Brad Cazort said he's heard rumors that Little Rock doesn't shut down every Tuesday night while the Board of Directors meets. Now he's aiming to find out.
This week marks the first time in 20 years that Cazort isn't expected at City Hall on Tuesday. The 60-year-old spent all of his 40s and 50s on the board, which meets weekly.
He decided not to run for re-election last year, saying: "It's not a lifetime job. It was not meant to be."
Restaurant owner Capi Peck, chairman of the city's Advertising and Promotion Commission, will take Cazort's place on the board today.
It'll be the first time anyone other than Cazort has represented Little Rock's Ward 4 -- an area that stretches from Markham Street and later Rodney Parham Road north to the Arkansas River, and west from Mississippi Street past Interstate 430 to Pinnacle Valley Road.
When Cazort was first elected to the board in 1996, beating out two challengers, the city had just completed restructuring, and Ward 4 was created.
When his wife, Susan, is asked about her getting more time with her husband now that such a large commitment is dropping from his workload, she said she still doesn't expect to have him around on Tuesday nights.
"He probably won't have any more free time," she said. "He always needs to fill it up. He'll probably stay active with something. He plays a lot of trivia. Tuesdays are trivia night at the Flying Saucer. He'll probably be there."
Cazort, a repository administrator at the Arkansas Crime Information Center, started in politics at age 18.
That's when he and his best friend Stuart Thomas -- who went on to be the Little Rock police chief and is now retired -- decided on a whim to run for one of the more than 500 Pulaski County Quorum Court seats while they were students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It was the term before county government was restructured, and the large group met only twice a year, pretty much only to approve the county budget. Now there are just 15 seats on the Quorum Court.
As a justice of the peace, Cazort officiated a few marriages. Because of an Arkansas law at the time that required men under age 21 to get permission from their parents to wed, he could officiate a marriage but couldn't legally enter into one.
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In 2002, when Cazort was serving as vice mayor on the city board, he ran for a judge seat but lost that race.
Susan Cazort said her husband's announcement not to run for re-election to the city board came as no surprise to her.
"He was only supposed to be there four years and not run again. I've been expecting him not to run for 16 years now," she said.
One could say politics runs in the family. Cazort's grandfather, Lee Cazort, was the second and fourth elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas. He served in the state House of Representatives and state Senate before that, going on to become the youngest-ever speaker of the House at age 29.
Asked how he'll stay involved in politics after his departure from the city board, Cazort shrugged and said, "I'll vote."
On Facebook, there's a photo of him with his wife and daughter, 26-year-old Amanda, after voting together in last year's election.
Cazort said he learned quickly that making time for his family, despite his many commitments on the board, was important. Being a city director is a part-time job. Directors are paid $18,500 a year, and in addition to being required to attend weekly meetings, they are expected at neighborhood events and to field phone calls from constituents and developers.
Most city directors have full-time jobs on top of that, and Cazort practices law on the side. He was a full-time practicing attorney when he joined the board at age 40.
"One thing that I learned really early on was the importance of family. It was very early on I missed something of Amanda's for a city function of some sort. And I promised her at that point I would never do that again, and I have never missed anything else. In fact, I turned down a private tour of Air Force One from Bill Clinton because it was at the same time Amanda was in a swim competition," Cazort said.
He and his daughter are close. On Brad Cazort's 60th birthday last year, his daughter shared a photo collage on Facebook and called him "the best confidant and partner in crime and teacher and mentor and shoulder and accountant and chauffeur and fan and support group."
After attending a reception at City Hall in her dad's honor last month, she posted, "I have always known my dad was pretty much the greatest, but tonight I was humbled as his daughter to see how many people agreed."
She recently moved home from Alabama and started a job as a zoo educator at the Little Rock Zoo -- a place Brad Cazort has had a hand in growing over the years.
Cazort led the task force in 1998 to revamp the zoo after it lost its accreditation. He currently sits on the zoo's board of governors. The mayor plans to appoint Cazort as a citizen member of the zoo board after Cazort's term as city director ends.
"I'm really proud of the zoo for where it has come in 20 years, but I don't take any of the credit for it," Cazort said. "I'll take credit for trying to raise the public's awareness about how important the zoo is for a number of reasons -- for education, for conservation, as well as being a huge economic engine for the city."
At the city reception, Cazort was given a lifetime membership to the zoo, as well as a lifetime membership to any golf course in Little Rock.
Cazort also played a role in rewriting the city's transportation code years ago.
Other accomplishments have taken nearly his entire time on the board to accomplish. His campaign goals when starting out included adding a west Little Rock fire station. That only recently came about.
Cazort also supported neighborhood efforts to build a community center in the Pankey area back in the late 1990s when he first got on the board, but efforts there failed and were only recently realized with a city partnership. The community center opened in November.
With his extra time now, Cazort hopes to golf more -- one of his favorite pastimes -- and travel. He and friends, including Thomas, have bought matching knickers, knee-high socks and Scottish flat-cap golf hats.
Thomas said it sometimes was a surreal predicament as police chief knowing that his best friend was in a way his boss.
"If you've known somebody for 45 years, you can read their expressions. Sometimes [at board meetings] I could tell he was on one side or another on an issue. He was easy to work with, he understood the system and personnel, and he didn't ask the impossible. ... He's been a wonderful friend," Thomas said.
In Cazort's closing remarks at the reception in his honor, just after he began to tear up, he joked to City Director Gene Fortson, with whom he had gone on a late-night tour of all the 5 a.m. clubs in the city when the issue of whether to force them to close earlier was before the city board for a vote.
Because of state Freedom of Information laws, the two had to give public notice that they would be together discussing city business, and they had to invite the media along.
"Gene, one good thing about leaving, you and I can now go to 5 a.m. clubs without the press," Cazort said, to a room full of laughter.
Metro on 01/01/2017