Thursday’s thumbs

Rejection of ‘Hots NWA’ tops list

NWA DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE While the folks over at the University of Arkansas turned a thumbs down on keeping the athletics program going on its path Wednesday, we had our own digital thoughts about some recent events:

Ol’ Tony Catroppa, aka Tony C, has for years operated places where slinging suds (beer), serving up hard liquor and performances by near-naked women were standard fare. In general, those places don’t raise too much of a ruckus. But the idea of turning his Tony C’s Italian Gardens Ristorante on Arkansas 12 in the Prairie Creek area of Benton County was a bad one for the community. Thankfully, a state agency that controls alcohol licenses denied an application for “cabaret dancing” and a name change to “Hots NWA” after residents and Benton County officials opposed the move. Catroppa can appeal to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, but we hope he doesn’t. That area doesn’t need the headaches.

A week or two ago we turned a thumb down on the treasurer of American Legion Post 77 in Bentonville after he pleaded guilty to theft. Now it’s the former post commander’s turn. Marvin Akers last week acknowledged stealing more than $100,000 from the organization. “Not everything is as it appears and I apologize to the court and the American Legion,” Marvin Akers said last Thursday after pleading guilty to theft of property. We’re not sure what he meant, but it appears he pleaded guilty, and it appears he ought to be ashamed of stealing from an organization in which his fellow veterans participate. It’s a real shame. Maybe they had good reasons, but the operators of Vantage Point didn’t explain the other day why they decided to drop outpatient and school-based mental health services at the end of the year. We appreciate everything they and any other health care providers have done and can do to render aid to people going through challenges in the realm of mental health. Vantage Point of Northwest Arkansas announced it would focus exclusively on acute inpatient services, meaning care for immediate or emergency mental health needs rather than longer-term and outpatient therapy, starting Dec. 31. In other words, there’s less ongoing care that can avoid acute episodes, but when those happen, Vantage will be there. In someone’s world, that makes sense.

Let’s give some high praise for the public school officials who locked down an elementary school in Rancho Tehama Reserve in California the other day when a man started shooting and tried to enter the school. The circumstances of the event were already tragic enough, with several deaths, but the security efforts of the folks at the school prevented it from becoming an even bigger tragedy. Many children are alive today because of their response. Wisely, schools don’t necessarily share their security information with the world, but here’s hoping the folks at all schools were reminded by those events in California that their efforts to protect are not wasted time or energy. If the church shooting in Texas tells us anything, it’s that all locations where people gather can become targets.