Arkansas Blog

A cousin of mine, who I don't see often, sent me one of those "forward" e-mails today...forwarded to me and everybody on his contact list. He had received it from someone who had forwarded it from someone else. My cousin was very excited to have discovered this, and wanted to share it.

So, what's the story people have just happened onto and seem to be passing all over the Internet? Suffer the children, 7/20/2006 - By Warwick Sabin (the Lord's Ranch story).

"So it is for Little Rock as another mayoral race gets underway. The city's POPULATION and economy are growing, tourism is increasing and the cultural life is improving. "

Our city's population is growing? Really?

According to the census, from 2000-2005 Little Rock grew from 183,133 to 184,564 or just 0.7 or roughly 0.13% per year. Arkansas as a whole grew by 4% during that time which was less than the national average of 5.3%. Pulaski Co as a whole grew by just 1.4%. Meanwhile, the surrounding counties (Faulkner, Lonoke, and Saline) were 3 of the 5 fastest growing in the state with double digit growth. The leaders, obviously, were the NWA counties which is where so many of our bright young people are ending up. Put a different way, Maumelle added 3800 residents compared to LR's 1100, Cabot 6000, Conway 8700, Bryant 3500, etc.

We're not thriving here in Little Rock, far from it. We can't just put the brakes on West LR development which is really the only growth of our tax base which is occurring. The streets of the $500k homes and the $40k ones cost the same to pave, but which ones are collecting the property tax to enable such improvements? Those same property taxes pay for police and fire services that are far less often used in West LR than the poorer sections of town as well. Nobody in West LR's griping about paying these taxes, so let up on the people who are paying their share. I'd support annexing everything the city can even to the point of city-county consolidation.

Sorry, the quote above was taken from Warwick Sabin's article this week.

Glad to see our school issues are getting attention. Rural legislators need to band together and take a stand against Little Rock to protect our schools and way of life. Can you really say that kids in the Little Rock schools are better than kids in smaller schools.

No, Perry County...Little Rock kids are no better than Perry County kids...or Saline County kids...or Washington County kids...

Perry County is cool...it's not Little Rock versus anybody...your county is peaceful...

Take a stand against Little Rock? I thought this was between Bryant and Paron.

Speaking of Little Rock Population growth...I recently attended the SLC meeting in Louisville, KY. The Mayor there spoke of their experience of having the city of Louisville (about 250K) annex the entire county to take them to about 1Million.

It put them in the top 20 largest cities and was a huge boost to their development. This issue was discussed in several meetings at the conference. In one meeting they talked about their new status as a large city being one of the factors that led to UPS investing over $1Billion in a new distribution and technology center.

If Little Rock is currently 180K or so and they annexed the whole county to become one metro area of about 375K that would put them on the map.

Again, we get into big vs little dictricts and what we need to be discussing is how to get every student, no matter where they live in this state, to have the education to suceed against an overseas workforce that getting a solid education.

The threats of not having higher paying jobs isn't Paron vs Little Rock or even Paron vs Perryville, It is the US vs southeast Asia. The core courses are a minimum of what a person needs to have to be able to survive as a knowledgable citizen who is able to understand what is happening around the world and can make knowledge-based decisions on both a personal and citizen basis.

Thank you for providing a few facts about growth in Little Rock. You certainly can't get them for the Times or DG, they are too busy advocating for the greed is good crowd.

If we are ever going to start a meaningful discussion of LR, development, redevelopment, and growth it must start with the facts, not a sale pitch.

It looks like people on both sides are finally getting so frustrated with the way we are treated and this city is managed that maybe its for a change. I hope so.