Signs, spike strips, and ‘minor’ details

The city council voted to cancel the sign moratorium it imposed at its last meeting and table the proposed changes to the existing sign ordinance after hearing from local business owners at Wednesday's public meeting.

This issue is not dead, a second public hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday, July 11 at 6:30 pm, the regular council meeting time. However Mayor Townsell tells the Log Cabin no action will be taken then either because of Alderman Jack 'rubber stamp' Bell's scheduled absence. Will the outcome really be any different with or without Bell's presence?

Recently we read that a high speed chase on I-40 was ended by a K-9 officer of the Conway PD. It seems Conway resident Harvey Battle, 32, pointed a gun at Morrilton police officers before speeding away from a traffic stop. Spike strips were used in an attempt to stop Battle but were avoided by the fleeing man.

The spike strips did however stop two cars unrelated to the chase, KTHV reports one of those individuals is an employee of the TV station. KTHV backpack journalist Mike Duncan was one of the cars that hit the spike strips and the Conway Police Department will be replacing two of his tires.

Controversy is beginning to brew in the Ward 3 city council race. There seems to be some discrepancies in the papers filed by both the incumbent candidates in this race.

According to information we received incumbent candidate Jack Bell failed to list his name on a petition form as required by law and incumbent candidate Mary Smith circled and checked that she is running for Non-Partisan Judicial Candidate on her political practice pledge.

To further compound these ‘minor' details, neither of these two incumbent candidates have ever had their Statements of Financial Interests notarized, which puts them both in violation of the Arkansas Ethics Commission. Some citizens and opposing candidates now question the validity of their candidacies for re-election.

Candidate Tom Jones issued the following comments on this issue.

According to the Running for Public Office handbook, Alderman Bell failed to meet the prima fascia requirements for submitting a valid petition and Mary Smith has announced her candidacy to be a judge.

I shared this with Melinda Reynolds, our county clerk, yesterday. Her official position on Jack Bell's Petition of Nomination was that it was stapled to another piece of paper that did have Jack Bell's name on it. Her exact quote was "It came together." Regarding Mary Smith's Political Practice Pledge, Ms. Reynolds' official position was "She can always come back in and redo this."

This has a bad appearance, knowing that two non-incumbent candidates (Larry Rathjen and George Carroll) had their Petition of Nominations rejected by Melinda Reynolds on similar technicalities. Luckily for both of those candidates, they got their first Petitions in before the deadline, so they had time to go out and collect another 30 signatures after Ms. Reynolds rejected it. Larry Rathjen actually got Melinda Reynolds to approve, in writing, his first Petition BEFORE he collected his signatures, only to have the Petition rejected once it was turned in.

No official complaint has been issued at this time and both candidates remain on the ballot. We will post more information about this controversy when it becomes available.