The Arkansas Two-Step This is a two-part column with steps to bring a better life to all Arkansawyers. Part One: Our environment: Before we start with the details, let’s take a close overall look at our State. We live in a section of the United States, which has four easily distinguishable seasons, we’re mostly immune from wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and we aren’t overcrowded with people. I’ve lived in areas of the country where all of the above were threats, and I can tell you a climate that is only slightly different as summer turns to fall and winter is not ideal as far as I am concerned. Or just look at the lines for food and virus tests in our overcrowded urban areas, if you want another reason. But those aren’t all the advantages our state has to offer. We call our state, “The Natural State” and even though we have destroyed a huge amount of what we once had, we still have a lot left. After saying that, the first point I want to make is, we should strive to keep as much of our natural surroundings as possible. In other words, “Stop widening the Pig Trail,” etc. But while our city and state agencies are certainly guilty of widespread natural surroundings destruction, most of the obliteration of our forests, wetlands, and other areas is done by individuals. Let me give you a couple of contrasting examples. When we decided to move back to El Dorado from South Texas, we managed to find 17 acres of land in one of the best residential areas of the town. The site had a closed beer joint called The Palace, and there were several rundown buildings on the property. The remainder of the land was very heavily wooded along with two small ponds. We immediately removed the Palace structure and other dilapidated buildings, and sited our house well off the road overlooking one of the ponds. Since our building site was very close to where the old farm-house was located, we lost only a few small trees. Then, when we were almost through with construction, our architect showed me the driveway plan, and after I checked it out on the ground, I made some revisions. The architect’s straight line from Calion Road called for the removal of five major trees. The curves in the driveway you see today are my revisions to keep from cutting those hardwood trees. Recently, when we had our house appraised to take advantage of the ultra-low interest rates, the appraiser commented the appraisal would be higher because of the major trees on the property. Now contrast that with the way most developers build a house or a subdivision in towns without a Tree Ordinance. First, most of them, clear all the vegetation, and it doesn’t matter if they cut hundred year old hardwood trees, or if they are in the city limits, or adjacent to some preexisting quality residential areas. A glaring example is underway just a few hundred yards from my property where a developer is in the process of putting in a subdivision. The first thing he did was a full-scale logging operation cutting nearly all of the major trees on the + 10 acre property. That is perfectly legal to clear-cut a wooded track zoned residential within the El Dorado City Limits because we don’t have a Tree Ordinance. If you are going to build residential properties, you can clear every bit of vegetation on the land. That is why, within the next few weeks, I will present a Tree Ordinance and a Landscape Requirements Ordinance to the El Dorado City Council. Both ordinances are from the City of Fayetteville Municipal Ordinance Regulations. Fayetteville has some of the best tree and landscaping ordinances in the State, and if your town or city needs ordinances to enhance the tree canopy or to mandate landscaping blank parking lots, Fayetteville is where you should look Of course, you might think trees and a natural setting are fluff, but| you would be dead wrong. Numerous studies have highlighted the positive responses to trees. Why do we enjoy tree-lined-streets, or crepe myrtle or a thousand brilliant Arkansan oaks during the fall? I can still vividly remember the fall colors of maple trees on the University grounds as well as the breathtaking fall beauty of the old Confederate Cemetery. Our towns and cities with tree lined streets and landscaped parking lots are keys to a better quality of life for its residents. Living with trees and thousands of vegetation species increases our quality of life. Part two: Education and Jobs However, I would be amiss, if I just dwelled on our natural surroundings as the only way to achieve a better quality of life for our State’s residents. Yes, our natural surrounding are important, but other factors heavily contribute. I think you would have great difficulty in living the best life possible without a good job, which provides the income necessary to live that good life. In my opinion there is only one place to start toward that goal, and that is with a good education for as many of our citizens as possible. We should start our push to educate our workforce with a 50% raise to every teacher in the state, which, by the way, would only make them par with California and New York. Then combine that with a statewide El Dorado Promise, which would pay all college tuition for every Arkansas high school graduate. But go further, and give those Arkansas high school graduates $1000 a semester as book and living expense money. Of course, our Universities need an equal boost in pay, and allot those Universities a big increase in funding directly focused on research and new campus building construction….Then maybe our Flagship University could build an exhibit hall for the 7,000,000 museum items stored in an off campus agri storage building. That huge commitment to education would pay off with a workforce that would attract high quality jobs, and over the years, bring a huge increase in the State’s average worker’s pay. Yes, I’m sure you’re thinking. “Where are we going to get the money?” I have a few suggestions: How about tacking on a 10% gross revenue tax on the casinos that are sucking millions a year out of Arkansas, or maybe another dollar a pack on cigs. Heck, that would help our +20% of our population break the habit. Yes, there are dozens of ways. A one cent gasoline tax would easily solve the financing. What if we did gut up and actually made the effort to really educate our people? Can you imagine the benefits? The educating of a generation of Arkansawyers would turn this state around, and instead bringing up the rear, we would be leading the field. Yes, an educated workforce could make our State stop begging with our hat held out willing to take any polluting, low-end jobs, our state would be the envy of the nation, and our quality of life would soar. Do we want a better life enough to gut up and go for it? I hope so. Well, someone said, “When you dream, dream big.”|