Blytheville holds community meeting
By REVIS
BLAYLOCK
NEA Town Courier
Blytheville Community meeting was held on Saturday at the public library hosted by Bishop R.L. Jones. Jones also serves on the Blytheville City Council.
Jones introduced the guest speaker, Kennard Williams of Little Rock, state outreach coordinator with the United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Williams spoke on programs available to assist with gardening such as high and low tunnel type covered structures to protect plants, cover crops, pollinator and beneficial insect habitat, crop rotation, micro irrigation and compost facility. There are cost sharing programs available. He talked about eligibility, assistance, soil testing and other programs of the NRCS.
Williams said growing food is money.
“Growing food to feed the family or to sell it at a market can be beneficial to the citizens of Blytheville,” he said.
His job is to help families grow food and inform them what is available. The Urban/Small Farm Practices program has been in existence for two years.
“Our motto is helping people, helping the land,” Williams said. “You can have all of the education in the world but you can’t function if you are hungry.”
Several guests asked questions about the gardening practices and thanked Williams for the information. He distributed pamphlets and an Arkansas Conservation Practice catalog encouraging those present to share the information.
One citizen asked ‘how does that affect Blytheville’ and pointed out he needed to be sharing that information with farmers. The citizen went on to say Blytheville is getting worse all of the time. He said the city has a lot of things but does not use them, such as the street sweeper, asphalt trucks and more. He said if he was 15 years younger, he would move out of Blytheville.
Councilman Jones encouraged people to come to the committee meetings and talk about their concerns. He said the concerns of the citizens would be addressed.
Another citizen took the floor and asked about the houses that need to be torn down. “There are so many stinking houses that need to be taken down…. What is the city doing for our children?” she asked “There is nothing here for them to do. All our town stinks. We do not have nothing, the city council does nothing.”
Another citizen suggested they go to the meetings and tell the council they are tired of it.
Bishop Jones said Blytheville Mayor Melisa Logan would have attended the meeting but was out of town.