After posting the City Council agenda with my question about the sale price of the old Baptist Memorial Hospital seeming too low, I received this information from someone in the know, and they granted me permission to pass it on:

"The reason they are selling Baptist Memorial Hospital for $200,000 is because there is $1.5 million estimated in asbestos abatement.  In other words, the city could have sold it for $1.7 million, but paid out $1.5 in abatement costs.  These estimates were also from 2-3 years ago, so the cost of abatement has probably risen 10-20 percent."

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City Council meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in City Hall. Agenda is on the jump.

Among the items: A resolution sponsored by the mayor authorizing the management of the parking lot east of Willow and between Broadway and Second Street during events at the ball park. The agenda doesn't say to whom such authorization would be granted.

Linda Robinson (one of your Ward 2 aldermen) is sponsoring an ordinance -- labeled "for consideration only" -- regarding the "collection of bulky and large trash or brush."

The mayor is sponsoring an ordinance for the sale of the old Baptist Memorial Hospital property on Scenic Hill for $200,000. Which sounds grossly undervalued to me, given its location and potential value as a future residential development.

And the mayor is launching something called a "green agenda" for the city. Hmmmmmmm... it'll be interesting to see if it's just semantics or if the city is actually going to take some serious steps towards environmental sustainability.

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The Democrat-Gazette has reported that, to date, the city of North Little Rock has spent $2.8 million on the vessels at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum (including associated expenses for bringing the Arkansas Queen riverboat, a private business enterprise, here). Apparently the AIMM is averaging about 30 visitors a day. Max Brantley over at the Arkansas Times blog is critical of this, as he has been of Pat Hays' little flotilla (and other of the mayor's policies), and brings up the spectre of more derelicts being added to the riverfront. The USS Hoga tub that was at Pearl Harbor is still sitting in a mothball facility in California, and the USS Orleck destroyer is being evicted from its current home in Texas (but apparently a Louisiana town is also calling for dibs on it). The Orleck, as DJ Smith reported in The North Little Rock Times previously, has an "alumni association" that is willing to pony up money for the annual maintenance and upkeep of the vessel if it comes here, but who's to say if it will prove to be enough money. And what happens when the veterans who served on the Orleck have all passed away -- who will pony up the payments then?

So, chime in, folks! Has this $2.8 million (mostly in sales tax money) been spent wisely? Would it have been better used for other things? Do you visit the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum? (While I've been on the deck of the Razorback, while writing about it shortly after its arrival, I've never been inside.) Do you support an expansion of this as a tourist attraction, or should the fleet be disbanded and shipped elsewhere (at a cost, of course)?

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