Of the people,
Home of subscriber Gerald Koogan
By the people, For the people
TUESDAY, November 3, 2015 / Vol. 1 Issue 4 / 75 cents
County officials rally around anti-drug message for students “Crack cocaine? You’re insane!” chanted District Judge Susan Weaver at a Red Ribbon Week ceremony at South Side-Bee Branch School on Monday, Oct. 26.
The judge offered up a few more anti-drug ditties to the 1,000 or more students, including: “I don’t wanna your marijuana,” and, “2, 4, 6, 8, meth is not my soul mate!” Students from all three county schools, Clinton, Shirley and South Side, gathered around 8:30 a.m. to listen to anti-drug messages from the judge, sheriff and others as part of Red Ribbon Week. The South Side band played the national anthem and four members of the Arkansas National Guard presented the colors.
Balloons float away after the Red Ribbon Week ceremony at South Side-Bee Branch School on Monday. One balloon was reported to have been found in Fort Smith, more than 140 miles away. (Photo by Danielle Carpenter/South Side student)
find a pastime or hobby they enjoy Weaver invited the as an alternative to students to visit using drugs. her courtroom to “You want to get see what happens high?” the judge to people who asked. “Hey, let’s get mixed up with leg wrestle instead!” drugs. She be- Van Buren County seeched them to Judge Roger
Hooper read a proclamation making Oct. 26-30 Red Ribbon Week and encouraged businesses to put up signs supporting a drug-free community.
started out by mentioning his own four children, and asking, “What do you tell kids who know everything?”
students that many serious drug problems start out with drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, then progress to “The problem is,” hard drugs, such as he said, “you don’t methamphetamine. know everything.” “I’m challenging Sheriff Scott Bradley The sheriff told the you, right now, just
to say no,” Bradley said. “It really is bad, and it’s not the life you want.” Bradley concluded: “If you play the game, you may end up in my jail. I don’t ever want to see you there.”
Here a leak, there a leak
Van Buren County Circuit Clerk Ester Bass shows a plat that is available at the Land Library at the Courthouse Annex in Clinton. To his left is a plat cabinet that Old record books are being replaced by holds the documents. new covers at the Courthouse Annex.
Work to save county records continues Van Buren County Circuit Clerk Ester Bass has been working on restoring Courthouse records for the past five years.
The downtown Clinton area was without water off and on for a couple of days last week as Clinton Water Department workers dealt with leaks and busted pipes. All told, said department Manager Isaac “Zeke”
Keeling, there were seven pipes that had to be repaired. A “water hammer,” or pressure surge, set off the chain of events Tuesday. (Photo courtesy of the Clinton Water and Sewer Department)
The historical documents – one of them signed by President Thomas Jefferson – had been through a flood and were so time-worn that the ink was fading to an almost unreadable point. Bass got four people to trace over the writing in the books, each of which contains about 640 pages. They completed one book, and it
took them a year to do it. Then Bass learned about an Oklahoma City company that could scan the pages and digitize them. The project has not been costly to taxpayers, Bass says. The cost to save the records, put them in new binders and purchase a plat cabinet has been about $150,000. Of that amount, the Quorum Court budgets $20,000 per year. The rest of the money comes from the Recorder’s Cost
Fund, which is made up of fees paid when a document is filed, and can be used only for Courthouse-related expenditures. Much of the money spent on the project has been recouped through copying fees paid by gas and oil companies researching land deeds.
Halsted, work on indexing the records as time permits.
Some of the records currently are available online and can be found through titlesearcher.com. Others will be available there soon. Two Courthouse staffers, Amber Maddox and Lesley
Bass says all the documents should be in binders and protective sleeves by early next year.
The documents include deeds, mortgages, chattel, gas and oil and others. There are different ways to search the records and it isn’t necessary to have much information to make the search a success.
“We’re saving the history of the county,” he says.