Thursday’s thumbs

The holiday season brings some ups, downs

It’s holiday season and it seems we’re using our thumbs and fingers a lot to pick up sweet treats that are so hard to steer clear of this time of year. But we’ve taken a break from packing on our festive five pounds this season to offer thumbs up and down for a few recent developments:

When talk of new regional airport for Northwest Arkansas heated up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an occasional criticism focused on the eventual selection of land near Highfill as its location. It was out there, to say the least. But advocates always had a reasonable response: Who builds a new airport in an already developed area? Building it in the boonies created the most flexibility for developing an airport that wouldn’t conflict with other nearby uses, but it also made the trip to and from the airport seem as if the banjo music might start playing at any moment. For years now, airport officials have worked to obtain funding and authority to build a road from the west part of Springdale to the airport, a dedicated highway that would more or less serve as a private driveway to the airport’s entrance to the south. It hasn’t been built yet. Now, airport officials say they may need to back off the private drive approach to increase the chances to get the project going, and that seems like a wise move. Spending millions to build a road certainly should improve access to the airport, but if taxpayer dollars are going to it, there ought to be some effort to maximize its usefulness for local travelers, too. If that strategy means a better road, it’s a far better strategy than one that keeps the project on hold for many years to come.

One of the best ways to discourage graffiti is to get it cleaned up quickly once someone has defaced a property. The Springdale City Council Tuesday night approved some minor changes in city ordinances so that the city’s response to graffiti on private property can be faster. “My goal is to get it down as soon as possible,” said Police Chief Mike Peters. With small adjustments regarding a paperwork bottleneck within city processes, so-called “emergency” responses can be done more quickly. That’s needed when some dunderhead applies his artistic (?) ways to someone else’s property with words or messages nobody in the community wants to embrace. Let such activities go without a response and the whole city might end up looking like all those rail cars we see passing by on the train tracks.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says the number of journalists jailed as a result of their work worldwide has hit a record high of 262, most of them in Turkey, China and Egypt. In a lot of countries, doing any reporting that criticizes government officials can be viewed as a violation of laws barring “false news.” That phrase has a familiar ring to it, no? The ethical practice of journalism should never be a crime or discouraged as a part of official government policy. Some people in power, however, do not like the light that news coverage shines on their activities. That says more about them than about the reporters who end up incarcerated.

An untold number of police officers and sheriff’s deputies in Northwest Arkansas have been busy for a while now prepping for annual Shop with a Cop programs through which they help qualifying families provide gifts for children. It’s this time of year all the fundraising pays off as the officers walk the aisles of local stores with their young beneficiaries. We’re thankful for such programs and for the officers who give of themselves in making it work.