By CRYSTAL HOLLIS
T-H Staff Writer
Some commercial and grain-hauling trucks will no longer have access to certain streets in Wheatley.
The Wheatley City Council passed a new law Thursday night restricting trucks with three axles and a gross weight of 20,000 pounds or more from using certain streets.
According to the ordinance, certain trucks will be allowed to have access to restricted streets if the owner or driver of the truck lives on such street. The ordinance also allows for trucks to use restricted streets if it is the only access for the purpose of pickup or delivery on that street.
Wheatley city attorney Bill Snowden said the streets suitable for heavy trucks will be marked. Streets deemed suitable for passage by heavy trucks are fewer than the ones restricted.
The ordinance restricting use of some city streets is due in part to the width of some streets. Most streets in Wheatley are not safe for two-way traffic when one of the vehicles is a heavy truck, city officials said. Also, according to the ordinance, most of the streets were not constructed with the capacity for heavy loads, leading to increased maintenance costs for the city when those streets are used by the heavy trucks.
Violators of the new ordinance will be fined not less than $150, according to city officials.
In other business, Mayor Larry Nash told councilmen a local resident was recently hurt, and remains hospitalized, after slipping on the grounds of the civic center, which is currently being renovated. The council agreed to allow the city to pour concrete from the steps to the street to make the walkway safer.
Nash also announced there will not be a grand re-opening of the civic center on March 18, as originally planned. According to the mayor, the floor of the facility was sub-contracted and poor work was performed in that area, causing the reopening to be postponed.
Council members also passed a motion to allow Nash to purchase a used generator for $2,500. Nash said the generator would be used in case the power were to ever fail again at the sewage pump. According to Nash, "We had water during the entire time we were without power. However, the sewage pump was not working and we could have had a very bad mess on our hands if power had not been restored as soon as it was," he said.
According to Nash, FEMA will reimburse the city with $23,000 for the cleanup effort of debris from December's ice storm. Nash said the cleanup effort was now going to cost the city about $13,000 instead of the original $60,000 bid quoted at last month's meeting.
By DAVID NICHOL
T-H Staff Writer
It's a long road from introducing a bill to appropriating money for a project -- such as a building including a Fine Arts Center -- to actually seeing that project become reality.
That was the word from state Rep. Danny Ferguson, who has introduced a bill to do just that.
On Thursday afternoon, Ferguson said his bill had been made a Joint Budget bill, which is standard procedure for capital improvements.
Ferguson said capital improvement programs would not be voted on until near the end of the session. And he said there are plenty of pitfalls. Not the least of those pitfalls is the sheer volume of requests against the actual funding available.
He said he believed there were about 700 capital improvement bills, requesting about $850 million. He said the capital improvement budget was only about $100 million.
"The way the money is split, the governor gets half, the Senate gets one fourth and the House gets one fourth," said Ferguson. "It's going to be a tough battle to get $5.5 million appropriated, if there's only $25 million to spread out to 100 members."
In spite of the problems, Ferguson said he would continue to work for the appropriation.
"We're going to be in here fighting and scrambling for it," he said. "We probably won't know until the last few days of the session."
Classes in the Forrest City School District will dismiss at 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 13, for teacher inservice.
Classes will resume at the normal time on Wednesday.
The St. Francis County Quorum Court voted unanimously in a special meeting Thursday night to amend the previously amended real and property taxes for St. Francis County.
According to County Assessor Craig Jones, an error by the state Department of Education caused the need for the second amendment to the ordinance.
"Last Friday I was called by Little Rock, and they told me that there was some debt service that they had applied a rollback to and you can't apply a rollback to debt service. They called the ACD, the Assessment Coordination Division, and they called us and told us that there was a 2/10ths of a mill adjustment that needed to be made," said Jones.
The newly amended millage for the Forrest City School District will stand at 27.2 mills.
The error delayed the opening of the tax books, but according to both Jones and Chief Deputy Collector Emily Holley, the books will be opened soon and then tax collections will begin.
Two men were sentenced to time in the Arkansas Department of Corrections on Thursday in St. Francis County Circuit Court.
Houston Cunningham, 39, of 2117 Crawford, Forrest City, was found guilty of failure to appear and given five years with credit for time served.
William Jeffrey Merritt, 27, of Nashville, Tenn., was found guilty of theft of property over $2,500 and given five years, with credit for time served.
There were also five cases where a suspended imposition of sentence was given, four of those with supervised probation. There were also two cases in which charges were dismissed under Rule 28.