By KENDALL OWENS
T-H Staff Writer
County Judge Carl Cisco says he is facing somewhat of a dilemma please the members of the St. Francis County Quorum Court or please the citizens of St. Francis County.
In May, Cisco agreed to a self-imposed budget of close to $73,000 a month in order to reduce a deficit of more than $400,000 in the county's road department budget. At that time, Cisco told justices that he had purchased material, due to expected price increases early in the year, which would be used later. He also told justices that the budget constraints would not be a problem unless he was facing catastrophes.
According to Cisco, recent rains have not brought about major problems, and those combined with a series of minor problems, mainly along Crowley's Ridge, is now making it necessary for him to ask justices for additional funding for county roads.
"The budget that we agreed to was, and still would be, working fine if we hadn't had all of the rain that we had here recently. We're seeing damage to the roads across the county, and if we stay within our budget constraints, we can't fix these roads," Cisco said.
On a tour of the roads Monday, Cisco discussed several problems in the Barrow Hill Road area, including a recently installed pipe on County Road 311 and a gaping hole on County Road 323.
"We came out here and repaired a hole that was on this road not long ago," Cisco said referring to the hole on County Road 323. "But Sunday, Mr. Sonny (Road Department Supervisor Sonny Hamilton) got a call about this one, and after they came out and took a look at it, he decided for safety reasons that the road needed to be closed until we can repair it. Here recently, we've had to close off so many roads that we had to make a sign to put up out here. We don't like closing off any of the roads, but this was really a safety issue. This hole doesn't look like much, but when you actually inspect it, you can see where the earth underneath the road has pretty much been washed out."
At a bridge along County Road 311, Cisco stopped to show the effects of a storm which blew through last week, dropping five inches of rain along the Ridge.
"In this spot, we're really having problems. I believe it was Judge Courtney (former St. Francis County Judge Wayne Courtney) who came in here and put this large pipe in. Last year, we came back out here and put a second large pipe in to help control the flow of water, and it still isn't helping. You can see where the water has come through here with so much force that it has pushed all of the concrete and rock that we put in here back. Our normal rains don't really bother us in locations like this, but when you get a storm like we had last week, it can do damage in a hurry. We're going to have to come in and clear all of this debris out and drop in concrete in order to get this repaired right. Under this budget, we just can't do that," he said.
"These are the types of things that I wish the justices could see so that they could get a better understanding of what we face in the road department. We can't have these citizens traveling on roads that aren't safe or using secondary routes to their homes when they have roads that can take them home. I understand that the budget has to be fixed, but we have to keep consideration of these folks out here. These aren't the only problems, I can take you out to Moss Hill and over to Big Eddie and to several other places where we have washouts and problems just like this. Under our budget, the department has done all that it can," Cisco said.
Cisco said he estimates needing an additional $40,000 to $50,000 in order to complete the necessary repairs. A portion of that additional funding would also offset the increased prices mentioned in May.
"We're not talking about a lot more money, but in budgeting for these repairs, we have to figure in the increased prices we're going to have to pay for any material that we may have run out of. We had a surplus of materials, but we've been using that while operating under this budget. We've had price increases in several areas from steel, to wood, to fuel. It really comes down to telling people whether we can fix their roads now, or telling them that they will have to wait until spring. That decision is basically the court's."
At the beginning of the month of November, the road department deficit had been reduced to $194,066.84.
By KENDALL OWENS
T-H Staff Writer
The commander of Arkansas State Police Troop D has a little extra to be thankful for after a fatality-free Thanksgiving holiday period.
Capt. Nathaniel Jackson, commander of Forrest City based Troop D, said that while troopers worked several accidents throughout the eight-county troop, no fatalities were recorded.
"We worked 21 accidents during the holiday period, but primarily those accidents did not occur on the interstate. Of those accidents, eight of them that we worked were here in the county. It's always a good holiday period for us when we don't have any fatalities, so all in all, this was a pretty good period," Jackson said.
Overall, during the holiday period which began on Wednesday, Nov. 24, at 6 p.m., and ended on Sunday at 12:01 a.m., troopers reported a total of 354 arrests, including five DWI arrests, 61 safety belt violations, three child-restraint citations, 62 non-hazardous arrests and 24 criminal arrests. According to Jackson, the actual troop efforts began before the holiday period started on Wednesday.
"Traditionally, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is our busiest travel day, so we saturated the interstate with our units. We made sure that we were out there to try to keep the roads safe and assist any motorists in any way that we could, and everything pretty much ran smoothly on Wednesday," he said.
Troopers were back out in force on Sunday, according to Jackson. "While we didn't have a saturation on Sunday, we did have our units primarily patrolling the interstate systems. Folks were trying to get back home, and once again we wanted to be out there to make sure that everything was safe for our travelers."
According to Jackson, sobriety checkpoints, which are routinely seen around some holidays, were not part of the Thanksgiving period due to low DWI arrests surrounding the holiday period in recent years.
"We didn't have any sobriety checkpoints up during this holiday season because we really haven't faced a problem with drinking and driving around the Thanksgiving holiday. We really put an emphasis on the interstate because we have more people out there for Thanksgiving," Jackson said.
Troop D consists of Crittenden, Cross, Monroe, Lee, Phillips, Prairie, St. Francis and Woodruff counties.
By TAMARA JOHNSON
Managing Editor
Two men were sentenced to the Arkansas Department of Corrections Monday on charges stemming from one of the largest Interstate 40 drug busts ever to be recorded by State Police Troop D in Forrest City.
Hector Aguilar, 38, of Tucson, Ariz., and Francisco Galvan, 37, of Lynwood, Calif., were arrested in February this year after state police found 25 kilos of cocaine placed in 12 unmarked boxes inside a tractor-trailer loaded with toys. The drugs had an estimated street value of $16.5 million.
State police stopped the tractor-trailer for speeding on Feb. 8 between Forrest City and Widener, and after obtaining consent to search the trailer, troopers found several unmarked boxes inside and scattered among other boxes marked Hasbro. Officials with Troop D, at the time of the stop, said the shipment of toys was headed to a Wal-Mart store in North Carolina.
Aguilar was originally charged with permitting an unauthorized driver to drive and possession with intent. Galvan was originally charged with driving on a suspended driver's license and possession with intent. The traffic charges were merged into one count each of possession with intent to which each man pled guilty and was sentenced to five years in the ADC during circuit court proceedings before Judge Harvey Yates.
In other circuit court action on Monday, Donald R. Campbell, 59, of Wynne, was sentenced to three years in state prison on a felony hot check violation and two counts of second-degree forgery
This sentence is to run concurrently with another sentence Campbell is serving out of Crittenden County.
Alvin Pounders survived a three-way tie in the final Professor Pigskin football contest to win the $50 cash prize.
Pounders, of Colt, missed four of last week's selected high school, college and NFL games, but ended in a tie with Brook Hively of Wynne and Ron Ellis of West Memphis, both of whom missed only four.
Pounders was the only one of the trio to correctly pick LSU over Arkansas in the tie-breaker game. Hively and Ellis both had Arkansas picked to win the game, which eliminated them from the three-way tie.
On Tuesday Dec. 14, at the Forrest City Civic Center, the East Arkansas Enterprise Community will hold its annual public meeting, celebrating the organization's eighth year in existence.
Representatives from across the Delta will be in Forrest City for the meeting which will feature William "Bill" Bynum, president and CEO of the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta based in Jackson, Mississippi.
According to a press release from the EAEC, the theme for the event will be "Sustaining Communities through Entrepreneurship and Asset Building". The meeting will also highlight activities from 2004, including the EAEC's small business fund, youth groups through the EAEC Youth Consortium, health projects and the organization's "Breathe Easy" program which works to stop smoking.
Registration and exhibit set-up for the annual meeting will be held from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. with the public meeting taking place from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The EAEC incorporates four counties, St. Francis, excluding Forrest City; a portion of Wynne in Cross County; Lee; and Monroe.
St. Francis County received $135,431.08 in sales tax during October, according to City and Town, the official publication of the Arkansas Municipal League.
In addition, towns in St. Francis County received the following amounts from county sales tax in October: Hughes, $26,841.80; Forrest City, $212,405.38; Wheatley, $5,348.24; Palestine, $10,653.34; Madison, $14,190.08; Caldwell, $6,685.30; Colt, $5,290.72 and Widener, $4,816.28.
Towns in St. Francis County with their own sales taxes also received the following in October: Forrest City $145,056.43; Hughes, $9,337.64; Madison, $1,001.18; Palestine, $6,400.49 and Wheatley, $4,285.