Little Rock voters will elect a new mayor next week. Either Baker Kurrus or Frank Scott Jr. will find plenty to deal with upon taking office in January.
To borrow the favorite word of University of Arkansas head football coach Chad Morris, crime rates in the capital city are "unacceptable." The Little Rock Police Department has countless internal issues that must be resolved. The city has been relatively stagnant for years when it comes to population and job growth. Race relations must be addressed in a more forthright manner than in the past. The city also needs a workable plan for filling the so-called doughnut hole--the hundreds of empty homes and lots that are begging for residents.
Let me add one more thing to the new mayor's to-do list--cleaning the place up. Little Rock is a dirty city, and it doesn't have to be that way. Picking up trash and mowing empty lots might not seem to rate on the same level as crime reduction and improved race relations, but I can tell you from experience that perception becomes reality in the worlds of community and economic development. Families looking for a place to move and company executives considering an additional business location can tell a lot about a city simply by observing how clean it is. They get an immediate sense of whether residents take pride in where they live.
During the four years I worked as a presidential appointee to the Delta Regional Authority, I visited dozens of towns in the eight states we represented. I learned a great deal by getting to a town early and driving around. Were the major streets leading into town free of trash? Was it apparent that there was strict code enforcement in residential and commercial areas? Was there an emphasis on downtown revitalization? Were there impressive parks and numerous walking trails?
I recently had lunch with a fellow columnist at the Little Rock Club on the 30th floor of the Regions Building. We looked toward the west and he commented, "We live in a beautiful place, don't we?"
I agreed with him. Then we noted that residents and visitors alike do quite a job trashing Little Rock. I've written before about my daily frustration of driving downtown and seeing the trash along Cantrell Road, especially the stretch from the bottom of Cantrell Hill to the Episcopal Collegiate School. The litter, leaves and limbs in the ditch are so bad that water backs up onto the road following heavy rains. I can only imagine what visitors think when using this busy entrance to downtown. A longtime Little Rock business and civic leader said to me earlier this month: "I know you've written about that stretch of road before, but it's not doing any good. I get mad every morning when I go to work."
I could cite plenty of similar examples. Kurrus and Scott are effective communicators. Little Rock's new mayor must use the bully pulpit to generate public support for causes that improve the city. A good place to start would be to adopt Keep Little Rock Beautiful as a cause and help transform it into one of the best organizations of its type in the country. As trashy as Little Rock is now, I would hate to think where it would be without the hardworking Keep Little Rock Beautiful volunteers.
Keep Little Rock Beautiful, a nonprofit organization, became an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and Keep Arkansas Beautiful in 2006. The group has held a citywide cleanup each spring for the past nine years. The 10th annual event will be March 9. Wouldn't it be great if the mayor spent his first couple of months in office recruiting neighborhood associations, churches, schools and civic clubs to participate? There are usually between 800 and 950 volunteers who take part. Think of the impact if a mayor's efforts were to boost that number to 5,000 or so.
Last March, 821 volunteers picked up 996 bags of trash and 60 bags of recyclable materials. There were 418 city blocks and 65 acres of parks cleaned. More than three miles of waterways were also cleaned, and 458 tires were collected and recycled.
"We seek sponsorships and donations to help support the cleanup efforts," says Suzanne Hirrel, who chairs Keep Little Rock Beautiful's litter prevention committee. "We provide T-shirts for volunteers and some litter-grabbers for those who participate. Through support from Keep Arkansas Beautiful, we're also able to provide trash bags and gloves."
There's also an annual fall event that focuses on Murray Park and the Arkansas River. This year's cleanup in September attracted 39 volunteers who collected 42 bags of litter and two bags of recyclable materials. This event needs to be far larger, and a committed mayor could make that happen. Keep Little Rock Beautiful partners with the Friends of Fourche Creek for two additional cleanup days in the Fourche Creek area. These events usually occur in March and November.
I've written before about the need for a program that employs the homeless and panhandlers to pick up litter. That should happen sooner rather than later. There also must be more of a focus at City Hall on the adopt-a-street program. Keep Little Rock Beautiful began partnering with the city a few years ago to revitalize the 23-year-old program. Signs were redesigned and a new coordinator was named. The adopt-a-street program now has 223 groups adopting 161 miles of streets. Eleven more organizations have joined this year. In a city the size of Little Rock, there could be at least twice the number of entities involved.
A strong mayor can make that happen.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 11/28/2018