The fireworks begin

In a public forum Saturday, Kasha Kelley tacitly accuses Greta Goodwin of holding up her stalking bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and holding up her transparency Web site authorization in Ways and Means. The story is in today's
courier and will be in tomorrow's Traveler.

For the record, Kasha has not announced she will run against Greta, but is seriously considering it.

Tiahrt

Todd Tiahrt is making a stop through Ark City today. While the Republicans face a tough election cycle, I'm doubtful Tiahrts seat is that vunerable. My guess is that Democrats will devote most of their energy into keeping Nancy Boyda's seat in the north.

That said, state Sen. Don Betts will probably pull some significant support from the inner city of Wichita and could get some coattails from an Obama wave, if one occurs.

Tiahrt is vunerable on health care and a bad economy in general. He also must explain his support for the ongoing war and Boeing's failure to get the Tanker Deal.

Obama race speech

Several conservative thinkers praised Obama's speech on race last week. Charles Murray, author of the The Bell Curve and an early advocate of wholesale wellfare reform, said this ....

I can’t vote for him. He is an honest-to-God lefty. He apparently has learned nothing from the 1960s. His Supreme Court nominees would be disasters. And maybe he is too green and has lived too much of his adult life in a politically correct bubble. But the other day he talked about race in ways that no other major politician has tried to do, with a level of honesty that no other major politician has dared, and with more insight than any other major politician possesses. Not bad."

Casinos good or bad?

If the Ponca Tribe builds their casino/resort project, we really will have mini-las vegas across the state line. That one is IN ADDITION to an old proposal by the Pawnee Tribe to build a large-scale project, too. They seemed very serious and even came to Ark City to meet with local leaders about three years ago, but the project has obviously stalled.

http://www.arkcity.net/stories/061605/com_0002.shtml

My hope has been that the casino activity would help the Ark City area with more employment and perhaps some pull from out of towners. Hard to tell whether much of that is happening, and whether the casino cluster so far has been a net gain or loss. Retailers seem mixed on the topic, as shown in Foss's story last week. Curious what others think?

http://www.arkcity.net/stories/031108/com_0002.shtml

I wonder also, whether our County Commissioners, should pursue that deal with the Ponca Tribe to improve a network of county roads so that casino patrons have a nice path off the Interstate. The tribe would foot the bill, but any benefit Ark City might get from casino traffic off the Interstate would stop

banning tin part deux

Money quote from James Jordan's story on window ordinance in Tuesday's paper.

Commissioner Patrick McDonald
“If we give them a year they will find a way. If we don’t start it never will happen."


That said, I'm for giving some folks, like Sybrant, more than a year to fix the windows. He says he has 68 of them on the downtown buliding. But the question that comes up is, when is the city going to summon the courage to start setting standards for appearance that the community deserves?


(Speaking of code enforcement, whatever happended to the property by the bridge the city was trying to clean up? Looks the same as far as I can tell.)

banning tin

Wonder if the proposed ordinance banning tin and other materials covering up windows will stir up as much fuss as the yard parking ban.

This is politically risky because some prominet property owners will probably stand on their hind legs. Jim Sybrant already is building steam, according to the article in today's paper. http://www.arkcity.net/stories/031408/com_0002.shtml

I personally like that city officials are pushing this. I realize there's an expense but at some point we have to create standards for appearance. I do think, though, that the city should try to find a way to help lower income folks pay to have glass or plastic or whatever material is acceptable to fill the windows.

The worst culprits are downtown, which is the city's crown jewel that needs polishing. I hope city officials, unlike the yard parking ban, stand their ground and approve this even though a vocal opposition may emerge. Sometimes the popular, or what appears to be the popular, thing is not the right thing.

OK, blast away at me.

Smoking ban

Winfield is discussion a smoking ban. State lawmakers are, too. (Not likely to see much action this year, thought)

Why isn't Ark City.

Personally, I think the individual rights argument switched to the non-smokers side long ago. Who has the right to puff toxins into the air I breath?

(I do feel that bars could be an exception. Smoking and drinking seem to go hand in hand. But if the state, or the cities, banned it in bars, it wouldn't bother me a bit)

Moderated posts

Some posts that I did not published are now published, dating back to December. Several of these issues are old news but I went ahead and published them. They were ones I just overlooked (or perhaps were duplicates). Apologies to those of you who got ignored. Sometimes it's hard to sort through all the mail, you know?

Economic impact of bond

This didn't get talked about much during the campaign for the bond issue, but City Manager Doug Russell made an interesting point — the school bond issue will inject some economic activity into Ark City. You wouldn't want to push that point during a campaign because that is not the purpose of improving schools. But it is a reality.

I guess we'll see if contracters use local businesses and hire local workers to heighten the economic impact.

It passed

School bond passes 53 to 47 percent, with 80 provisionals still uncounted.

That mirrors our online poll.

I predicted it would pass by a small margin. Nice being right for once.