JPs approve new official seal

Garland County now has an official seal it can call its own, adopting an image of the county courthouse’s cupola set against the outline of the county.

Justices of the peace selected the seal from several designed by Locker Room Athletics. It will be featured on the new county website that’s scheduled to launch in November.

The ordinance the Garland County Quorum Court adopted Monday night preserves the image as an official seal recognized by the Arkansas secretary of state’s office. In 2015, the county discovered the seal it had been using was the copyright of Cromwell Architect Engineers Inc., the Little Rock firm awarded the $2.3 million detention center design contract.

The discovery came after a website operator filed an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request. The county had sent the operator a cease-and-desist letter that instructed him to remove the image from his website, which the county said the public was confusing with the official county website.

The records request sought documentation that certified the image as the county’s official seal. The county’s response included a letter from Cromwell that said the county had asked Cromwell to create the image to use as a seal for official contract documents related to the detention center’s construction.

The letter stated Cromwell retains all copyrights to the seal and has granted the county a nonexclusive license to use it only for the purposes of the detention center project.

The county appropriated $22,700 from six General Fund-supported budgets and seven restricted fund budgets for its new website. The state provides the current website for free. CivicPlus will provide the new website that’s scheduled to launch Nov. 30.

County officials have said it will be similar to websites CivicPlus hosts for Longview, Texas, Annapolis, Md., and Arizona’s Maricopa County.