Pine Bluff still slips, looks to get back up

Pine Bluff continues its enigmatic ways. In the same look into the mirror, one can see the great enthusiasm in Pine Bluff. Some of it is from people who have been around long enough to remember when there was a city full of enthusiasm, and by that we mean top-tier schools and bustling businesses and more captains of industry than could fit in a double-decker bus. And some of it comes from the young who want some of what their parents and grandparents had in Pine Bluff.

They, the young and not-so-young, are eager to see Pine Bluff as this entity that is on the way back.

Then there is looking back at us, in the same mirror, the census, that once-a-decade slap-down. There was a time, a few censuses ago, when there was concern that the city would drop below 50,000 residents. The answer, at least the answer from the mayor at the time, was to annex the inmates that were confined within the city limits.

That worked — once.

Ten years ago, however, Pine Bluff dropped under 50,000. And now that the numbers are out for the 2020 census, we see that the city is struggling to stay above 40,000.

Let’s just give a big shout-out to Mary Liddell. She worked tirelessly out of the mayor’s office to get Pine Bluff’s numbers up. Every weekend and during the week sometimes — and this went on for months and months — she set up shop at venues around town, organizing volunteers and urging people to sign up for the census.

No doubt, without Liddell’s work, which was voluntary, Pine Bluff would indeed have slipped under the 40,000 mark.

And so it seems that we are the Michael Jackson moonwalk city. We have every appearance of moving forward, but indeed, we move back with every slippery step. And as we push forward, we are moving back so fast and so furiously that we have been identified as the metropolitan area in the entire United States that is losing population the fastest. We even made The New York Times with that distinction.

A couple of city leaders pointed out our weaknesses, which are generally well known. Jobs. Crime. Education. Quality of Life. All are areas where Pine Bluff suffers. And all are areas where improvements are being attempted. But it’s slow going because each of those areas is dependent on all of the others, and there is so much ground to make up.

One sector, however, that holds more of the key to progress than the others is education. The city now has two school districts instead of three. Dollarway is no more, and that district is now tucked inside the Pine Bluff School District. But the Pine Bluff district is also on the ropes, under state control and at risk of being dissolved.

How does a city attract young families to its borders when that is the school system that will be in charge of educating their children? Well, as one alderman put it, those families are not coming to Pine Bluff.

There is a risk to thinking along the Pollyanna-ish lines of “everything will be fine,” because it is obvious that things do not just fall into place merely because we want or need them to. That said, we do marvel at the grit and determination of those pushing against the wheel. Surely, at some point, our moonwalking shoes will get some traction and forward we will go. In another 10 years, we’ll see just how far that is.