A quick scan of the morning news:

* NO GIFT WRAPPING OF TREE DEBRIS NECESSARY: Happily, the city of Little Rock has announced it will waive its customary tight rules for yard waste. Tree debris of any size can be placed at the curb and crews will work to pick them up over time. Debris pickup starts today.

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* NOW ABOUT THE TRASH: The mountain of Christmas- and storm-related trash will exceed green monster capacity in many cases both because of the seasonal load and absence of normal pickups. Will the city also pick up bagged overflow, in a departure from customary rules? I’ll test it.

*ENTERGY: BETTER LATER THAN NEVER: Entergy will open a center at 900 Louisiana at 10 a.m. today for the customers, somewhere near 100,000, still without power after the Christmas Day storm. The company also has announced that more repair workers are arriving in Arkansas today. The lights started going out 3.5 days ago. Still waiting to be added to the Entergy news release list. Maybe when the weather improves. A testy reader wonders if Entergy president Hugh McDonald suffered any power outage or maybe benefits from underground power service. (Note: My street has underground power service. But we went dark for 24 hours because of interruptions elsewhere.) INSTANT UPDATE: A reader reports that McDonald, a Chenal Valley resident, did experience a power interruption of undetermined length. And INSTANT COMMENTARY FROM ANOTHER READER:

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I want to put Hugh McDonald into a walk-in freezer with a few blankets, a flashlight, leftover Christmas dinner and a phone that calls only one number, where he is put on hold because his call is important to us. Periodically someone will answer the phone and tell him crews are working diligently to get him out of the cold, dark, maddening freezer within the next few hours or seven days.

* OFFICIAL BUSINESS: Public agencies nominally opened yesterday, but it was sometimes hard to tell. Skeleton crew at state Capitol. A tiny band at the Pulaski County courthouse. And a Northeast Arkansas reader complains about U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford. Hoping to pass along encouragement on the “fiscal cliff” debate, our reader was frustrated:

I called his District Offices in Jonesboro, Cabot and Mountain Home today and got a recording stating they were closed for the holidays and would re-open on January 2, 2013. When I called his DC Office, I got a recording stating the office was closed and that I could not
eave a message because the voice mailbox was full.

I then tried to send Congressman Crawford an email from his website regarding the upcoming vote on the fiscal cliff. When I hit the “Submit” button, nothing happened. I tried to do that with both my laptop and my IPhone, and nothing happened each time.

It sounds to me like he’s out of touch, at least least with this First District Voter!

ALSO: On the jump, another report from the city of LR on various city services

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