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GGGG's Website www.GGGGnews.com
Important
functions :
Thursday - January 10, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - Judge David Switzer - Auditorium, Garland County
Library
Tuesday - February 5, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - Steve Arrison - Auditorium, Garland County
Library
Tuesday - February 12, at 6 PM:
GGGG Special Meeting - Kent Myers - Hot Springs
Transportation Plaza
Thursday - February 21, at 6 PM:
Garland Good Government Group Business Meeting - Room "B" Garland County
Library
Tuesday - March 4, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - Josie Fernandez - Auditorium, Garland County
Library
Thursday - March 20, at 6 PM:
Garland Good Government Group Business Meeting - Room "B" Garland County
Library
Tuesday - April 1, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - Jo West Taylor, County Treasurer - Auditorium, Garland County
Library
Tuesday - May 6, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - State Senators & Representatives - Auditorium, Garland County
Library
Tuesday - June 3, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - General Bill Lefler - Hot Springs Transportation Plaza
Tuesday - July 1, at 6 PM:
GGGG Open Meeting - Josie Fernandez, National Park Superintendent - HS
Transportation Plaza
This website is now primarily an
archive of information relative to the Hot Springs Metropolitan area
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In Service to Our Community
Hot Springs and Garland County Arkansas is one of the nicest places on earth to live and
work but our present city leaders continue to fail to plan and have taken actions that
have serious negative impacts on the growth, progress, safety, and welfare
of our citizens.
As an example, one recent action (May 7, 2007) by four of our seven city directors
was a vote to NOT allow the citizens of Hot Springs a vote for an
expenditure of approximately $14,000,000 to build a new city hall.
Those directors are:
Tom Daniel, Steve Smith, Carroll
Weatherford, and Elaine Jones. The only public input was a
hasty and brief "public hearing" held during the same meeting. No
financial spreadsheet justifying such an indebtedness to the public was provided. In fact, six of the directors even voted to declare an
"emergency" so that bonds could be sold in 30 days. The Arkansas
Constitution and courts describe such emergencies as issues that have
immediate affects on the health, safety, or well-being of the public.
We could not see how an immediate sale of bonds or a new city hall can
constitute a true emergency.
Another extraordinary action taken by the city board at the same meeting
was to change the name "Franchise Tax" to "Franchise Fee" in the City Tax
Code. This was an all-too-obvious effort to disguise their real
actions and support their claim that taxes would not be impacted.
We took no position either for or
against the construction of a new city hall but most citizens questioned
the priority of such a large expenditure when many other areas that do
directly affect the health, safety, and welfare of the public need
addressing.
For example, if you drive the Central Avenue portion of Arkansas Scenic Highway 7
from its beginning to its end, you cannot help but notice that there is only
one small 3 or 4 block section that is not 4 lanes wide. This is the
section where a small selfish group of business owners managed to persuade
our city board to close half of our only north-south thoroughfare so that
they can have free on-street parking for themselves and their patrons.
This is also the portion that local residents refer to as the
"bottleneck" for obvious reasons.
On June 19, 2006, four of our city board members arrogantly ignored the
pleas of most citizens, a petition with 650 signatures, and substantial factual evidence by voting to make
the 2 lane bottleneck with parking a permanent condition. Those 4
members who have onceagain proven to have no concern for the safety and well-being
of our citizens are:
Tom Daniel, Steve Smith, Carroll
Weatherford, and Elaine Jones. Click on the names above
and you will see directors who
are not representing your best interests.
The track record of the above 4 officials is not good. Note that
these are mostly the same city directors and the same special interest group
who decided that our new multi-million dollar downtown parking garage needed
a waterfall and some rusting statues more than we needed a street to get to
it. That was their justification for closing Bath Street which could
have fed traffic directly to parking.
Click to See
Map
If you are interested in knowing what factual information was provided
to but ignored by the city board in this action, the following is a short summary which pointed out that a
"Yes" vote to keep the 2 traffic lanes with parking would mean:
1) Violating the primary goals of Focus Garland County - Vision 2010 and
the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) plan.
2) Violating the city's own comprehensive plan and code which requires
all of Central Avenue to be four lanes.
3) Ignoring the huge negative impact to the economy of the city and
recommendations
made by the Director of the Hot Springs
Convention and Visitors Bureau. (see letter)
4) Ignoring the increase of accidents in the bottleneck area from none
before the bottleneck to almost 40 during the first 6 months the bottleneck existed.
5) Ignoring statistics which prove two of the top three locations for
pedestrian accidents occur "when pedestrians are entering or existing parked
vehicles" and "emerging from in front of or from behind parked vehicles."
6) Ignoring the input and comments from EMS, Sheriff, Police, and Fire
departments.
7) Ignoring the City's 2003 Citizen Survey by UALR which found that a
large majority of Hot Springs citizens considers the city suffers greatly
from congested traffic conditions.
8) Ignoring the fact that the vast majority of citizens are opposed to
the bottleneck. Some 650 additional names on petitions were provided to the
city board.
The actual meeting handout is available by clicking here or by checking the
meeting minutes.
You will find that this website makes no apologies for taking the
position that our city needs leaders who will cease actions such as closing streets and
traffic lanes to accommodate the whims of their special interest friends.
We do not apologize for believing that elected officials should represent
the wishes of the people who elected them rather than preventing citizens from
speaking at public functions. We strongly believe that the primary
function of any public official is to protect the safety and welfare of the
public. It is certainly not their function to authorize bottlenecks
that impede traffic, cause tourists and locals to avoid downtown, and impose
life-threatening delays on our police, sheriff, fire department, and EMS.
Our
primary objective is to stop this insanity. We are now past the
initial project of helping city leaders understand
that our community must adapt and support the inevitable growth of
metropolitan Hot Springs including properly planning for the necessity for handling additional
traffic. The voices of our citizens continue to be ignored. We are now
appealing to the Arkansas State Department of Highways and Transportation (ADHT)
and other state agencies. We hope that the safety related information
we provide will be more seriously considered at the state level but we must
be fully prepared to take appropriate steps for placing these issues on
future ballots. If we discover that neither the city or state is
concerned about the public's safety and well-being, a
referendum could prove to be the only guarantee that the public will be listened to.
Our
members are currently working to develop future plans and would appreciate
your help in this endeavor. Please E-mail us to join this most important
effort.
editor@Hot-Springs-Metro.org
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A Note
About Our Representatives
 | IF YOU READ OUR NEWSPAPER ADS, you already know that we
took a strong position against the incumbent city directors including the
mayor during the last election. The reason you didn't see director Edwards in our ad
was
because he actually voted against the downtown "bottleneck" and
demonstrated that he does try to vote in the best interests of his
constituents rather than for special interests or self-serving interests as is
apparent for most of the directors. Director Edwards has done a
fantastic job over the years and, in fact, received the honor of being
selected as City Director of the Year for the entire state of Arkansas.
He certainly does not deserve the harsh criticisms constantly directed at
him by rude directors. |
| We gave Bush a bit of a break by informing you that he only
voted to create the "bottleneck" downtown once because he wasn't
there during the second vote. Also, someone asked how can we vote
against director Weatherford when no one ran against him. We
recommended a write-in vote for Scooby Doo and Scooby did get some votes.
Following is the ad we ran prior to and on election day. |
| No local organization currently holds our elected representatives
accountable for their actions. It is our intention to be an apolitical completely non-partisan
website. Once we more fully develop a readership base, we do expect to
select an annual best and worst elected official. Perhaps,
even on a monthly basis, if warranted. |
| Our prime focus will always be to keep you, the citizens of the Hot Springs Metropolitan
area fully informed. As you can see by our editor's letter to the editor
(click here), we are usually
not allowed to speak
at city board meetings so we have developed this website to allow the
public a voice. We
encourage your participation and will publish your comments on our
"Discussion" page which is a forum designed solely so that you can make
your voice heard and your opinion considered. We will sign your
letters however you sign them. To really help us, we encourage you
to become a regular contributor or join the Garland Good Government Group
which is a registered, non-profit organization.
You can also write us at Hot
Springs Metro, Inc. - PO Box 22084 - Hot Springs, AR 71903 or e-mail us at
editor@Hot-Springs-Metro.org.
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| NEXT STEPS: Now that our directors have stuck us with
additonal debt, increase fees,
"dysfunction junction," the downtown bottleneck, and have closed the
street to our nice parking garage, one of our options is to replace our directors and put a stop to the "good ol' boy" insider control
of our city. We are also still working to gather information and ask for opinions from the Arkansas Attorney General and
explanations from the
Arkansas Highway Department as to why our directors are allowed to violate their own city
comprehensive plan and not properly plan for our city's growth. Other possible actions are
also being developed.
Let us have your recommendations. |
| Most of work was devoted to helping form a good government or watchdog type group
which would
promote voter participation and inform the public of candidate positions
and the real impact of future referendum issues.
To this aim, we anticipate the group would host local debates where future candidates also answer
questions directly from the public. Our principal goal is to always
encourage fair, open, transparent, representative government. When
the apparent reason individuals run for office is to serve selfish interests or
self-serving interests such as taking multiple annual vacations at the
taxpayer's expense, we must expose them. |
| The group is now formed but it is vitally important that you continue
to let them have your thoughts. The new group that was formed is the
Garland Good Government Group and you can join
them at a meeting or on their website
www.GGGGNews.com. We hope you will commit to be part of the solution for our community because citizens who remain
silent can only contribute to the problem by allowing our leaders to
continue catering to
selfish or self-serving interests rather than the best interest of all
of our citizens. |
| This website is no longer directly affiliated with the Garland Good
Government Group but will continue so that you, the citizen, will have a
forum where your views, concerns, complaints, critiques, commentary, and
compliments will be published for all to see. |
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E-mail your comments to
Editor@Hot-Springs-Metro.org |
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