(Editor’s note: This letter was incorrectly attributed to Kay Shapiro in Thursday’s edition and is being run again to correctly identify the writer, Jeanette McGrew.)
Editor, The Commercial:
As Yogi Berra quipped, “It’s deja vu all over again.” In a recent editorial, it was stated that Ms. Cynthia Hines (marketing and communications coordinator of the city of Pine Bluff) envisions “a new Pine Bluff with a vibrant, revitalized downtown with gleaming sidewalks full of window-shopping pedestrians and small businesses populating The Pines mall alongside those popular national chain stores that people are eager to visit.”
In this same editorial, it was suggested that the only reason we don’t have this bucolic city of dreams is that we are negative thinkers — “whenever we go out of town or greet someone from out of town and speak ill of the community,” we are doing our community a disservice.
I don’t have to tell my friends in Little Rock about the goings on in my city. They read the Democrat-Gazette — about the vendetta against the police department, the ferral hog vs. the pot-bellied pig, the bricks in the middle of Main Street, the zip code controversy, ad nauseam, and they draw their own conclusions.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
In addition, there has been a great migration of Pine Bluffians to other Arkansas cities. Jefferson County is now number one in declining population. We have a ‘positively Pine Bluff mayor’ who has given her all to no avail. Certain members of our city council have taken negativism to new heights.
Jeanette McGrew
Pine Bluff