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When the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate in the Pine Bluff metropolitan area fell a full percentage point in April compared with the same month a year earlier, it’s time to celebrate.
While all of the state’s metropolitan areas saw their jobless rate drop in April, Pine Bluff had the biggest drop, falling from 9.8 percent unemployment in April 2011 to 8.8 percent this year.
Northwest Arkansas had the lowest unemployment rate of 5.3 percent, down from 5.9 percent in April 2011. Arkansas’ jobless rate was 7.2 percent in April, and the nation’s rate was basically unchanged at 8.1 percent, the bureau noted.
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Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Eliminating blight
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When a local government department exhausts its annual budget five months into the year, that’s usually nothing to brag about, especially when said agency is asking for more money.
It seems the Pine Bluff Inspection and Zoning Department has spent its 2012 budget for demolishing condemned houses and is asking the City Council for more funding. That good news, not bad news.
Inspection and Zoning Department Director Robert Tucker said the department has spent some $93,000 demolishing condemned houses so far this year and is asking the City Council for an additional $60,000 from undesignated funds to continue the progress.
He could have asked for even more money.
With a declining population and deteriorating housing stock, abandoned residences are a major issue facing the municipality and are frequent source of complaints from the public because they are often converted into crack houses and have a propensity for being torched by arsonists.
In the past the city didn’t have the funds to demolish many structures. However, with the passage of the five-eighths of a cent sales tax increase in early 2011, there are actually some undesignated funds in the budget this year.
The $93,000 budget this year has allowed the city to demolish 35 houses. In case you were wondering, the number of structures on the city’s condemnation list tops 400.
Rather than have employees sit idle for the balance of the year, Tucker’s request makes sense. Tearing down condemned houses is an expensive and complicated program, but it is progress targeting blight.