We live in a section of the United States which has four distinguishable seasons. We’re mostly safe from wildfires, earthquakes and hurricanes, and we aren’t overcrowded with people.
I’ve lived in areas of the country where all of these were threats. A climate that is only slightly different as summer turns to fall and winter is not ideal. And look at the lines for food and virus tests in overcrowded urban areas.
We call Arkansas the Natural State, and even though we have destroyed a huge amount of what we once had, we still have a lot left. We should strive to maintain as much of our natural surroundings as possible.
While our city and state agencies are guilty of widespread destruction, most of the obliteration of forests, wetlands, and other areas is done by individuals.
When we decided to move back to El Dorado from south Texas, we managed to find 17 acres of land in one of the best residential areas of the town. The site had a closed beer joint called the Palace, and there were several rundown buildings on the property. The remainder was heavily wooded and included two small ponds.
We removed the Palace structure and other dilapidated buildings and sited our house well off the road overlooking one of the ponds. Since our building site was very close to where an old farmhouse was located, we lost only a few small trees.
Then, when we were almost through with construction, our architect showed me the driveway plan. His straight line from Calion Road called for the removal of five major trees. The curves in the driveway seen today are my revisions to keep from cutting those hardwood trees.
Recently, when we had our house appraised to take advantage of the ultra-low interest rates, the appraiser commented the appraisal would be higher because of the major trees on the property.
Contrast that with the way most developers build a house or a subdivision in towns without a tree ordinance. Most of them clear all the vegetation, and it doesn’t matter if they cut 100-year-old hardwood trees, or if they are in the city limits, or adjacent to some pre-existing quality residential areas.
A glaring example is underway a few hundred yards from my property where a developer is in the process of putting in a subdivision. The first thing he did was a full-scale logging operation, cutting nearly all of the major trees on the 10-plus acre property.
It’s perfectly legal to clear-cut a wooded track zoned residential within the El Dorado city limits because we don’t have a tree ordinance. That is why, within the next few weeks, I will present a tree ordinance and a landscape requirements ordinance to the El Dorado City Council. Both are from the City of Fayetteville municipal ordinance regulations.
Fayetteville has some of the best tree and landscaping ordinances in the state, and if your town or city needs to enhance the tree canopy or to mandate landscaping blank parking lots, Fayetteville is where you should look for examples of how to do it.
You might think trees and natural settings are fluff, but you would be wrong. Numerous studies have highlighted positive responses to trees. I vividly remember the fall colors of maple trees on the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville grounds as well as the breathtaking beauty of the Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery. Our towns and cities with tree-lined streets and landscaped parking lots are keys to a better quality of life for their residents.
Our natural surroundings are important, but other factors heavily contribute. You would have great difficulty living the best life possible without a good job, which provides income necessary to live that good life.
There is only one place to start toward that goal, and that is with a good education for as many of our citizens as possible. We should start our push to educate our workforce with a 50 percent raise for every teacher in the state. Then combine that with a statewide El Dorado Promise, which would pay all college tuition for every Arkansas high school graduate.
Go further and give those Arkansas high school graduates $1,000 per semester for book and living expense money. Our universities need an equal boost in instructor pay, and a big increase in funding for research and new campus building construction. Then maybe our flagship university could build an exhibit hall for the 7 million museum items stored in an off-campus storage building.
That huge commitment to education would pay off with a workforce that would attract high quality jobs, and over the years bring a huge increase in the state’s average worker’s pay.
Where are we going to get the money? How about tacking on a 10 percent gross revenue tax on the casinos that are sucking millions a year out of Arkansas? Or maybe another dollar a pack on cigarettes? That would help our population break the smoking habit. Or a one-cent gasoline tax would easily solve the financing.
The educating of a generation of Arkansawyers would turn this state around, and instead of bringing up the rear, we would be leading the field. An educated workforce could allow our state to stop begging for polluting low-end jobs, and our quality of life would soar.
Do we want a better life enough to gut up and go for it? I hope so. As many have said: When you dream, dream big.
Email Richard Mason at richard@ gibraltarenergy.com .