Did you know Mayor Stodola is on that state junket to Paris, Hamburg, etc.?
Did you know that his official schedule, according to one city official, has not reflected his participation in that trip? (A city spokesman says it’s there now.)
Did you know that there’s been, at least before today, no official notice to City Board that the mayor wouldn’t be present at the board’s meeting tomorrow night?
Who’s paying for the trip? I’m asking, though my source indicates it isn’t the city. (And the spokesman now confirms that. The Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce is the sugar daddy, which should reassure city voters the next time they find themselves lined up against the chamber’s interest on an issue in which the mayor will participate.) Good thing it wasn’t the public’s money, given the city’s severe case of the shorts. Of course, he could just use the everybody’s-doing-it excuse. You did see, didn’t you, that NLR Mayor Hays is just back from a study of high-speed rail in Spain (high-speed rail!) while his city battles service-threatening deficits.
Maybe somebody could ask the guv on the speaker phone tomorrow to say hello to the mayor. Security guards wiling, of course.