The multipart sale-tax increase passed in Fayetteville on Tuesday. Those who love to taunt the city doubtless will mock the smaller percentage approving the bit for continued construction of trails, as compared to the 3-to-1 majorities for the sewage treatment and road improvements.<\/p>\n
Specifically, according to the NWA Times<\/a><\/em> (and here<\/a>) and The Morning News<\/a><\/em> (the Times<\/em> gave only percentages but to the hundredth and total votes; the MN<\/em> gave vote totals and no-decimal percentages. The Demzette<\/em> had a 1B picture with a caption that gave nothing away):<\/p>\n Total number of voters was 5,838, or 17 percent of the city’s registered voters.<\/p>\n The trails proposal was only 3-2, or 60-40 percent. If that was the vote of a contested race of a Democrat and a Republican, that proportion is called a landslide. I wouldn’t, but lots of spinners do.<\/p>\n Here is a better comparison. Earlier in the summer, Springdale residents approved their funding a proposed minor-league baseball stadium. It won.<\/p>\n By 13 votes<\/a>. You need to take this one to at least to the tenths: 50.1 to 49.9, 2,408 to 2,395 (50-50).<\/p>\n How did Fayetteville Mayor Dan Coody win this election when the city library<\/a> couldn’t squeeze the electoral turnip no more than its school district<\/a>? He hustled where officials of the others presumed the right side would be obvious, never mind the complicated justifications. Even smart UA types had trouble with complexities outside their careers or other specialties. Mayor Coody aggressively sought media attention (risking critical reporting and negative editorials, which ended up endorsing the taxes while generally kicking Coody) and he was literally on the street hustling votes by shouting out to voters from his car and on foot.<\/p>\n The moral: Walking is lots more popular than baseball. If library and public school officials want comfortable budgets with vigorous majorities, they better hang out at the Farmers Market three mornings every week. The multipart sale-tax increase passed in Fayetteville on Tuesday. Those who love to taunt the city doubtless will mock the smaller percentage approving the bit for continued construction of trails, as compared to the 3-to-1 majorities for the sewage treatment and road improvements. Specifically, according to the NWA Times (and here) and The Morning News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":708,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/11\/pleading-the-first\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":0},"title":"Pleading the First","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\" Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":224,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/08\/briefing-room-not-brief\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":1},"title":"Briefing Room Not Brief","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The week's least important news: The White House briefing room is being renovated, and the press was run out of it Wednesday, to temporary quarters. NPR more or less managed a cute story out of it, though it was a waste of valuable minutes, and my own newspaper gave it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/06\/couple-columnists-hit-a-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":2},"title":"Couple columnists hit a bar","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Two columnists walk into a bar Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, June 24, 2005: A temptation is to write rather complete articles from the notes I took at the just-completed conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, meeting in Grapevine, to the northeast of Fort Worth and northwest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Grapevine Lines"","block_context":{"text":"Grapevine Lines","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/grapevine-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":208,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/06\/john-updike-really\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":3},"title":"John Updike, Really","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- After arriving at the Dunes of Ogunquit motor court after midnight and in a drizzle, My Beloved Wife and I gave ourselves permission to take it easy today, not push. We have through Thursday morning in Maine and we don't want to waste a minute, but we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Boston Blotter"","block_context":{"text":"Boston Blotter","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/boston-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/10\/degree-by-degree\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":4},"title":"Degree by degree","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, October 21, 2004. We went to the new Blair Library on Tuesday, after lunch at Jammin' Java with friends, She to the video section and I in my cap upstairs to grab a couple of novels by William Humphrey, a biography of whom I'll\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4220,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/04\/steve-and-steve-paul-and-john\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":5},"title":"Steve and Steve, Paul and John","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Steve Wozniak of all people showed up in Fayetteville, Ark., for a campus speech Sunday night. He spoke engagingly for a senior status wonk-nerd-geek -- he is 62. Is there humility in a guy like that? Yes, after a fashion. \"Woz\" is certainly an electronics genius following a childhood as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, 1975","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/1975-woz-jobs-gar-310.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n-30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"