Stories from Saturday, January 6, 2018

The Blytheville Code Enforcement and Animal Control committees met Thursday to receive a report from Jim DeFoe about the departments’ activities in the past month. Committee Chairman John Mayberry also reported on some lighting projects that Assistant Chief Ricky Jefferson had discussed with him as well as new features on the city’s new website concerning citizens being able to file complaints with greater ease...

A closure letter from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) dated December 21, 2017 and addressed to Blytheville Mayor James Sanders states that the requirements of Consent Administrative Order (CAO) LIS 16-031 and Amendment LIS 16-031-001 have been met by the city and is hereby closed. ...

The Blytheville Parks and Recreation Committee met Thursday to discuss the situation that has developed between the BBSB, the city and the Baseball Facilities Board. While doing so, Committee Chairman R.L. Jones provided two existing ordinances to the committee and stated that he wants to stand behind the boards and let them have the “free will to work as long as they working pertaining to the ordinance we passed.”...

Parents and citizens of Blytheville have been abuzz since it was recently announced that the Blytheville Baseball Softball Boosters [BBSB] “will not be operating the local league for the 2018 season at the Youth Sportsplex.” Additionally, speculation and buzz has increased since the BBSB has begun to “remove their belongings” from the Sportsplex...

Critics say the struggle to force Blytheville City Council members to attend council and committee meetings for which they were elected to attend and for which they are paid has been an ongoing struggle for many years and has been met with varying degrees of success. However in 2017, the success of those efforts has been called into question...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana. “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind,” C.S. Lewis. 2018! Wow, it seems like just yesterday that some were partying like it was 1999 and others worried if the computers around the world were going to crash with the year 2000. We blinked our eyes and…bam, 2018!...