Mountain Home woman killed in early morning accident
A Mountain Home woman, 25-year-old Deniese McFall, was killed early Thursday morning as she was riding her bike on Highway 5 North near the 1500 block. According to a report from Arkansas State Police Corporal Jackie Stinnett, a vehicle driven by Zachary Wells of Mountain Home was traveling south on Highway 5. McFall and 21-year-old Andrew Strevels of Mountain Home were traveling north on bicycles, or what State Police call “pedalcyclist”, in the center turn lane. Wells was negotiating a left hand curve when he struck McFall in the southbound lane and Strevels in the center turn lane.
A report on Strevels condition was not immediately available at the time of this report.
A juvenile, who was in the car with Wells, was not injured in the accident, according to the report.
Conditions were clear and the road was dry at the time of the 1:13 a.m. accident.
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Body recovered from Lake Norfork
The body of 70-year-old Charles Hogan Daniels of Jordan was recovered just before noon Monday. According to Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, divers from the Arkansas Game and Fish recovered the body in approximately 114 feet of water. Baxter County Coroner Bradley Hays has ruled it an accidental drowning.
Emergency service personnel responded to a call from Jordan Marina at approximately 3:47 Sunday afternoon on a report that a man, 70-year-old Charles Hogan Daniels, had jumped into the water at a location north of Jordan Island, from a boat and disappeared.
The Sheriffs Office, Arkansas Game and Fish, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Rangers, and Fire/Rescue teams went to the area by boat and began to search for Daniels. At approximately 11:30 Sunday night search teams believed they had possibly found his body on sonar in approximately 115 feet of water.
Divers went down Monday morning to make the recovery.
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Dollar General manager arrested for theft of funds
A Midway man, 52-year-old Danny Inskeep, has been arrested after an investigation of theft of funds from the Midway Dollar General store he previously managed. He was booked into the Baxter County Detention Center Monday on a felony theft of property charge and released the same day on a $7,500 bond.
According to Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, on July 17th, the District Manager for Dollar General Stores filed a report with the Sheriffs Office alleging Inskeep had stolen two cash deposits from the store on July 14th and July 15th totaling $6,925.28. The District Manager says the theft was accomplished by floating or rolling deposits. The terms are used to describe how some crooks steal money from a deposit and not take that deposit to the bank until they can replace the money, usually with money from the next days deposit.
The investigation revealed the stores deposit logs had been falsified and did not match bank deposit receipts. The cash receipts from July 14th and July 15th had apparently never been deposited.
A warrant for the arrest of Inskeep was issued on July 26th, and he was arrested on the warrant Monday. He is scheduled to appear in Baxter County Circuit Court.
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Bull Shoals has new recorder/treasurer
Newly appointed Bull Shoals Recorder/Treasurer Tina Bailey is already on the job after being tapped Tuesday evening by the council in a special session to fill the vacant position.
The position was vacated in July with the resignation of Recorder/Treasurer Kim Williams.
Mayor David Nixon says both he and the council had conducted interviews of several candidates for the position, and the council was ready to move forward.
Bailey and her husband located to Bull Shoals in late 2016 from Crosby, Texas, near Houston. In her position with the Crosby Independent School District, Bailey was responsible for maintaining the mileage records for the school’s fleet of 75 buses. She is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in accounting. Bailey and her husband have family ties to Bull Shoals and have vacationed in the area for a number of years.
Mayor Nixon says the position duties were reorganized during the council’s regular monthly meeting in July, and the budget was amended to reflect the action.
While the recorder/treasurer is an elected position, Mayor Nixon says the reorganization was conducted with an eye on the future, with the Arkansas Municipal League expected to support legislation in 2019 that will revamp the role of recorder/treasurers across the state.
The term Bailey was selected to fill expires December 31, 2020.
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General Improvement Fund now depleted
A sometimes controversial source of funding that cities, counties and non-profits across the state and the Twin Lakes Area have tapped into for the past 20 years for financing numerous community projects has been depleted.
Since 1997, cities, counties and non-profits across the state have received state funding through a program known as the General Improvement Fund (GIF). The source of the funds came from state budget surplus.
Over the 20 years, the surplus dollars have been allocated in different ways. A state Supreme Court ruling in 2005 led to a large chunk of the funds being distributed among eight economic development districts around the state.
What followed was a grant process whereby applications were submitted to the economic development boards for consideration, generally accompanied by verbal or written support from a state legislator. The membership of the boards is comprised of the mayors and judges in the counties represented in each economic district, as well as a designated number of private citizens.
While cities, counties and non-profits continued tapping into the surplus dollars, an investigation was quietly underway that would lead to a State Representative pleading guilty to conspiring with a State Senator to use their official positions to appropriate General Improvement Funds to two nonprofit organizations in exchange for bribes.
In January, a week after the former state legislator entered his guilty plea, Governor Hutchinson in a strongly-worded message urged the legislature to eliminate the GIF program. When the legislative session ended in April, the GIF program was not included in the 2018-2019 budget.
With dollars remaining from the previous legislative session, cities, counties and non-profits continued submitting applications requesting funding. But the Executive Director of the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District in Harrison, Joe Willis, says most people will be surprised to learn all the funds have been disbursed.
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Willis says General Improvement Funds have been used to cover a host of programs across the nine counties in the Northwest Arkansas Economic District that includes Baxter, Marion, Searcy, Newton, and Boone counties.
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Willis says much of the dollars distributed through the General Improvement Fund was the only means for these non-traditional requests to gain financial support. He says many of the requests do not fit in a box for typical state and federal grant funding.
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