Dogtown Wire

The City Council recently approved spending $35,000 to hire – for one month – the former chief of the Little Rock National Airport, Deborah H. Schwartz, and have her lay the groundwork for a new master plan for the facility.

Here’s hoping the current members of the Airport Commission have boned up on their history.

Late in 2000, with the City Council breathing down their necks because half of the airport’s operating costs were being subsidized from the city’s general fund budget, the commission put out a call for consultants to help develop a short-term business plan to help guide the airport to self-sufficiency within three to five years. Seven consultants responded, quoting fees of $15,000 to $60,000. Because Mayor Pat Hays had instructed the commission to keep the cost to around $30,000, they tapped a Cincinnati firm that had offered to do it for no more than $33,000. The dotted line was signed and work commenced.

If you haven’t been to the Arkansas Times website because of busy holiday weekend demands, go to Max Brantley’s Monday post about the closing off of the Junction Bridge to all but a select few.

Comments numbered 29 at 6:40 a.m. this morning.

Brothers and sisters, that headline is not a prediction — it’s a reality.

At least, it was for those folks who wanted a bottle of water at Riverfest.

At $3 per 20-ounce bottle of Dasani — that’s the brand bottled by Coca-Cola, whose products have the monopoly on soft drinks at the annual shindig — the thirsty Riverfester who didn’t want either to get liquored up or wired on sodas had to show Andrew Jackson’s portrait for every 6.4 bottles of water consumed, which was a likely quantity over the course of the weekend.

Let’s look at what a body got for that $19.20 a gallon. Dasani, for all its frou-frou sounding name, is basically tinkered-with tap water. But don’t take my word for it — let’s go to the source, namely www.dasani.com/popups/faq01.htm.

Sometimes inefficiency smacks you right in the face.

One day last week, for example, I was tooling along I-630 and glanced over at a passing vehicle. What I beheld was a Dodge Durango SUV with a Pulaski County logo on the door – and just one person inside of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at waste.

Central Arkansas has – so far – been spared the hype surrounding the recent release of "Grand Theft Auto IV". This is probably a situation that will not last.

Early estimates are that over 2.5 million copies of "Grand Theft Auto IV" sold on the first day in the U.S. alone. If it comes out someone who played the game committed a violent crime that is attributed to the violent nature of the game; how long before it will be seized upon by the mainstream media?

When the expected story breaks on the evening news, here are some thoughts to consider.