Appearing each Saturday," All Thumbs "is The Benton County Daily Record's take on the people, events and issues deserving a "thumbs up "for a noteworthy accomplishment or good deed or a "thumbs down "for magnificent failure or just general stupidity.
Thumbs up to the family of the late William F. "Bill"Payer for establishing a memorial fund in his honor that will pay for a carbon-monoxide monitor and alarm for the Bella Vista Fire Department.
The monitor and alarm are for a compressor that is used to fill the oxygen bottles firefighters rely on for their survival. It was needed to bring the fire department up to standards set by the National Fire Protection Association.
Payer, who died in June, had lived in Bella Vista for the previous 14 years. Before that he was a firefighter and emergency medical technician for more than 30 years in California. The memorial fund is doing what Payer did in life: Part of his job was to ensure that his fellow firefighters had reliable self-contained breathing devices. Kudos to the Payer family for carrying on his passion.
Thumbs up to the city of Bentonville for hiring David Wright as its new Parks and Recreation manager.
Wright, who will start the job Oct. 27, has excellent credentials. He comes from Fayetteville, where he has been recreation superintendent since 2002, managing 55 public parks and more than 3, 300 acres. He is a certified parks and recreation professional and aquatic facility operator. In 2005, he was named Director of the Year for the Southern Region of the U. S. Specialty Sports Association; in addition, during Wright's tenure, Sports Illustrated recognized Fayetteville as having the best grass-roots community recreation program in Arkansas.
We welcome Wright to the community and wish him good luck. Good parks and recreation programs are crucial to Bentonville's development, and it sounds like Wright has the knowledge and expertise necessary for the job.
Thumbs up to lower gas prices.
AAA reported Monday that an average gallon of regular gasoline in Arkansas cost $ 3. 43, 48 cents less than it was Sept. 15. Some gas stations in northwest Arkansas were selling gas for (gasp !) under $ 3 a gallon this week.
With the way things have been going economically this past year, it's nice to finally get a break and see gas prices come down a bit.
Thumbs down to the latest murder in Benton County, which happened a week ago today.
Police say Myrtle Walter, 75, confessed to shooting her husband, Paul Walter, while he was sleeping in their bedroom. She claimed her husband had been mentally abusing her and that she could no longer take it. On Tuesday, Walter was transferred from the Benton County Jail to Generations, a secure geriatric psychiatry facility in Fayetteville.
This is a sad case. Walter's attorney provided a doctor's letter saying she suffers from dementia, which very easily could have played a role in the shooting, along with the four or five beers Walter said she consumed that evening, according to court documents.
Thumbs up to the Benton County Sheriff's Office for the way it handled a standoff with a Garfield man on Tuesday.
Mark Lee Wright, 29, had told a woman at a residence on North Wimpy Jones Road to leave with a child who also was at the house because he was about to shoot himself, according to BCSO Maj. Gene Drake. Wright held deputies at bay for three hours before deputies fired two canisters of tear gas into the house. Wright exited the house but refused to obey instructions and was then Tasered, Drake said, before being taken into custody.
It seems deputies followed the standoff playbook and got their man without anyone getting hurt (unless you count Wright being Tasered, which we don't ). We hope that Wright receives the help he needs for whatever drove him to Tuesday's incident.
Thumbs down to Paul Doane, executive director of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, for seeking reimbursement for a jaw-dropping $ 34, 515 in travel expenses that he accumulated in just more than a year - April 2007 to May 2008.
Most of those expenses were legitimate business expenses, but he did break some rules, according to deputy legislative auditor Charles Fiser. Doane collected reimbursement for a $ 750 frequentflier discount book of 10 tickets without documenting its purpose, as well as for commuter expenses to his home in Massachusetts and a $ 250 American Airlines Admiral Club membership. He also collected room and meal charges beyond state limits.
To his credit, Doane has reimbursed the system $ 2, 784 for certain items; however, this revelation about his travel is alarming. It shows that, at best, he is strangely ignorant of the rules governing reimbursement. Given that he's making $ ™, 000 this fiscal year, he shouldn't be having trouble paying his bills. We hope the system's board of trustees will keep a close eye on his spending habits from now on.
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