a “No” vote on this issue, but my reasons were not necessarily due to the doubling of the fees. Business Permit fees only bring in about $20,000 annually, so doubling them would have brought in about $40,000. This is a small increase when looking at our entire budgeted revenues ($16.6 million in 2023). My reason for voting against this change was due to language in the ordinance that required the city of Maumelle to publish a list of delinquent businesses on the home page of our city’s website. Our website is the “front porch” or welcome mat for the city when residents or prospective businesses are looking at our city. I personally thought it was inappropriate for our home page to have a link to delinquent businesses in Maumelle. That’s not very welcoming in my opinion.

We can certainly make this list public in other areas of our website, but I didn’t think it was appropriate for this to be on our front page.

My other reason for voting “No” was that this ordinance allocated 50% of all business registration fees to go directly to police and fire. When you start allocating revenue items to specific departments, it takes away the council’s ability to budget these revenues into other needed areas. Obviously, we’re going to properly fund police and fire, so there’s no need to send 50% of business registration fees to these departments especially when the amount is only $20,000. I felt this revenue item should stay in the general fund so the council could continue budgeting through our normal process and not tie up dollars by allocating them to specific departments automatically.

In new business, the council heard a resolution that would authorize the city attorney to seek condemnation and begin eminent domain proceedings for a narrow piece of property that is delaying construction of the new roundabout at White Oak Crossing and Country Club Parkway.

Over the course of the year, all other property owners in the area have agreed to sell a portion of their property in order to make room for this new roadway. There is one remaining parcel that the city needs to acquire which amounts to .14 acres or 6,033 square feet of property. After receiving appraisals on this property, the value was $40,722. Offers to purchase at this price were rejected and the property owner countered and asked for $80,000. The city then offered $45,000 for the property and the owner came back with another request for $70,000. Lastly, the city has offered $55,000 for this land that totals .14 acres which is about a 35% price premium over the appraisal we received.

This offer has not been accepted which is why the city asked to begin eminent domain proceedings so the court process could begin and determine a fair price.

The eminent domain process would basically hand this issue off to the court to decide a fair price so that the project could finally move forward. It’s our duty to be fiscally responsible with tax dollars and the city sees no reason to continue offering more money than an appraiser has said this parcel is worth. That is why the Mayor was asking to begin the eminent domain process. However, the council voted 4-4 (Mayor cast a tie-breaking vote) to table this issue until the next meeting to see if the property owner would accept the most recent offer. I was a “no” vote on tabling since I wanted to see the project move forward. The court will likely decide this anyway, so I was supportive of the Mayor’s request to have them begin reviewing the issue.

The last item of business was a housekeeping budget resolution to write off bad debt from our general, street, and sanitation funds. This bad debt comes from many years ago when the city had a community service and sanitation fee that we collected quarterly. These fees were transferred over to Central Arkansas Water and they now collect them on resident’s monthly bills. This debt would likely never be recovered and the cost to pursue it would be greater than the amount of debt we could recover. With no discussion, this resolution passed unanimously by all in attendance.

Glad to see we could come together and finally approve some city business!

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Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Chad 501-529-1336, chad4maumelle@gmail.com

GSA auction full of delights

The General Services Administration is a behemoth of a federal agency.

Essentially, it is responsible for almost every piece of federal property, a truly massive inventory of everything.

From the Hubble Telescope to a printer at the federal courthouse.

The GSA also has an annual auction to dispose of any what it considers excess property.

This year, the online auction is this Saturday and credit where credit is due, it was Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post who pointed out the auction in a story earlier this week, in a very funny gift guide.

The column was a delight but so is the auction website, click here to see it.

There you’ll discover all of what the GSA has for sale and it includes:

Farm and construction equipment
Aircraft
Boats
Cars, vans, and trucks
Computers
Mobile homes
Coins, china, crystal, and rugs
Jewelry and collectibles
Medical equipment
Generators
Furniture
Exercise equipment
Tools
Real estate

Alas, there’s nothing listed in the NASA Shuttle/Hubble category but there’s plenty to buy here in Arkansas and if you’ve ever wanted a fire truck, there's a deal to be had.

A 1992 “KOVATCH KFT-11” and pictured below is currently up for sale.

The high bid is $872 but earlier this week is going at $175.

The entry says “repairs may be needed” which probably should be assumed but if you’re in the market for a fire truck, that’s a pretty good price and there’s so many things you can do with one.

You can fight fires of course, but if you got it, you’re the coolest dad in the school’s pickup lane. Or you could paint it pink and be very in demand for every parade in a 300 mile radius.

There’s a total of 52 things listed in Arkansas and besides the fire truck there’s parachutist’s helmets to lots of parts to even a dumpster.

Arts report: Christmas Time is Here and in Conway

Charlie Brown Christmas is, perhaps, the most iconic Americana of the 20th century.

The special debuted in 1965 from cartoonist Charles Schulz, who would have turned 100 earlier this month. The first of what became several animated holiday specials, Charlie Brown Christmas has become an annual tradition in terms of both watching, and listening as the soundtrack from the Vince Guaraldi Trio is one of the most covered pieces of music in recent memory.

Norah Jones. Harry Connick Jr. Stone Temple Pilots. That’s just a smattering.

But all those hours watching. All those hours listening. One probably hasn’t seen the show done live.

That changes this Saturday when the traveling A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live On Stage stages a production at 7:30 p.m. at the Reynolds Performance Hall on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas.

Tickets are $31.05 to $46 and can be purchased by clicking here. That price includes the various fees that come buying tickets these days.

Connor Barr as Charlie Brown with Megan Mistretta as Lucy; Alex Polzun as Snoopy; Arturo Guadalupe Hernandez as Linus; Calvin Wakefield Kaleel as Pig Pen (and bassist); James Appleton Woods III as Schroeder; Kristen Amanda Vargas Smith as Patty; Marlina Brown as Sally Brown; Stephanie Craven as Violet and Hannah Roberts as Frieda; (Curtis Brown photo)

The show, produced by Gershwin Entertainment, stars Connor Barr as Charlie Brown with Megan Mistretta as Lucy; Alex Polzun as Snoopy; Arturo Guadalupe Hernandez as Linus; Calvin Wakefield Kaleel as Pig Pen (and bassist); James Appleton Woods III as Schroeder; Kristen Amanda Vargas Smith as Patty; Marlina Brown as Sally Brown; Stephanie Craven as Violet; Hannah Roberts as Frieda; Matt Rapiejko, the drummer; and, Kaitlyn Thomas and Carson Zoch are swings.

Robbie Simpson serves as Director with Charlotte Bydwell as Choreographer and Brent Mauldin as the Music Director.

The show is described as taking “each of your favorite scenes from the original animated show” but then adding “greater detail with more fun, more music, more finding the true Christmas spirit.”

Sounds like fun and a production

Barr agreed.

“We have a total of 22 traveling cast and crew members in addition to the awesome local crew and technicians at each venue we travel to,” he wrote in an email earlier this week.

This is the second year the show has been a traveling production, Barr added.

“We recreate the Christmas Special word for word with some extra Christmas surprises as the beginning and end of the show,” he wrote. “It’s the special everyone knows and loves brought to life on stage.”

The traveling production started in November and after leaving Conway, the show heads to Texas, Barr’s home state, and makes its way through the Midwest with a Christmas Eve show at the The Palladium Theatre in New York City.

It comes to a conclusion on Dec. 28 in New Orleans.

Q&A
What is A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live On Stage?
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live on Stage is an all-new live production of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television special that has been charming viewers since it first aired in 1965. Featuring the classic Vince Guaraldi music score and the popular Peanuts comic strip characters by Charles M. Shulz, audiences discover the magic of the meaning of Christmas right along with the Peanuts gang, live on stage. At the end, the audience is also welcome to sing along while the cast performs a concert of classic holiday songs.
What is the running time of the show?
Total running time is approximately 90 minutes, including a 20 minute intermission.
What will Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the other characters look like?
The Peanuts characters, including Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and Sally, are performed by actors who sing and dance on stage. They are not costumed characters.
Will there be music in the show?
Yes, A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live On Stage features all the classics from the Vince Guaraldi musical score, played live by a three-piece band on stage.
What is the recommended age?
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live On Stage is perfect for all ages, from the young to the young at heart. The average age of children who attend is between 4 and 12.
Will there be Peanuts merchandise for sale?
Yes, there will be merchandise available for purchase at the show.

In other arts news

North Little Rock High School is staging Holiday Highlights at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday night.

Purchase tickets by clicking here or the flier below

Upcoming games

Today ... Fayetteville (at Bentonville) ... 5 p.m.
Friday... Har-Ber (at Bentonville) ... 8 p.m.
Saturday ... at Bentonville ... 11 a.m.
Tuesday ... at Nashville ... 6 p.m.
Dec. 16 ... Vashon (at the University of Missouri) ... 4 p.m.
Jan. 3 ... at Central ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 6 ... at Conway ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 10 ... vs. Little Rock Southwest ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 13 ... at Jonesboro ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 24 ... vs. Bryant ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 27 ... vs. Cabot ... 6 p.m.
Jan. 31 ... vs. Central ... 6 p.m.
Feb. 3 ... vs. Conway ... 6 p.m.
Feb. 7 ... at Little Rock Southwest ... 6 p.m.
Feb. 10 ... vs. Jonesboro ... 6 p.m.
Feb. 17 ... at Bryant ... 6 p.m.
Feb. 24 ... at Cabot ... 6 p.m.

For the roster, click here.

The week that was: North Little Rock rolled to a Great 8 Tournament title and coach Daryl Fimple has his Lady ‘Cats undefeated at 7-0. They’re back in tournament action this week with a trip to Bentonville for three games in three days.

Sports

Football: Parkview wins 5A state title

Good for Brad Bolding.

The former North Little Rock coach claimed his first state championship when his Little Rock Parkview squad defeated Shiloh Christian, 31-21, last Saturday afternoon at War Memorial Stadium.

To read more, click Football: Parkview wins 5A state title

There’s two more state championship games on Saturday and you can view live states for each game by clicking here then click on the game of interest. The games will also be broadcast live on Arkansas PBS.

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Omar Anderson was a junior linebacker at North Little Rock this past season and to view his highlight reel, click here.

State finals schedule

Saturday: 4A, Malvern vs. Harding Academy - Noon, 3A, Booneville vs. Charleston - 6: 30 p.m.

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