I’ll be there covering the event for the News-Times. I haven’t had a chance to see the new building yet, so I’m rather pleased to be going. It’s a good chance to see where tax dollars went. The grand opening wraps up at 7 p.m.
So I’m at Sonic during lunch, wedged into one of those tight little car corrals waiting for my burger, when the lady in the car one stall over lights up a cig and starts pipping it in my direction. My windows are down, so the smoke is wafting slowing into my ride.
I would say that my personal space was invaded by this woman’s craving for a Marlboro.
Here’s what the city’s smoking ordinance says:
“Smoking is prohibited within a reasonable distance of an enclosed area where smoking is prohibited, so as to insure that tobacco smoke does not enter the area through entrances, windows, ventilation systems, or other means.
“This shall be at minimum defined by an arc measured from the center point of any public doorway or usual employee doorway or entrance utilized by the public or employees or ventilation intake regulated by this ordinance. The arc shall be 25 feet for all facilities unless the entrance is from a public thoroughfare such as a sidewalk or ally at which the arc shall be 10 feet.”
Nothing about “personal space,” but her car was definitely less than 25 feet away from a window at Sonic.
Note to smokers: Don’t light up at Sonic. Others can smell it, and it isn’t appetizing.
Be cool, man. Be cool.
Last week I wrote about how the Chinese government is cracking down on fuel usage during the Olympics, and how that would bring down gas prices here.
Well, the prices at the pump are already easing considerably in Arkansas, as seen in the graphic below.
My question? When will we see the trickle down in South Arkansas? Probably a day before fuel shoots back up to $4 per gallon.
The highest prices in the state are still more than $4 a gallon. Here, we’re averaging about $3.89.
Missouri currently has some of the cheapest fuel in the country right now at $3.32 per gallon in Springfield.
One of our readers asked to see the budget for El Dorado Forward. Here is what’s available. The document is in PDF format.
el-dorado-forward-budget-outline
I’m working on getting the numbers from the city to show you how much money has actually been spent, and where it’s going.
Another helpful page is available by clicking here. It contains more documents relating to El Dorado Forward.
**UPDATE** The above PDF document is the proposed budget, not the one approved by city leaders. I will hopefully have a copy of the approved budget very soon to post. I’m not sure that they differ all that much.
What if, overnight, you became a millionaire? It’s happened to quite a few people not too far from here in De Soto Parish, La., thanks to the large natural gas deposits that sit beneath the earth in northern Louisiana and in parts of north Arkansas.
The New York Times wrote a piece about how newly minted millionaires are coping with their hard-earned cash.
Click here for more.
One has to wonder, though, if this “boom” will soon go bust, much as the South Arkansas oil days did. Let’s just say that no one is expecting the financial center of the United States to be relocated to north Louisiana just yet. Still, there are many millions to be made there, and the economies of small towns that had little hope of surviving much further into the 21st century have been revived.
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