Maumelle City Council has busy night
Power outages are public health threat; Chamber legislative breakfast next Tuesday; Help still needed plus headlines and sports
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The Headlines
Upcoming meetings: The North Little Rock City Council meets next Monday night. For commentary on the planned downtown hotel on the agenda, keep scrolling.
Events: The Maumelle Area Chamber of Commerce has two events scheduled for next week. First up is a breakfast meeting at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday with state Sen. Jane English and state reps. David Ray and Brandon Achor. They’ll talk about this past legislative session and a Q&A will follow. It will be held at Park on the River. Click the flyer to buy tickets at $15 and to also RSVP.
On Thursday, May 11, the chamber will have its 23rd Annual Golf Tournament at Maumelle Country Club. It will start at 11 a.m. and team entry fee is $500. For more, or to register, click the flyer below.
Maumelle Public Facilities Board accepting resumes
The Maumelle Public Facilities Board is accepting resumes from residents interested in service on the Board. An appointment will be made for a five year term ending May 31, 2028. Applicants must be a resident of Maumelle.
Resumes should be submitted to the City Clerk/Treasurer’s Office, 550 Edgewood Drive, Maumelle, no later than 4 p.m., May 5. They can also be sent to Cityclerk@maumelle.org. Resumes will be reviewed by the Public Facilities Board.
A recommendation will then be made to the Mayor and City Council for the appointment to the position. Please contact David Gattinger at 501-310-8653 with any questions.
Maumelle: City Council report
Council approves plan for First Service Bank to construct a new building on White Oak Crossing; Improvements coming to Chick-Fil-A’s drive-thru; Maumelle’s Diamond Center Sports Complex renamed to honor Burch Johnson
The council meeting this week was fairly routine as we approved a couple of planning department items as well as a few budget amendments.
The first order of business was the approval of First Service Bank’s development plan to construct a new bank branch and corporate office in Maumelle. The bank will be located in between White Oak Crossing and Country Club Parkway, and immediately to the east of the new roundabout scheduled to be constructed soon.
I’ve attended the planning commission meetings where this bank has been discussed and their presence here will be an asset to Maumelle. They are constructing a beautiful building with substantial landscaping which will serve as a wonderful entrance to Maumelle from White Oak Crossing.
Second on the agenda for new business was the approval of a development plan amendment for Chick-Fil-A to renovate their current parking lot and drive-thru. As you’ve likely seen in other areas of the state and country, Chick-Fil-A has been installing covered drive-thru areas so their team members can better serve customers. This new drive-thru will help them process customers with better ease and traffic flow.
Next on the agenda was a resolution sponsored by Council Member Terry Williams to honor the late mayor, Burch Johnson, by renaming the Maumelle Diamond Center Sports Complex in his honor. Mayor Johnson passed away in October of last year. He had previously served as Maumelle’s first elected mayor and then later as a council member for the city. Johnson was a huge advocate for Maumelle’s baseball and softball program and helped to get the Diamond Center built for the city. It’s very fitting the city can honor him in this way since he worked so hard to make this sports complex a reality for Maumelle.
The final two items on the agenda were budget resolutions to modify the city’s 2023 budget. We appropriated $5,000 for the police and fire departments to attend safety training in advance of the total solar eclipse in April 2024. This will be a huge event for Maumelle and we want to learn from other cities so we can be prepared to handle the influx of people to our area. The final budget resolution was to amend the sanitation fund to recognize insurance revenue received for a trash vehicle that had a broken arm. These insurance funds offset the cost the city had to pay for the broken arm on the trash truck.
That’s all for the week from the council agenda. A few events coming up in the city:
There will be a public meeting held next Tuesday, May 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the South Room of the Community Center. This meeting will be a presentation regarding the city’s Bicycle & Pedestrian plan. If you’re interested in seeing the results of this study, please attend!
On May 16 from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., there will be an Open House held at Park on the River (11903 Crystal Hill Road). Feel free to attend and tour the property. The city is seeking the public’s input on how to make this facility better and to determine the future use for this property.
On May 18, the Maumelle Chamber will be hosting a Business After Hours at Park on the River to showcase the city’s new all-inclusive playground. The event will be held from 4:30-6:30 p.m. with a presentation around 5:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to attend this event and get a preview of the new playground that will begin construction later this year. Sponsorship opportunities are available for businesses and individuals if they would like to help with the final fundraising push to add additional amenities to the playground.
Chad Gardner, 501-529-1336, chad4maumelle@gmail.com
One month and counting later, help still needed
Volunteers are still needed in North Little Rock to help with tornado cleanup, said city spokeswoman Shara Booth Brazear earlier this week
The goal, she said, was to move piles of debris out of yards and closer to the streets for easier pickup.
We need, “another push of volunteers to make a drive through the affected areas and move everything to the street for our residents,” Brazear said.
Then Crowder Gulf, contracted by the city to do cleanup, would “remove debris placed within 25 feet of the street.”
Brazear also said some of those impacted by the March 31 EF3 tornado needed help re-securing tarps as well as replacing them,
If you’d like to volunteer, call 501-906-5014.
By the numbers
1 fatality in North Little Rock
37 homes destroyed in North Little Rock
600 plus homes in North Little Rock sustained damage
1,500 loads and counting of debris hauled away by Crowder Gulf
100 structures were destroyed in Little Rock
538 structures had extreme damage
Source: FEMA and the American Red Cross
FEMA: You may be able to get disaster assistance
Those impacted by the March 31 storm are still eligible for FEMA assistance, said the agency’s spokesman’s Thomas G. Kempton.
“Disaster assistance may include money for temporary rental assistance, home repairs, personal property loss and other serious disaster-related needs or expenses not covered by insurance or other means,” he said in a press release.
This assistance is available for citizens, non-citizen nationals and qualified aliens.
A citizen is defined as someone born in the U.S. or born to at least one U.S. parent or naturalized citizen outside the country.
A non-citizen national could be someone born in America Samoa, or a person whose parents are U.S. non-citizen nationals.
A qualified alien generally includes:
Individuals who are Lawful Permanent Residents (“Green Card” holders)
Asylees, refugees, or aliens whose deportation status is being withheld
Aliens paroled into the U.S. for at least one year
Aliens granted conditional entry (per law in effect prior to April 1, 1980)
Cuban/Haitian entrant
Certain aliens subjected to extreme cruelty or have been a victim of a severe form of human trafficking, including persons with a “T” or “U” visa
Individuals should consult an immigration expert to verify if they meet the immigration status requirements for FEMA disaster assistance.
Tornado relief number for North Little Rock residents, 501-906-5014
Power outages are a public health threat
It was the kind of news that made one think, “maybe I should buy a generator for the house, just in case.”
That just in case being the power being out for an extended time and the news was a study done by the University of Washington that showed Arkansas was among the hardest hit areas in the country in terms of extended power outages.
The other areas were Louisiana, central Alabama and northern Michigan, according to the study published April 29 in the journal Nature Communications.
It analyzed three years of power outages across the country but on a county by county basis from 2018 to 2020.
Not every county in Arkansas had data but of the ones that did, Pulaski County was among the 16 in the state that had at least 35 power outages of more than one hour and seven outages of more than eight hours that occurred in the three years studied.
Joan Casey, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences was inspired to do the work after being personally impacted by a long-term power outage.
“For me it was an inconvenience, but for some people it could be life-threatening,” said Casey, to Alden Woods of the University of Washington news service. “If you had an uncle that had an electric heart pump, basically, his heart wouldn’t work without power. You could use a backup battery for eight hours, but after that, if you don’t have access to electricity, you have to go to the emergency room. This is a really dangerous situation.”
Part of the reason there’s been more power outages and more long-term outages is the impact of climate change on the severity and duration of storms.
The study found that heavy precipitation in a given area makes a power outage five times more likely. Tropical cyclones make a power outage 14 times more likely while hurricanes make power outages 52 times more likely.
“We look at weather reports and decide whether or not to bring an umbrella or stay home,” Casey said. “But thinking about being prepared for an outage when one of these events is rolling through is a new element to consider.”
The findings could serve another purpose as there’s new federal money to revamp the country’s electric grid, with greater attention paid to the areas most impacted by long-term power outages.
Nationally, between 2018 and 2020, there were more than 231,000 power outages lasting more than an hour and of those, 17,484 stretched at least eight hours, a duration that is widely viewed as medically relevant. Meaning that public health could also be improved with a better electric grid.
“Any time we can identify another factor that we can intervene on to get closer to health equity, it’s exciting,” Casey said. “I think we’re going to see tremendous change, especially in the way our energy systems are set up, in the next couple decades. It’s this huge opportunity to get equity into every conversation and talk about what we’re going to do to make two decades from now look different from where we are.”
Arts notes
North Little Rock High School’s Spring into Dance tonight
The spring dance concert is at 6:30 p.m. tonight, May 4, at North Little Rock High School’s Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $6 for students and seniors and $8 for adults and can be purchased via our.show/nlrhs/springintodance site.
Tickets are only sold virtually. No cash or checks accepted at the door.
Crimes of the Heart starts next week
The Judy Kohn Tenenbaum Argenta Community Theater will stage a production of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart starting next Wednesday, May 10 at ACT II: The Sharon Heflin Performing Arts Education Center.
The show’s run will end May 20 and the first four shows will include dinner as part of the theatre’s dinner theatre program.
Dinner theater shows begin at 6:30 p.m. with Sunday matinees beginning at 2 p.m. Non-dinner shows will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Crimes of the Heart stars Angela Collier, Finley Daniel, Laura Landfair, Jessica Mylonas, Austin Rodgers and Thomas Williams. It is directed by long time ACT associate Laura Grimes.
Dinner choices include stuffed chicken, pork loin or sauteed eggplant along with risotto, vegetables, salad and desert. Dinner also includes your choice of red or white wine.
For tickets, please go to www.argentacommunitytheater.org/tickets or call John Broadwater at 501-353-1443.
Another vision for downtown
Since Terry Hartwick was first elected Mayor of North Little Rock in 1984, he’s had a consistent vision for the city – to make it and downtown better.
There’s been some notable swings, and misses, in those times, like, say, the basketball arena and concert venue in Baring Cross, but Hartwick has worked hard to improve North Little Rock.
First as mayor then as head of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce and then back as mayor again.
In the interregnum, Mayor Pat Hays executed some of Hartwick’s original vision but with some tweaks, like what was then Alltel Arena at its current location, and the no one anticipated Dickey-Stephens Park just down the street.
Hays and Hartwick, along with former Mayor Joe Smith all had one overarching goal – move the Greyhound Station out of downtown North Little Rock.
It was, in fact, a campaign promise made by Harwtick when he sought the mayor’s office in 2020, decades after he first held it, that getting Greyhound out was a top priority.
Promises made, promises kept, as the saying goes, as that what happened in September 2022 when demolition began and Hartwick said the property on Washington Avenue was being cleared out to, “make way for future developments in the downtown area.”
Fast forward to now, and that property is on Monday night’s City Council meeting agenda to be sold to developer Kal Makan of Makan Hospitality Management for the not insignificant sum of $625,650.
The Makans own a hotel in North Little Rock with others in Little Rock and Russellville. The company has already announced plans for a 14-story hotel that would include condo space, a restaurant and space that could be used for conventions and other large meetings.
It is big. It is bright. It is shiny.
Thing is, there’s been all manner of proposed developments for downtown North Little Rock that haven’t come to fruition.
Like, the big, bright and shiny hotel and convention center that would have been built adjacent to the Wyndham Riverfront at the site of the former,and long demolished furniture store that’s now a gravel parking lot.
On the other hand, there’s also been some notable wins with new developments on the Brownfield site by Dickey-Stephens Park along with new residential complexes scattered across downtown.
Time will tell, as they say but Hartwick’s persistent vision for North Little Rock remains.
Sports
No baseball at Dickey-Stephens this week
Road Trip: Now through May 7 at Springfield
Six-game home stand against Northwest Arkansas
Tuesday, May 9, 6:35 p.m.
Two for Tuesdays: Get two General Admission tickets for the price of one and only available at the Box Office.
Mug Club: Membership costs $30 and includes your first beer plus $3 select draft beer every Tuesday night Travs home game
Sponsorship: Treasure Hunt Tuesday, presented By Arkansas Auditor of State
Wednesday, May 10, 6:35 p.m.
Dog Days of Summer: Human fans can get $3 Berm tickets by bringing their dog to the game and only available at the Box Office. NOTE: Dogs are only allowed in the Berm areas | Presented By Moix RV Supercenter
Thursday, May 11, 6:35 p.m.
$3 Thursday: Enjoy $3 Beer Garden Tickets and Concessions deals, including Hot Dogs, Soft Drinks, Red Bull, Cotton Candy, and a Select Canned Beer & Seltzer! | Presented By Red Bull
Noche de Diamantes: Your Travs will take the field as the Diamantes de Arkansas in salute of Hispanic Heritage! | Presented By Modelo Especial
Friday, May 12, 7:05 p.m.
Fireworks: Presented By Arkansas State Parks
501 Night & Jersey Auction, presented By Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce
Saturday, May 13, 7:05 p.m.
Faith & Family Night: The perfect night for a church group outing! Come enjoy a pre-game talk with former MLB star Darryl Strawberry, who will also be available for an hour during the game to take photos with fans. (No autographs will be allowed.)
Kids Run the Bases, presented By Museum of Discovery
Sunday, May 14, 1:35 p.m.
Pre-Game Brunch Buffet: Get a special Brunch ticket that comes with a Field Reserved seat! Perfect for Mother’s Day and moms who also love baseball. Buffet will include select breakfast foods, juice, coffee, and soft drinks. (Alcohol will be available for purchase separately.) Food will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Presented By Picnic Brunch
Kids Run the Bases, presented By Museum of Discovery
Operation: Military Appreciation: Service Members get $3 off General Admission and Field Reserved tickets by presenting a Military ID (only available at DSP Box Office) | Presented By Mid-South Ford Dealers
Family Sunday: Get $2 General Admission tickets by presenting a physical or digital church bulletin and only available at the Box Office.