The Curb Appeal of Downtown Pine Bluff

                  ARKANSAS

                                        BY

                              Richard Mason

          The Curb Appeal of Downtown Pine Bluff

“You have got to be kidding.” Of course, even if you haven’t been to Pine Bluff lately, you have an opinion from reading about buildings falling in the street, streets closed, and the appalling condition of their downtown. Yes, it’s really sad, but the reason I’m writing about Pine Bluff is not to rub their noses in the mess, but to alert the citizens of Pine Bluff and the rest of the state to the seriousness of this situation. This is it in a nutshell: When the center of a town is considered to be a failure, the whole town is perceived to be a failure. Yes, Pine Bluff, as a town, is considered a failure primarily because of a failed downtown. Their downtown has reverse curb appeal.

Well, what is curb appeal, and how does it work, and would it help thousands of ugly Arkansas cities and towns? Yes, they all can be helped, and for a lot less money than it takes to bribe a Chinese Pulp Mill into setting up shop.

I really think you have to see curb appeal to understand how it works. Oh, we plan a vacation to Europe or Santa Fe without even considering that our choice was very likely determined by curb appeal. I know, when you consider visiting Switzerland, you think you will be taking in all those wonderful mountain views, but you won't. Yes, you will see the majestic mountains, but you'll spend the majority of your time in the small towns and cities, and when you return home you will rave about the great vacation in the Alps. Yes, you did vacation in the Alps, but those mountains were just the backdrop for the quaint, charming towns and villages in the country. What really made your vacation pop was curb appeal. Of course, here in Arkansas we tend to think of curb appeal as a planter of flowers in front of a business or a token tree. But curb appeal is so much more than that. It's underground utilities, a strict sign ordinance, it's preserving historic buildings, and yes it is planting thousands of trees along with more flowering plants than you can count.

I think most reasonable people will agree that all of the above recommendations sound pretty good, but the question is why do these positive ideas sit on the back burner of our economic development program? Huh? Yep, those recommendations are considered fluff. What we actually do is give the Chinese another 100 million to put in a polluting pulp mill. However, curb appeal costs only a fraction of what we regularly dole out to entice industrial development, and the benefits are multigenerational lasting. Those ideas should be on the top of every town’s economic development program, but of course they aren't even on the list. Why? Well to be brutally honest we're stupidly stuck in 50s with the concept that adding or creating jobs at any cost is the best way to improve the quality of life, and to hell with the environment.

We live in a capitalistic society, and that means our driving focus is based on an economic model. Well, I'm okay with that, but when we ignore things like beautification thinking we shouldn't waste money on those items, we're missing some of the core values of commerce. The curb appeal that sells houses sells towns. We have ignored our towns, especially our downtowns in the state until we have bricks in the street. Yes, it is a terrible indictment for a community to sink to the level where buildings actually fall in the street. That is curb appeal in reverse. Bricks in the street drive nails in the coffin. That anti-curb appeal will slowly eat away at a town until the community is a former skeleton of what it once was, and the remaining civic leaders will still be saying, "We need more jobs, jobs, jobs ...” If Pine Bluff had a beautiful, thriving downtown would their still be a flood of people saying, “Goodbye, Pine Bluff?”

Pine Bluff can make a comeback, but if their city essentially ignores their Downtown, it’s is going to be an uphill battle. What Pine Bluff should do is pass a one cent sales tax and dedicate a goodly portion of that money to creating a quality downtown. Yes, spend money rather than blowing hot air moaning about how terrible things are. And a word to the Pine Bluff City Council. Don’t try to pass the buck and blame the mess on the property owners. Gut up and pass ordinances that will either make the property owner maintain their property or sell it. But for God’s sake! Do something!  

Unless, the center of Pine Bluff regains its stature as a symbol of quality, the goal to bring back this community from the edge of total failure is going to be an impossible job.

Arkansas by Richard Mason : The Coming Deer and Elk Herd Apocalyse

Arkansas by Richard Mason : The Coming Deer and Elk Herd Apocalyse:          ARKANSAS                                            By                       Richard Mason     The Coming Deer and ...

The Coming Deer and Elk Herd Apocalyse

         ARKANSAS

                                           By

                      Richard Mason  

 The Coming Deer and Elk Herd Apocalypse

                                 Or

 How to control Chronic Wasting Disease, bring back our quail, and stop the feral hog population explosion.

Chronic Wasting Disease—CWD— will decimate Arkansas's deer and elk herd, if we don't take action to control it. This disease has mushroomed over the last decade, and if it continues to spread, it will sweep through the state reducing deer herds by an astronomical number. That’s a fact. It's a disease that is fatal to deer and elk, and there is no cure.

As far as we know, it hasn't spread to humans—but don't bring me any deer sausage this year. Actually, since Arkansas is ranked near the top of the fattest states in the country, it might be a decade before we recognize that it has spread to humans. You know, we just might figure old Bubba was on that Marie Osborn diet.

Of course, we can scratch our heads and wonder why it's sweeping through our deer and elk herds, and I’m sure there are several guesses as to why, but I believe most folks are barking up the wrong tree. It’s actually an easy question to answer. It’s our fault. Yes, we caused the epidemic of CWD.

The Game and Fish Commission is trying to come up with a plan to stop the spread of the disease, but outside of killing all the deer and elk in North Arkansas, they don't have a plan that would work. Actually, there is a possible way to eliminate most of the sick deer and elk, and slow the spread of the disease, but it’s an out-of-the-box solution. To understand the problem, we must consider some facts: The first and most obvious fact is that CWD has probably been around for centuries, but over the past 100 years it has slowly increased and spread. Consider the infected deer and elk for a moment: They are the weakest and most susceptible animals that would be taken by a predator. When the ecosystems are in balance, the predators remove the sickest and weakest of the herd. That's why the disease was kept under control for centuries, and that's why we are to blame for the epidemic. Yes, we are to blame because we killed off all the predators that were keeping the disease in check.

Of course, when I suggest we restore the predators to our ecosystem, it is always met with a blizzard of opposition. Why?

"The wolves, mountain lions, and bears are dangerous! I don’t want little Jonnie gobbled up by a pack of wolves or a danged panther!"

That my friend is an unsupported fear. More people are killed on Arkansas highways every weekend than have been killed by all the wolves and cougars in North America in the last century. We live in a state full of poisonous snakes, but how many people died from snakebite in Arkansas last year? Zero! Actually, we already have cougars in the state. One was killed last year in southeast Arkansas and game cameras all over the state have dozens of sighting. I have personally talked with several individuals in the El Dorado area about numerous mountain lion sightings. They report almost monthly sighting west of El Dorado around Morning Star Road, and several confirmed sightings of a black “panther” (cougar) east of El Dorado.

Last week a tagged mountain lion from Colorado was spotted in New England. It had traveled 2000 miles from Colorado. Mountain Lions are moving from the Black Hills of South Dakota and along the Arkansas River from Colorado into Arkansas. So except for the wolves, the predators are already here, but in numbers too small to do any good. So let's get over our irrational fear. We need to understand that restocking and increasing the predators in our state is far better than killing off thousands of healthy deer as we try to eliminate the sick ones.

Wolf packs, mountain lions, and even bobcats and bears will, through natural selection, kill a much higher percentage of sick deer than as the Game and Fish Commission proposes, which is simply; “…to reduce the density of deer in the infected area.” That proposal will do more harm than good. As they attempt to eliminate the diseased deer, they will kill thousands of healthy deer. Only after a deer has been killed can you tell if it has CWD. In my opinion, that is not the way to go.

The randomly killing of thousands of deer will just reduce the number of deer in the state. The percentage of infected deer will stay the same. That proposal by the Game and Fish Commission can never solve the problem. For every infected deer or elk that is eliminated, ten or more non-infected ones will be killed. Can you even imagine hundreds of thousands of deer that will be slaughtered needlessly, if we tried to eliminate CWD in that manner?

Their plan to try and kill off the infected deer and elk will result in a much smaller herds, and will be a giant step back to the 50s, when sighting a deer was a big deal, and what’s even worst, the percentages of that smaller herd that have CWD won’t change.

CWD took decades to flourish in our state, and it will take that long to get it under control. Yes, we are suffering the consequences that come from upsetting the balance of nature, and to reverse what we created, it will take decades, but at least we'll be going in the right direction by restocking predators.

Actually, the restocking predators will give a huge boast to our quail population and help control the out-of-control feral hog population. There are estimates of as many as two million feral hogs in the state and they are wreaking havoc on the wildlife population. If we can reduce the feral hog, raccoon, and armadillo population that devour quail eggs, our quail population will soar. Forget habitat; we have plenty of suitable quail habitat, but no quail.

If we would just understand what Chief Seattle said centuries ago, “Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Chief Seattle.

Fifty years into the future, our great grandchildren will look back on the way wildlife was managed today, much as we look back at the destruction of so many species in the 19th century. They will be appalled at the way certain species were targeted for elimination. What justification can we legitimately give that would allow the unregulated killing of numerous species that are important in balancing our environment?

If, in North Arkansas, we restock 150 mountain lions and 15 wolf packs, (Alaska has plenty to send us—and no, they don’t have CWD in their deer herds—I wonder why?) remove coyotes, bobcats, and bears from the list of hunted animals, we will see a steady decrease in infected deer, and our natural ecosystems will start to come in balance.

When we realize that removing predators from Arkansas, has had dire consequences, then maybe our Game and Fish Commission that will seek to balance the ecosystem in our state. Do we have the foresight to restore our ecosystem, or will we continue to use ineffective wildlife management practices that have no chance of success? Maybe we need some women on the Commission—who will think outside-the-box.