Asa Hutchinson (R) and Mike Ross (D) both want the state to join a lawsuit by 12 other states against proposed EPA regulations that would reduce carbon emissions by coal plants.

Hutchinson and Ross discussed that issue and others during a debate at UCA Thursday that can be viewed here. It will be televised tonight at 8 p.m. on AETN.

The proposed regulation is meant to reduce carbon emissions by 30% from 2005 levels but will require Arkansas to take a 44.5% hit – a hard pill for some to swallow in a state where SWEPCO’s new John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant has only been in operation since December 2012.

Libertarian Frank Gilbert agreed that the state should push back against the EPA regulation. Green Party nominee Joshua Drake supports the regulation as a means of combatting climate change.

The candidates debated a day after the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional Arkansas’ law requiring voters to present a photo ID in order to vote. Hutchinson said he was surprised and disappointed by the ruling. He said he did not believe presenting a photo ID is an unreasonable burden. The other candidates said they agreed with the ruling, with Ross explaining that the law had resulted in the disqualifying of ballots by voters who were not trying to disobey the law, including World War II veterans.

The candidates covered many of the same issues that have been discussed throughout the campaign. Ross did create a new line of attack by criticizing Hutchinson’s legal representation of James Fondren, a Defense Department official charged and ultimately convicted of giving classified information to a Chinese spy.

Ross said during the debate and in the following press conference that Hutchinson chose who to represent as an attorney. Hutchinson said he simply was defending a client, pointing to the fact that President John Adams once defended a British solder accused of murder.

Asked about the state’s Medicaid private option, Ross said he supports it, arguing that it helps people who are trying to stay off welfare. He described a meeting with a server at one of his events who said the private option had helped her obtain health insurance for the first time since her husband left her. Hutchinson, as he has throughout the campaign, said the program should be evaluated according to its costs.

“Mr. Ross is unwise whenever he says, ‘I’m for it, regardless of the costs, regardless of how many people are on there, let’s just do it,’” he said.

Hutchinson also criticized Ross for voting out of committee a health care bill that ultimately wasn’t adopted but that Hutchinson said laid the foundation for the Affordable Care Act. Ross said he voted against the ACA and was one of three Democrats later to vote to repeal it. Gilbert opposes the private option. Drake supports it but said he would have preferred simply expanding Medicaid.

Gilbert advocated the release of all nonviolent drug offenders, explaining it would make unnecessary a proposed $100 million prison. Drake likewise said nonviolent drug offenders should not be imprisoned.

Both of the two major party candidates have proposed tax cuts – Hutchinson an immediate one for middle income earners, while Ross would adopt a more phased-in approach. Hutchinson said his plan is necessary because Arkansas has higher income taxes than surrounding states. Ross said Hutchinson was advocating for what he called the “Kansas model,” where tax cuts have led to a budget shortfall and significant spending cuts.

Gilbert said by eliminating corporate welfare, no longer imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders, and making other cuts, Arkansas could eliminate all income taxes without raising others by the end of his eight years in office. Drake said taxes should be lowered on the middle class and raised on the wealthy, while the minimum wage should be raised to $10 an hour.

On immigration, Hutchinson said border security should come first followed by immigration reform. Ross said illegal immigration had increased while Hutchinson was under secretary for border and transportation security of the Department of Homeland Security, while illegal drug use had increased while Hutchinson was director of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

“Now, if Congressman Hutchinson can’t run a couple of little government agencies, I don’t know how in the world he’s going to run the state of Arkansas,” Ross said.

The days of runaway prices and easy profits in local real estate are gone for Northwest Arkansas, but economists and real estate experts agree the steady pace seen in 2014 is healthy and may be the new norm.

Agents sold 615 homes in September in Benton and Washington counties. The sales of new and existing homes totaled $116.04 million, up 4.2% from September 2013. Units sales were down 1.6% from the 625 transactions a year ago, according to Paul Bynum, market analyst with MountData.com.

New construction accounted for 13% of the recorded home sales in September. That compared to 11% in the year-ago period. Median home prices in Benton County sales last month were $155,000 or $86 per square foot. That compared to $142,000 or $81 per square foot in September 2013. The median price rose 9.2%, while the square-foot- price was 6.2% higher than a year ago.

In Washington County the median sales price last month was $154,950, or $90.6 per square foot. Total prices are up 8.7% year-over-year, while the square-foot price rose 9.5% from a year ago.

Prices are going in the right direction, but they have not fully recovered to the peak year values, according to Kathy Deck, director for the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas. She said prices are still anywhere from 5% to 10% below peak levels hit nearly a decade ago.

“What we have is a balanced market, even in light of all the new construction going up in the past year or so. We are not seeing any concern or caution at this point because the empty and completed homes listed for sale are not unmanageable. That is something we track closely,” Deck said.

New homes listed for sale at the end of September totaled 488, up 33% from the same month last year. New home inventory has risen each month since February when there were 373 listings, according to MountData.com.

Including existing homes there was a total inventory of 3,724 houses and condos listed for sale at the end of September. This inventory was down by 36 homes in August, but up 1% from September 2013.

Jim Long, agent with Crye-Leike in Bentonville, said he closed three home sales in September, a pace he can live with. One of those was a foreclosure. He said there is a fair number of buyers coming through his office and he is working with three potential buyers at this time.

“One is a first-time buyer looking in Bentonville with a budget of $125,000. Another client is shopping in the Lowell area at the $150,000 price range, and another couple is looking in the $180,000 range. Two of the three buyers are new to this area, one moving from Batesville and the other relocating from out-of-state,” Long said.

He said one hurdle for other buyers in that home prices have not come up enough to justify a move to another property.

“They are stuck underwater and can’t downsize or upsize until prices rebound further,” Long said.

Deck said prices have not appreciated to the point where those who bought near the market high nearly a decade ago, have enough equity to sell and move up or down, despite low interest rates.

“This is not just a local issue, it’s true in many areas across the nation,” Deck said.

“Interest rate uncertainty and a steady supply of new construction has helped keep a lid on price appreciation,” Deck said. “Northwest Arkansas is starting to act like a more mature market. There isn’t the opportunity for quick deal turnarounds that helped fuel the price appreciation to the (2006) peak.”

NINE MONTH REVIEW
For the first nine months of 2014, there have been 5,501 home sales, valued at $1.03 billion, sales volume is down from a year ago at 5,648 sales, according to MountData.com.

Bynum said the greatest number of sales so far this year (757) have been in the $125,000 to $150,000 price range. He said nearly half (47%) of the sales this year have been under $150,000. With 53% of sales greater than $150,000, the median price has increased to $153,000, from $150,000 in the year-over-year period. At the high end of the spectrum there have been 14 homes selling for more than $1 million this year, compared to nine a year ago.

He said the months of inventory at the end of September was four months for the homes prices under $150,000, which favors the sellers. Homes priced between $150,000 and $250,000 had a six month inventory which is considered a neutral market for buyers and sellers. Homes prices between $250,000 and $350,000 had a seven month supply which slightly favors the buyers. Beyond that, the supply is heaviest between $600,000 and $750,000 where there is between 21 and 28 months of inventory. At the $1 million category there is 28-month supply, based on sales so far this year.

Looking ahead to pending sales, Bynum said the trend of slightly fewer transactions is likely to continue. At the end of September he reports there were 566 new pending transactions compared to 579 new pending deals a year ago.

“Pending are a rough leading indicator of future sales,” Bynum said.

The committee tasked with assessing the student demand and community interest for a proposed sanctioned sports program at NorthWest Arkansas Community College hit some opposition from the college administration and faculty at its monthly meeting Oct. 16 in Bentonville.

After nearly 90 minutes of discussion back and forth about how to proceed with an interest survey of high school students regarding proposed sanctioned sports at NWACC, the committee agreed to table the matter. However, college officials agreed to move ahead with the mandated Title IX survey required by federal law. The survey of the students enrolled at NWACC will be done via Survey Monkey. The college’s communication department will notify students by email when the survey is ready.

This is the first time NWACC has had to give a Title IX survey because the school has never offered sanctioned sports since it was founded in 1989 and began offering classes in 1990. The committee plans to reimburse the college for any hours used to compile and administer the survey, which they believe will be minimal.

Discussions for a community college-level sports program began in July at the college’s semi-annual Board of Trustees retreat. Board member Todd Schwartz broached the subject of the college offering organized sports for the first time in its nearly 25-year history. It offers club sports, which has nearly 80 participants. Schwartz said he recently attended a conference where the idea of community colleges having competitive sports teams was discussed.

“NWACC has always supported its students through organizations,” he said. “A sanctioned sports program seems to be another way.”

A group of community business leaders attended the July meeting advocating for the program. Among them was Cameron Smith, CEO of Cameron Smith & Associates, and former Razorback baseball coach Norm DeBriyn.

A committee was then formed to assess the potential demand and interest from students and the community at large. Gann Nunally, general manager of Nunally Chevrolet, spoke at the committee’s August meeting in favor for a sports program. He believes sanctioned sports at the college will drive higher enrollment numbers, which is a top college priority according to its goals posted on the NWACC website.

Schwartz and the committee exploring the idea said they planned to assess student interest and community support, set a budget and take their proposal to the full board for a vote.

At Thursday’s meeting Laurie Atkins, committee member and math professor/softball coach at the University of the Ozarks, presented her research as to why NWACC should offer sports even though only three community colleges in Arkansas do so — Mid-South Community College in West Memphis, North Arkansas College in Harrison and Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, which is private.

Ten other two-year schools across the state do not have the population base to support sports team, according to Adkins' report. That left two junior colleges — Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock and NWACC.  

Atkins said Pulaski Technical does not have a sports programs because its core focus is vocational training rather than traditional college coursework that is transferable toward to four-year bachelor’s degree. She said NWACC has the student and community population base to support sanctioned sports if they were offered.

“Many of our students are going out of the county and state, paying to go college and universities that provide sanctioned sports programs. These services that, having received millage and other public monies, we in all rights should be providing,” Atkins said. 

She said multiple studies show student athletes have higher retention rates and often are high achieving academically over the general student population.

NWACC President Dr. Evelyn Jorgenson took issue with the latter statement saying student athletes often get more services. She said if the general student population got extra tutorials, coaches and other help they too could have higher retention rates and better grade point averages.

Atkins said she offers study halls to all of her math students and it’s primarily the student athletics who attend, noting that staying academically eligible is important for the student athlete.

Chip Durham, also a committee member and former college baseball coach, said student athletics are justified in getting tutorial time given that they practice three to four hours a day and have travel time that detracts from their hours in the classroom.

Chuck Huebner, a committee member and pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Rogers, addressed the committee Thursday with his plan to survey high school students to access their interest toward NWACC should they offer sanctioned sports. Huebner proposed going into the schools and handing out the survey which would be completed on the spot. His idea was met with opposition from NWACC faculty who suggested the committee rely on numbers supplied by the Arkansas Activities Association. After discussion regarding time and potential confusion to the public, nothing was decided.

Committee member Dr. Jerry Vervack, dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Education at NWACC, reminded the group that while student interest is important it’s the community at large, parents of the students and taxpayers who also must support the proposed sanctioned sports initiative. All but six of the state's two-year colleges get local financial support from the communities they serve. NWACC has the second highest enrollment behind Pulaski Technical College and receives 2.5 mills, the second highest millage in the state for a community college. MidSouth Community College in West Memphis receives 4 mills, the highest in the state.

Schwartz said the committee will try and set budgets for the proposed sports teams at the next meeting set for Nov. 13. That meeting will also include discussion on how to best survey students, and determining community interest.

The committee is also looking into any state statutes that might prohibit a two-year community college who gets state funding and local millage from offering sanctioned sports. The committee said they had not researched the law for prohibitions when asked by Dr. Jorgenson.

A Federal Reserve economist says Arkansas’ economy struggles to gain a stable foothold for solid growth years after the so-called “Great Recession,” with the Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas areas being the largest “pockets” of growth.

As Arkansas emerges from the long shadow of the first economic decline in the 21st century, a lot of questions are still being asked about the overall health of the state’s economy after the Great Recession. What is clear to many Arkansans – from business leaders, economists and politicians to every day workers and ordinary consumers – is that economic conditions are no longer the way they use to be only a few years ago. There appears to be a new normal.

Charles “Chuck” Gascon, regional economist and research support coordinator with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, recently gave his observations about the state of Arkansas’ economy in a wide-ranging interview with TalkBusiness.net. Gascon was also in Little Rock on Wednesday to give a presentation on the U.S. and Arkansas economy at the annual state economic forecast at the University of Arkansas at Little rock.

In summarizing Arkansas’ economy, Gascon gave an interesting observation about the difficulty in generalizing about the state’s economic fortunes when compared to other states. For example, when looking at the state’s GDP productivity numbers, 30% of the state’s output comes from the Little Rock area and another 20% comes from fast-growing Northwest Arkansas economy.

“So you are talking about two areas with 50 percent of your output,” he said. “When you look at statistics, you have these two real pockets of strength and growth, but everything else is significantly different.”

In his role at the Federal Reserve’s regional office in St. Louis, Gascon and his colleagues provide detailed economic data and commentary for the Eight Federal Reserve District. The most familiar commentary comes from the Regional Economist and the widely-held Beige Book report, which provides an ongoing summary of conditions in the Eight District and the 11 other districts in the Federal Reserve system.

Headquartered in St. Louis, the Eighth District has main branches in Little Rock, Louisville, Ky., and Memphis, Tenn. The district includes all of Arkansas and portions of six other states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

TWO MAJOR TRENDS
In assessing the current recovery from what many believe is the most severe downturn since the Great Depression, Gascon says there are two major trends related to the state’s rebound from the continuing effects of the recession that ended nearly six years ago.

“First, there is the long-term trend in manufacturing when we got the shock from the loss of manufacturing jobs,” Gascon said. “But at the same time when you look at the health care sector, you see the long-term increase in this sector and it continues to add jobs after the recession.”

But unlike a lot of government critics, Gascon says the shift toward a healthcare-focused, service sector heavy economy did not just begin in Arkansas and rest of the nation in March 2010 with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

He pointed to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current forecast on U.S. employment from 2012-2022, which projected that occupations and industries related to healthcare will add the most new jobs across the nation in the next decade.

“The main reason is the demographic shift in the aging of the population. That is the big driver,” Gascon said. “I think I am pretty sure that those job growth projections happened before the Affordable Care Act was passed.”

Still, the Federal Reserve researcher said Arkansas will have to adjust to the historic changes from a being manufacturing-based economy to one that is largely powered by service sector jobs. He said the worker needed in the healthcare field is unlike the traditional blue collar workers who drove the state’s economy over the past 50 years.

“The skill sets in those two sectors are very different. That is one reason that we have this friction in the labor market because there is a ‘mismatch’ of jobs in demand and the skills that are needed,” he said. “Then you have workers who have left their jobs in construction and manufacturing who are (retiring) early and leaving the work force.”

LABOR MARKET SHIFTS
That is also a major cause for the state’s declining labor pool, Gascon offered. That same question has been raised by several Arkansas economists over the past 12 months, including University of Arkansas economist Kathy Deck. The director of the university’s Center for Business and Economic raised a note of caution in January when state labor numbers showed more rural counties of the state were experiencing employment downturns more severe than those that took place during the recent recession.

According to the state Department of Workforce Services, nearly all of Arkansas’ workforce investment areas saw decreasing populations in 2013. That resulted in the state’s labor force and employment decreasing between 2012 and 2013, at 18,100 and 17,600 respectively.

“I know labor force participation rate in Arkansas is a little lower because of demographics – in the sense that the population is a little older than in older states. That is why there is a steeper decline here relative to the rest of the nation,” he said.

On the positive side, however, the shrinking labor market has not equated to less worker productivity. In his presentation at UALR, the Federal Reserve economist said the state’s road to recovery has been “slow, but steady” with real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth of 8% since 2006.

MANUFACTURING, AGRI PRODUCTIVITY
Still, when you look at detailed income statistics on the Arkansas economic output, Gascon said, the spike in productivity is driven by growth in dividends, capital gains and profits versus increases in wages and salaries.

“When we talk to manufacturers, they say they are growing at a slower pace,” said the St. Louis-based economist. “Arkansas’ total production per worker is about $10,000 since 2006. That means they have been able to increase their productivity with fewer workers.”

Gascon continued: “When you look at the broader overall health of Arkansas and the nation, it is a different story than what you see when you look at (productivity).”

In Arkansas agriculture sector, the story there has also been dissimilar to the rest of the state. In August, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that Arkansas’ GDP grew by 3% in the fourth quarter of 2013. However, the state’s agriculture and farming sector lost ground, falling 1.36 points in overall growth.

“I think there are a couple of things that come to mind in the terms of the performance of the agri sector. What are the yields? And how is that going to translate to prices,” Gascon said, explaining why the state’s largest industry is face strong economic headwinds. “And this year, the yields have been great and prices have come way down and that has squeezed income.”

HOUSING MARKET FACTORS
Concerning the housing market, Gascon said housing prices in the state are on the rise, but not as quickly as the rest of the nation.

“There is a steady level of growth, but we didn’t get the ‘big Boston (housing) boom’ in Arkansas on prices,” he said.

More troubling, Gascon said, is the slowdown in sales of housing stock across the state in 2013. He said real estate agents he has talked to across the Eighth District say housing inventories are low.

“That means people are having a harder time finding the (home) they are looking for,” he offered.

Gascon said the other trend he is seeing in the real estate sector in Arkansas and across the region is that first-time home buyers are slow to enter the housing market.

“Is this a permanent shift or are we more in a bubble phase where the preference for when people start their families has just moved back a few years?” he asked.

“What that means is that we are in a pause phase until this group hits that threshold, then we will see that steady movement in the housing market again,” said the Eight District economist. “But it is going to take a little time for that to play out.”

INTEREST RATE FUTURE
At the same time, the momentum in the housing market largely depends on the Federal Reserve’s supervision of the nation’s most influential economic indicator – interest rates. In September, the nation’s central bank renewed its pledge to keep interest rates near zero for a "considerable time." 

The last time the Fed raised its federal-funds short-term interest-rate target was in 2006, a year before the financial crisis in 2007 that pushed the U.S. into the Great Recession. Today, many economic experts and investors are taking bets on whether the Fed will raise interest rates at its next policy meeting in June 2015. Gascon didn’t predict what he thought the Fed may do, but offered that the nation’s monetary policy will continue on the “steady path.”

“In this economy that we are in right now, things to be pretty slow moving,” he said. “Any path you look at on expectations from the market of the Federal Reserve’s (policy) …, we are not going to see a big jump in interest rates.”

Yet, the Federal Reserve economist did say there is also an upside for the housing market when there is an expectation that interest rates will rise in the short term.

“On the arithmetic side of the equation, as mortgage rates move upward – the cost of getting a home also rises,” he said. “The other side is that Interest rate (hikes) can cause people to take action. People realize they can no longer stay on the sidelines.”

El Dorado oil giant Murphy Oil Corp. saw third quarter earnings fall 10.8% from a year ago as sliding crude prices and weaker international oil demand cut into the company’s bottom line and flattened the company’s profit margins for the fifth straight quarter.

For the period ended Sept. 30, Murphy reported adjusted income of $205.6 million, or $1.15 per diluted share, compared to $230.4 million, or $1.22 per diluted share, a year ago. Murphy’s revenue rose marginally to $1.42 billion, compared to $1.41 billion a year ago.

Wall Street had expected the Arkansas oil company to report third quarter earnings of 99 cents per share on revenue of $1.41 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Murphy Oil President and CEO Roger Jenkins said third quarter earnings were “negatively impacted due to lower average realized oil sales prices of nearly $9.00 per barrel.” He said he was still pleased with the progress the company made in portfolio optimization, production operations, and return to shareholders.

“The signing of the Malaysia sales agreement marks the value of those long term assets at near $7 billion, and we continue to progress our exit of the downstream business in the United Kingdom. In production we continue to set quarterly production records, with the Eagle Ford Shale and offshore Malaysia projects leading in oil growth,” Jenkins said. “We look forward to a strong closing quarter of the year, and I anticipate setting another quarterly production record as we maintain our current annual guidance.”

During the third quarter, spot prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil fell from a monthly average of $97 per barrel (BBL) in August to $93/bbl in September. The discount of WTI crude oil to international Brent crude oil fell from an average of $8/bbl during this year’s first half to an average of $4/bbl in the third quarter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. More closely, spot prices for WTI crude oil have dropped 21.7% since the Fourth of July, from $105.52 to $82.62 in midday trading on Wednesday.

Going forward, most Wall Street forecasters don’t expect the current low-price environment to improve anytime soon for Murphy and other oil producers and explorers in the fourth quarter or early 2015.

On Monday, highly influential Goldman Sachs forecasted that it expected the nation’s benchmark WTI crude to continue downward to $75 a barrel and Brent to $85 a barrel in the first quarter of 2015, down a whopping $15 from their previous forecast. Goldman analysts also predicted WTI could fall as low as $70 in the second quarter and Brent as low as $80, if supply and demand levels don’t improve.

During the third quarter, Murphy’s Malaysian business units announced an agreement with Indonesian state-owned oil company, PT Pertamina, to sell its 30 percent stake in the company’s Malaysian oil and gas portfolio for $2 billion in cash. That deal is expected to close in two phases, with the first Pertamina expected to be completed in the fourth quarter. The second phase will be completed by the first quarter of 2015, company officials said.

Although Murphy said it is not giving up on its long-term partnership with Pertamina to develop future deep- and shallow-water offshore exploration projects in Malaysia, the company has signaled it will follow the recent trend of other international oil giants such as ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron and divert more capital to grow the company’s U.S. shale operations.

“We will continue to evaluate all aspects of our portfolio,” Jenkins said following the deal on Sept. 30. “This transaction allows us to re-deploy the proceeds through an individual or combination of strategic and financial initiatives such as increased drilling capital in the Eagle Ford Shale, acquisition opportunities, debt reduction and share repurchases.”

Still, Moody’s Investor Service affirmed the company’s senior debt as “negative” on Oct. 1, saying the company’s outlook was negative because of the uncertain use of the proceeds from the Malaysian sell-off and the oil giant’s relatively higher risk asset portfolio compared to its industry peers.

Moody analyst Gretchen French said Murphy would need to increase capital spending on its U.S. shale operations and make better acquisitions to offset poor exploration results and low natural gas prices.

“Moody’s believes that acquisitions and increased capital spending in the Eagle Ford Shale will account for a meaningful use of the asset sale proceeds, given longer term asset portfolio durability concerns,” French wrote in a research note. “In order to support production growth post 2017, Murphy will need to make acquisitions, as exploration successes have been lacking and natural gas prices have not been supportive of economically growing production in (Canada).”

Following are additional highlights of Murphy’s third quarter report:
• Signed a Sales and Purchase Agreement to sell 30% of Murphy`s Malaysia business for $2.0 billion;
• Authorized a new $500 million share repurchase program on Aug. 6, 2014 and announced a 12% dividend increase to $1.40 per share on an annualized basis;
• Set a new quarterly production record of 229,759 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd);
• Grew Eagle Ford Shale production 15% compared to the second quarter and set a new quarterly record of 60,563 boepd; and
• Closed on the sale of the U.K. retail gasoline business on Sept. 30, 2014 and remains on-track to close on the Milford Haven refinery sale Oct. 31, 2014.

At the close of business Wednesday, Murphy’s shares were down 63 cents at $52 a share. More than 2.34 million shares traded hands in the mid-week session, well above the Arkansas oil producer’s daily volume of nearly 1.4 million shares. Murphy has a 52-week high of $68.43 and a yearly low of $49.38.

Murphy USA Inc., the retail marketing business that was spun off by Murphy Oil as an independent public trade concern just over a year ago, is scheduled to release its third quarter earnings on Nov. 5.

Big gains in September job numbers and declines in the number of unemployed pushed the Northwest Arkansas jobless rate down to 4.4% compared to 5.5% in September 2013.

Metro employment of 223,690 was above the 220,794 in August, and just slightly ahead of the 223,626 in September 2013, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The September numbers are subject to revision.

September marked the 14th consecutive month the NWA metro jobless rate has been below 6%. The metro area is the only one in Arkansas to post a rate below 5%.

The size of the Northwest Arkansas regional workforce during September was estimated at 234,000, up from the 232,070 in August, but 1.06% below the 236,521 during September 2013. The average annual monthly labor size was 234,412 in 2013, 232,208 during 2012, 228,918 during 2011 and 225,974 during 2010.

All of the eight metro areas in or connected to Arkansas had jobless rate decreases in September compared to August, and all had jobless rate declines compared to September 2013. During September, the lowest metro jobless rate in the state was 4.4% in Northwest Arkansas and the highest rate was 7.9% in the Memphis-West Memphis area.

NWA METRO NUMBERS
Following are other key figures from the BLS metro report.

Unemployed persons in the region totaled 10,310 during September, down from the 11,276 during August and below the 12,895 during September 2013.

Jobs in the Trade, Transportation and Utilities sector — the region’s largest job sector —  totaled 47,100 in September, up from the 46,700 during August, and down from the 47,900 in September 2013. The sector reached record employment of 50,500 in December 2006.

The Northwest Arkansas manufacturing sector employed an estimated 26,100 in September, down from 26,200 in August, and down from the 26,500 during September 2013. Sector employment is down 21.6% from more than a decade ago when September 2004 manufacturing employment in the metro area stood at 33,300.

Employment in the region’s tourism industry was 22,800 during September, which set a new record for the sector. The September data is subject to revision. The level was up from 22,700 in August – which was the previous high for the sector – and up from 21,900 during September 2013.

In Education & Health Services, employment was 25,200 during September, up from 24,700 in August and up from 24,600 during September 2013. The September employment, if it stands, sets a new record for the sector.

In the Government sector, employment was 32,700 during September, up from 29,500 in August and up compared to 31,900 during September 2013.

NATIONAL NUMBERS
Unemployment rates were lower in September than a year earlier in 339 of the 372 metropolitan areas, higher in 26 areas, and unchanged in seven areas, noted the broad BLS report.

The U.S. unemployment rate in September was 5.9%, down from 7.2% from a year earlier. Arkansas’ jobless rate was 6.2% in September, down from 6.3% in August and down from 7.7% in September 2013.

Oklahoma’s jobless rate during September was 4.7%, unchanged compared to August, and down compared to 5.6% in September 2013. The Missouri jobless rate during September was 6.3%, unchanged compared to August and below the 6.4% in September 2013.

ARKANSAS METRO AREAS
Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers
September 2014: 4.4%
August 2014: 4.9%
September 2013: 5.5%

Fort Smith
September 2014: 5.7%
August 2014: 6.1%
September 2013: 7.5%

Hot Springs
September 2014: 6.1%
August 2014: 6.4%
September 2013: 7.7%

Jonesboro
September 2014: 5.3%
August 2014: 5.7%
September 2013: 6.7%

Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway
September 2014: 5.3%
August 2014: 5.6%
September 2013: 6.6%

Memphis-West Memphis
September 2014: 7.9%
August 2014: 8.5%
September 2013: 9.2%

Pine Bluff
September 2014: 7.6%
August 2014: 8.4%
September 2013: 9.6%

Texarkana
September 2014: 5.8%
August 2014: 6.4%
September 2013: 7.4%

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS METRO AREA HISTORY
Past annual average unemployment rates
2013: 5.7%
2012: 5.6%
2011: 6.2%
2010: 6.4%
2009: 6.2%
2008: 4.1%
2007: 3.8%
2006: 3.6%
2005: 3.3%
2004: 3.8%
2003: 3.7%
2002: 3.3%
2001: 3%
2000: 2.9%

The September labor market report for the Fort Smith area shows two consecutive months of workforce gains and rise in the number of employed. Such gains will need to continue to erase an almost 9% loss in regional jobs from an employment peak in October 2008.

Fort Smith’s metro jobless rate was 5.7% in September compared to 6.1% in August. The rate was lower than the 7.5% in September 2013, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. September’s data is subject to revision in future reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The size of the Fort Smith regional workforce during September was 126,104, up from 125,739 during August, but below the 130,684 during September 2013. The labor force reached a revised high of 140,253 in June 2007, meaning the September workforce size is down 10% from the peak number.

The number of employed in the Fort Smith region totaled 118,911 in September, up from 118,030 in August, and an estimated 1,987 jobs below the 120,893 employed in September 2013.

All of the eight metro areas in or connected to Arkansas had jobless rate decreases in September compared to August, and all had jobless rate declines compared to September 2013. During September, the lowest metro jobless rate in the state was 4.4% in Northwest Arkansas and the highest rate was 7.9% in the Memphis-West Memphis area.

FORT SMITH METRO NUMBERS
Unemployed persons in the region totaled an estimated 7,193 during September, below the 7,709 during August, but well below the 9,791 during September 2013.

The Fort Smith area manufacturing sector employed an estimated 17,900 in September, down from 18,000 in August, and down from 18,400 to September 2013. Sector employment is down almost 37% from a decade ago when September 2004 manufacturing employment in the metro area stood at 28,400. Also, the annual average monthly employment in manufacturing has fallen from 28,900 in 2005, 19,200 in 2012, and to 18,300 in 2013.

Jobs in the Trade, Transportation and Utilities sector — the region’s largest job sector —  totaled 24,400 in September, down from 24,500 in August, and above the 23,700 during September 2013. Employment in the sector reached a high of 25,700 in December 2007.

Employment in the region’s tourism industry was 10,100 during September, up from 9,900 in August and above the 9,400 in September 2013. If not revised, the September numbers mark a new high and mark the first time the sector has employed more than 10,000.

In Education & Health Services, employment was 16,500 during September, up from 16,300 in August and below the 16,800 during September 2013. Annual average monthly employment in the sector has steadily grown since 2005 when it reached 14,000. In 2012 the average was 17,000, but fell slightly to 16,800 in 2013. Employment in the sector reached a record 17,300 in October 2012.

In the Government sector, employment was 19,200 during September, up compared to 17,800 in August and above the 19,100 in September 2013.

NATIONAL NUMBERS
Unemployment rates were lower in September than a year earlier in 339 of the 372 metropolitan areas, higher in 26 areas, and unchanged in seven areas, noted the broad BLS report.

The U.S. unemployment rate in September was 5.9%, down from 7.2% from a year earlier. Arkansas’ jobless rate was 6.2% in September, down from 6.3% in August and down from 7.7% in September 2013.

Oklahoma’s jobless rate during September was 4.7%, unchanged compared to August, and down compared to 5.6% in September 2013. The Missouri jobless rate during September was 6.3%, unchanged compared to August and below the 6.4% in September 2013.

ARKANSAS METRO AREAS
Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers
September 2014: 4.4%
August 2014: 4.9%
September 2013: 5.5%

Fort Smith
September 2014: 5.7%
August 2014: 6.1%
September 2013: 7.5%

Hot Springs
September 2014: 6.1%
August 2014: 6.4%
September 2013: 7.7%

Jonesboro
September 2014: 5.3%
August 2014: 5.7%
September 2013: 6.7%

Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway
September 2014: 5.3%
August 2014: 5.6%
September 2013: 6.6%

Memphis-West Memphis
September 2014: 7.9%
August 2014: 8.5%
September 2013: 9.2%

Pine Bluff
September 2014: 7.6%
August 2014: 8.4%
September 2013: 9.6%

Texarkana
September 2014: 5.8%
August 2014: 6.4%
September 2013: 7.4%

FORT SMITH METRO AREA HISTORY
Past annual average unemployment rates
2013: 8%
2012: 7.7%
2011: 8.3%
2010: 8.2%
2009: 7.9%
2008: 4.8%
2007: 5.3%
2006: 4.9%
2005: 4.5%
2004: 5.2%
2003: 5.5%
2002: 5%
2001: 4.2%
2000: 3.7%

With less than a week until Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 4, the latest polling in the race for Arkansas governor and U.S. Senate show Republicans with leads that are outside the margin of error.

The 16th annual Arkansas Poll, conducted by the University of Arkansas, shows U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Dardanelle, leading incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., by a 13 point margin, 49% to 36%.

In the race for governor, former Republican U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson is leading former Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Ross by 11 points, 50% to 39%.

The poll, conducted between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27, has a margin of error of +/- 3.6%, meaning that both Republican candidates have large leads outside the margin of error.

In the race for Senate, Arkansas Poll Director Janine Parry noted that among men, the spread between Cotton and Pryor widens to 21 points with 57% favoring the freshman Republican congressman versus only 36% supporting Pryor. But polling of women showed no difference between the two, with both men showing 42% support among female respondents.

Parry said the calculated difference between male and female votes for the leading candidates was 15 points, the largest in Arkansas Poll history.

And she said that is why left-leaning candidates and PACs have focused on women's issues in the month leading up to the election.

“It is no accident that the Democrats seem to have made October the month of the woman,” she said. “Not only are women as likely to favor Pryor as they are Cotton, but their votes are still up for grabs. While 7 percent of men answered ‘don’t know’ or refused to answer, 13 percent of women were in one of those categories.”

Democrats may have made an effort to win more votes from female voters, but it may not be working as Cotton's lead has widened by 3.5% from the Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College poll conducted Oct. 15 and Oct. 16, in which Cotton's lead was 8.5 points over Pryor, 49% to 40.5%. Six percent of respondents in that poll identified as being undecided in the race.

Cotton's campaign was upbeat when asked for comment on the latest polling, campaign spokesman David Ray said.

"We feel good about where the race is right now, but we're not taking anything for granted," he said. "Tom and our volunteers are working around the clock to turn out our voters and win on Election Day. Arkansans are ready for change, and they're ready for a U.S. Senator who has what it takes to stand up to President Obama in Washington."

The Pryor campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

In the race for governor, the Arkansas Poll numbers are far off the previous Talk Business/Hendrix College poll, conducted Oct. 15 and Oct. 16, which had Hutchinson at 49% to Ross's 41%.

J.R. Davis, spokesman for the Hutchinson campaign, said the Arkansas Poll showed that Hutchinson's campaign was connecting with Arkansas voters.

"We are very excited by the results and our momentum that demonstrates Asa's plan is resonating with voters, but we know how important it is to get our voters out on election day.  We will not rest on poll numbers but we will campaign through the finish line."

Ross's campaign, on the other hand, pointed to an internal poll conducted Oct. 25 and Oct. 26, which shows a statistical dead heat for the gubernatorial and Senate races.

“We have outraised Congressman Hutchinson by more than $2 million in this campaign and a poll just last week showed Mike Ross leading by 2 points, so we are excited about the strong position and momentum our campaign has heading into Election Day," said Ross spokesman Brad Howard.

"Mike Ross is focused on the only poll that matters, the one on Election Day. He is traveling all across the state meeting as many voters as he can between now and Election Day and talking about his Jobs First plan to strengthen education – particularly pre-k and career tech – cut taxes, reduce regulations and create more and better-paying jobs."

The head of the Arkansas Research and Technology Park said Thursday that the “town and gown” collaborative effort between the city of Fayetteville and University of Arkansas has been the key ingredient to the success of the region’s research park over the past decade.

University officials held a ceremony Thursday in Fayetteville commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Arkansas Research and Technology Park. At the 10 a.m. ceremony, a new economic impact analysis was unveiled, touting that the technology park has boosted the state’s economy by more than $522 million over the past 10 years.

“It really started as an outgrowth of conversations between the university and the Fayetteville city administration about what more could be done to deepen the ‘town and gown’ relationships for knowledge-based economic development,” Phil Stafford, president of the research park, told Talk Business & Politics.

The Innovation Center at the research park was first dedicated on Oct. 15, 2004. The park ended fiscal year 2014 with 38 public/private affiliate companies and 196 employees, resulting in a total employment impact of 385 jobs statewide.

“From the vantage of 10 years, it’s clear that the Arkansas Research and Technology Park has been an unqualified success, and its anniversary is well worth taking some time to celebrate,” University of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart told a crowd that gathered in the Innovation Center atrium.

According to the report by The Center for Business and Economic Research in the UA Walton College of Business, labor income associated with the research park’s tenant companies totaled $189.5 million from 2005 to 2014, and the research park’s overall economic impact on the state from 2003 to 2014 totaled $522.9 million.

Based on expenditures by the park’s affiliates for fiscal 2014, which ended June 30, the research park generated $54.7 million in economic activity statewide and $1.8 million in state and local taxes. The park’s partners include the city of Fayetteville, the Northwest Arkansas Council, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, Innovate Arkansas and the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, among others.

Stafford said he believes even though the Fayetteville Tech Park is now 10 years old, it is poised for more growth in the midst of an exciting time for venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and startup and technology-based companies in the state of Arkansas.

He also mentioned the fact that he has advised the Little Rock Technology Park Authority Board on its controversial efforts to create a technology park in central Arkansas. In July, the board approved a consultant’s recommendation to locate the technology park’s new headquarters in Little Rock’s so-called “Creative Corridor,” where start-up and entrepreneurial activity in the downtown area is rapidly picking up pace. In early June, the Technology Park board announced the hiring of Brent Birch as its new director.

“First and foremost, you have to have a plan and stick to the plan,” Stafford said of his advice to his Little Rock peers. “This is not a short-term endeavor, but a long-term opportunity to attract economic development to your community.”

Stafford also said that the Fayetteville research and technology park is now almost completely driven by “consistently innovative” companies that exclusively benefit from the research and development assets from the university.

“That has enabled these companies to innovate, invent and test their technology and deploy them for commercialization,” he said.

Over the past 10 years, the Fayetteville technology park has been able to attract technology and knowledge-based companies across the entire startup ecosystem, Stafford said. For example, he said while it may only take one entrepreneur a few days to create a mobile app, it may take another startup company several years to bring a medical or biotech innovation to market.

“Those are two ends of the spectrum, and then there is everything in between,” Stafford said. “The time frame to get (to market) is driven by access to capital. That is the great accelerator.”

Stafford also said he is excited about the research park’s future and is always looking for new ways to innovate and expand opportunities for the companies and partners it serves.

“We are consistently looking to ideas on how we can be a better partner. Plans are underway to add additional research assets that we can leverage to expand our portfolio of companies,” he said. “It has taken a lot of heavy lifting, but we have created more of a mindset of entrepreneurship and our ecosystem has grown and now has a lot more support than we than back 10 years ago.”

Workplace diversity is a passion for Shelley Simpson, president of the trucking and integrated brokerage operations for logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services. It’s career she’s built over the past two decades which began as a customer service representative right out of college.

“I didn’t grow up playing with trucks. I grew up playing with dolls,” Simpson said during her speech at the Cross Church Summit Luncheon in Rogers on Thursday (Oct. 30). “Someone had to be intentional to say to me this (trucking) is a great career for me. … Someone had be intentional to have a diversified team that included not only Millennials, but also Generation X and Baby Boomers.”

Simpson said too often the diversity issue is “uncomfortable” but it needn’t be, especially if diversity is sought for the right reasons. She said diversity is not just about gender, ethnicity or age, it’s also about experience levels and areas of expertise and talents that can vary greatly among any class of workers.

“It’s not about a quota, it’s about culture,” Simpson said. “If I told you that workplace diversity could help you grow profits up to 2.5 times, would you be interested? If I told you that it could help you retain your best employees would that be of interest to you, or if your customers could be better served by it, would you then be interested?”

Simpson said companies often don’t intentionally embrace diversity, and they don’t have programs in place to seek out the best and brightest candidates with unique and diverse experiential qualities.

She said J.B. Hunt began three years ago to do a better job of recruiting straight from college. However, Simpson said a true picture of diversity is difficult recruiting from a university with 17% diversity.

“Today we actively recruit from 88 colleges, across many different disciplines. We now speak 24 different languages. In just three years,” she said.

She also noted that college degrees are not the end-all, be-all factor for hiring. Experience and leadership qualities also matter in the selection process.

Simpson said the face of this country is changing as six of the top eight metro areas now have no majority ethnicity and 75% of those entering the workforce today are female or people of color.

“Companies have to adapt or get left behind, because their customer base and vendors are also going to demand diversity,” Simpson said.

A local example of where the application of diversity has worked at Hunt is with the Integrated Capacity Solutions or brokerage division which was originated in 2010. Simpson said the leadership team that planned, staffed and built this new division was purposeful regarding diversity. The leadership team itself included men and women of various experience levels, ages and ethnicities and they sought to recruit a combination of youthful vigor and older wisdom.

At roughly the same time, the company launched its Rise Leadership program to recruit and harness talent across the world. Simpson said convincing some of them to move to Northwest Arkansas after college graduation was a challenge, but the company gave them a commitment to help them relocate in three years if they choose to leave.

“We find that about one-third of them love it and want to stay after the three-year period,” Simpson added.

Since 2010, the ICS division has grown from $0 revenue to $1 billion this year, Simpson said. The brokerage segment has also grown its local workforce to 16% of the corporate total in Northwest Arkansas and it’s the fastest growing of all four operating divisions at Hunt.

The success of ICS helped push Simpson into an expanded management role in April when she was named president of the company’s laggard truckload segment in conjunction with her duties at ICS. Simpson now oversees two of the company’s four operating segments and is the company’s highest ranking female.

As of the company’s last fiscal year report (April 2014), Simpson was not among the top paid executives mentioned in the company’s Proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Terrence Matthews, executive vice president and head of the Intermodal division was on the list as were two other male executive vice presidents — David Mee, chief financial officer and Craig Harper, chief operating officer. CEO John Roberts III, formerly ran the ICS division before his promotion to replace outgoing CEO Kirk Thompson, who is still chairman of the board.

A Fort Smith-based company has added 30 employees this year and compressed natural gas could be part of the reason.

Billy Turner, fleet supervisor at Tri-State Enterprises, said the company has increased its staff from 100 employees last year to 130 this year thanks in part to sales growth and cost savings associated with the conversion of fleet vehicles now running off of CNG.

"We can show that just with the fuel savings alone, that we are starting up new routes," he said. "And everytime we start a route, that's one person driving and one person in the warehouse. We've been able to get several routes started.”

Turner said that was possible due to conversion of each vehicle the company was purchasing, which now consists of 10 "box trucks" with CNG conversion kits installed and plans for a tractor trailer outfitted with CNG.

With vehicles getting between seven and nine miles per gallon and being driven as much as 100,000 miles in a year, he said the savings add up quickly.

At the time the company started doing conversions of its fleet vehicles last year, he said compressed natural gas was running about $1 per gallon while traditional gasoline and diesel were running higher, as much as $4 per gallon. At those rates, it could cost $50,000 at eight miles per gallon to fuel 100,000 miles of travel on diesel, while CNG would only cost $12,500.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/savemoney.shtml

From last year to present, costs have fluctuated, with fuel hanging around $2.80 to $3.00 per gallon for diesel. CNG has risen to about $1.70. But even with the gas drop and the CNG increase, the company is still looking at fuel savings of $13,750 per vehicle.

Dean Pendergrass, who handles fleet sales at Breeden Dodge in Fort Smith, said a typical CNG conversion can run as low as $6,500 to as high as $12,000 for the largest tanks, similar to those used at Tri-State, which he said illustrates how companies and even government fleets can have real savings in as little as a single year by converting to CNG.

And the use of CNG is being noted by the Fuel Institute as reducing the demand for diesel fuel in the United States as soon as 2016. A study for the Fuel Institute said diesel fuel demand could drop as much 12.5%.

Mitchell Simpson, deputy director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission's Energy Office and the Arkansas Clean Cities Coordinator, said rebates were available this year to help individuals and businesses convert vehicles to CNG power to see those savings over the use of traditional fuels. To convert vehicles that traditionally run on gasoline, he said a rebate of $4,500 or 50% of the cost – whichever was lower – had been available earlier this year. The program had $150,000 available, but those funds have all been used for this year, Simpson noted, adding that the state hopes to bring the program back next year.

But even with the conversion rebates available last year and earlier this year, Turner said his company had not taken advantage of the rebates due to requirements by the AEDC energy office.

"The biggest challenge is the rebate," he said. "If they would do it like other states and take the EPA stipulation off of it, then other fleets could save as much money as we are. It ties into more jobs for the state of Arkansas," Turner said.

The EPA stipulation Turner mentioned is in place, Simpson said, to make sure the CNG conversion kits meet quality standards as well as emission standards and said the regulations are in place to protect Arkansans.

"It just means that they've gone through a pretty stringent evaluation process to make sure those kits are safe and appropriate for the conversion vehicle and that the emissions are low," Simpson said.

Turner said even without the rebates, his company could point to the savings it has already seen and continues to see as a reason to continue its CNG efforts.

"We have 30 new jobs this year. As far as natural gas is concerned, I can fully say four of those jobs are because of natural gas savings. The other 26, it had a little bit of a hand in it. … We're putting money back into the company and that's why we're growing like we have."

The pricing battles between retailers nearly two months before Christmas are heating up as Wal-Mart Stores and competitor Target unveiled plans to sway consumers toward their respective stores and websites.

Savings on 20,000 items in Wal-Mart supercenters will be rolled back on Saturday (Nov. 1) as the retail giant seeks a jumpstart on the official holiday season. Price reductions expand across the big box from grocery items to popular toys and electronics, according to Stephen Bratspies, executive vice president, general merchandise for Walmart U.S.

He said the retailer is focused on delivering lower prices throughout the holiday shopping period – which officially starts this weekend – as stores transform from orange and black to red and green within a short 12-hour window. The retailer gave no details regarding Black Friday deals, except to say they had bought deep in categories like licensed products around the Frozen and Ninja Turtles movies, flat screen televisions, tablets and popular toys.

Bratspies said the physical stores will feature more “retailtainment” events like Frozen parties, or trade-in and up promotions for gamers like the early release of Call of Duty. Wal-Mart said retailtainment and store events are left up to store managers, although the corporate office does make broad recommendations which are followed about 80% of the time. Bratspies said one of Wal-Mart’s strengths is its ability to feature local events and merchandise when possible.

Walmart.com is kicking off its holiday seasonal savings program on Nov. 3 and plans to offer weekly online specials to registered shoppers via email. Free shipping only applies to orders over $50, but this year the retailer is providing free same-day pickup in stores  on certain items.

Savings Catcher has been expanded to cover top toy purchases and holiday ham and turkey prices effective Nov. 2. The retailer also is making a new app function available to assist shoppers locating certain items within a supercenter. With “Search My Store,” customers may search for nearly any item carried in a Wal-Mart store and see the item’s availability at that store, its aisle location, ratings and reviews.
 
“Search My Store” is already available on Android devices and expands to iPhones by mid-November.

“We are taking care of our customers today and all season long no matter how they shop – whether in our stores, online or on their mobile devices,” said Fernando Madeira, president and CEO of Walmart.com U.S. “More than 65% of Walmart customers have smartphones and they look to us to provide a flexible shopping experience when, how and where they want.”

TARGET DEFENSE
Target may be the darkhorse of this holiday season if new CEO Brian Cornell has his way. The company has already announced free delivery on online orders regardless of size.

Walmart.com responded with free shipping on only selected gift items as noted on its website. Target also outlined an aggressive price match strategy between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24. 
 
“If a guest purchases a qualifying item at Target between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 and then finds it for less at Target.com, a local competitor’s printed ad or at select online retailers, Target will match that price,” the company noted in a statement.

Walmart is testing price match against online retailers in six markets. The company gave no details on the test saying only that it’s being discussed. The retailer’s normal price match policy between identical in-store items to other physical store competitors is unchanged.

Target also announced weekly sales, weekend promotions and exclusive deals on Target.com and Cartwheel, Target’s savings app. Cartwheel will offer daily deals for its more than 10 million users, and from Nov. 2 to Dec. 24, Cartwheel will offer 50% off a 
different toy every day. 
http://cartwheel.target.com/

The app will have new features for the holidays, including special deals for top users, personalized recommendations and a select number of popular offers that do not expire, Target noted in its release.

CONVENIENCE TOOLS
Both retailers mentioned new or expanded tools and resources to provide more convenience for shopper this holiday season.

• Wal-Mart
Wish List: Starting Nov. 7, children and parents can build a Toy Wish List for Santa by adding their favorite toys directly from Walmart’s digital Toy Book. Wish lists can be shared on Facebook and in email with friends and family.

Holiday Hub: New this year, Wal-Mart is sharing how-to videos, product demos, seasonal recipes and other tips across multiple platforms where customers seek holiday inspiration, including Pinterest, YouTube and Walmart.com.

• Target
Wish List App: Target’s new app is available Oct. 31, and creates holiday wish lists for parents and kids. Children may add must-have items to their list, while parents can share the list with friends and family. The app also offers an augmented reality feature that works with Target’s Kids’ Gifting catalog. Plus, guests can save 10% on their Wish List on one day of their choosing before Nov. 26. The app can be downloaded on Apple and Android mobile and tablet devices or printed on the registry kiosks in Target stores.

App Enhancement: Target is re-launching its mobile app in time for the holidays with enhancements such as helping guests locate and purchase what they’re looking for using interactive store maps and shopping lists as well as streamlined checkout including, Apple pay in the iPhone app.

Methamphetamine doesn’t discriminate. Like the cocaine and crack craze of the 1980s it’s the drug of choice by many in Benton and Washington counties. Most of the crystal meth is tracked in from Mexico with a purity level of 95% to 100%, according to Tommy Flowers, resident agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Flowers was one five panelists presenting at The State of Meth luncheon in Rogers on Friday (Oct. 31).

“Tighter regulation over the sale of products containing pseudoephedrine over the past five years has limited the number of local labs cooking meth, but there is still anywhere from 50 pounds to 100 pounds of it moving around the region daily,” Flowers said, proclaiming it the drug of choice in the region today.

He said the local street value of meth today is about $20,000 a pound, because it comes out of Mexico where it’s $6,000 a pound. The further from the border the more expensive it is.

Chad Brown, board member of the local drug task force, said the lucrative economics around distributing meth in addition to the powerful addiction of users mount a strong resistance, which is why so much effort is given to prevention. He said a 98% addiction rate of first time users is also an eye-opener because unlike other drugs, there are no casual meth users.

Michael Poore, superintendent of Bentonville Public Schools, was also a panelist at the Benton County Drug Task luncheon. Children enrolled in schools whose parents use meth or moms who used while pregnant require more services and suffer other learning challenges at an added cost to schools and ultimately taxpayers, he said.

A social worker recently informed him of a local kindergarden student whose parents used meth in the home. The child was neglected, dirty and troubled by the fights she witnessed between the parents. Poore said the five-year-old worried because her mom slept all the time and she liked it went her daddy went a way because the mom was happier.

Poore said local schools promote prevention and this week it paid off when a local middle school student found 70 pills in a ziplock bag hidden in a stack of chairs in her classroom.

“It could have been a catastrophe, but this child knew that wasn’t right and told an adult. The school is investigating the matter,” Poore said.

Doug Sarver, a minister of global missions at Cross Church and a panel member, said there is also a financial burden on the church and other nonprofits in the region because of the drug trade and abuse.

“In a sense, it’s a tax on the nonusers and productive circles of society,” he added.

Sarver shared a personal story of his own addiction to cocaine 30 years ago, a habit he said was $3,000 a week then, equal to about $100,000 now. He was introduced to drugs in the seventh grade, but managed to establish a professional career with fast-food chain Sonic as head of the regional advertising coop and a franchise owner.

“Just 25% of users are visible and on skid row, and 75% of meth users look like us in the room. They manage to hide their addiction like I did for a few years. But there is an impact on the society at large in the forms of higher work absenteeism and higher levels of work-related injuries,” Sarver said.

He said users also take a huge toll on their families, stealing from them to feed their growing habit. The one thing he knows for sure is that users can’t be rehabilitated until they themselves want it. For him it took six years to get there.

Many meth users won’t have six years, because the average life expectancy for heavy users is five years, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Kim Umber, secretary of the DFBC, said that stat proved to be true for her own daughter who died in 2006 from five years of meth abuse.

Benton County Prosecutor Elector Nathan Smith, also a panel member, said unlike other drugs, meth can alter the chemistry in the brain which can lead to acts of violence that the person would not have normally committed. Smith said there is no nook or cranny in this region where drugs can’t find a way in. His parents who live in a more affluent Bentonville neighborhood had an incident where five adults were found manufacturing meth in a $300,000 home. He said there also is a strong correlation between crimes and meth use, because the costs of using can run out of control after a while.

Bentonville Police Chief Jon Simpson, also a panel member, agreed with Smith. Simpson said the majority of all crimes have some connection to drug use.

“If not directly related, you don’t have to look far to find the connection. Many times it starts with shoplifting and car break-ins. We are seeing more ‘smash and grab’ car break-ins, which come in cycles. Nine out of ten times they commit these crimes hoping to get the money they need for their next hit,” Simpson said.

The local drug force spent the entire month of October presenting drug prevention programs to 4,000 middle-school children in the area. Formerly part of the Rogers-Lowell Chamber of Commerce, the Benton County Drug Force has recently had to reinvent itself as an independent entity and advocacy group.

Past president Chad Brown explained that the federal funding expired which had provided the Rogers-Lowell Chamber the ability to operate the program for the past decade.

“We are working to grow our membership and have realigned with the Boys and Girls Clubs, where the real battle has to be fought. Teaching awareness is something we all can do,” Brown said.

Flowers said meth manufacturing is on the decline locally but use is still up.

Another issue Flowers worries will befall the region in the next year or so is a rise in heroin use, which is a growing problem on college campuses and in other southern cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham. He said the resurgence in heroin is coming from college kids and adults who have become addicted to prescription pain killers that they might have been prescribed or took from a parent’s medicine cabinets.

With the recent crackdown by doctors prescribing these drugs, addicted users have sought out cheaper and more accessible highs by using heroin. Flowers said prescription pain killers cost about $1 per milligram and finding the supply is more difficult which creates the demand for heroin.

“Birmingham reported between 80 to 100 deaths last year from heroin overdoses,” Flowers said. “I see this as the next epidemic coming our way.”

Former President and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton made his way through the Fort Smith and Texarkana areas Sunday (Nov. 2) on what is likely his last 2014 campaign through the state before Tuesday's (Nov. 4) general election.

But with recent poll numbers indicating growing leads for the Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Cotton and Republican gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson, what brings Clinton through western Arkansas on a final campaign swing?

Dr. Janine Parry, director of the Arkansas Poll and a political science professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, said there were two reasons – political heritage and mobilizing a Democratic base for a possible surprise upset. Parry's Arkansas Poll gave Hutchinson an 11 point lead over Democrat Mike Ross in the race for governor, while it showed Cotton with 13 point lead over Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor.
www.thecitywire.com/node/35327

And it is the large spreads in the two races at the top of the ticket that Parry said could be giving the former president heartburn this close to the election.

"It matters to him," she said. "He's watching the political landscape change both swiftly and dramatically in a very short period of time. So it matters to him and he wants to try to preserve the party that supports the policies he thinks are best.”

By being a presence on the trail in recent months and especially in the closing weeks of the campaign, Parry said Clinton's Fort Smith visit and others around the state are meant to drive Democratic voters to the polls in a mid-term election that traditionally sees lower Democratic voter turnout.

"It still looks like a good ground game, Democrats are arguing. They (say they) can overcome these huge obstacles and win the race and potentially keep the Democratic majority in the Senate. The stakes are high and they don't want to risk (not pulling) out all the stops. That's where we're at.”

She said high profile surrogates, like Clinton, are what Democrats think will bring out their base of voters. What is tough to know, at this point, is how well the efforts are working. In the first week of early voting, both Democrats and Republicans were talking a big game with a 36% increase in early voting from 2010 to 2014, or the last mid-term to this year's mid-term.

Dr. Jay Barth, one of the pollsters behind the Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College polls that showed Cotton with an 8.5% lead on Pryor and Hutchinson with an 8% lead over Ross, said the early voting is always a big question, but especially this year with the significant increase in early voters.

"I think it's a key question. Obviously, I think Democrats think they are tapping into folks who would not have previously voted. Instead of focusing on someone (that traditionally votes and votes early), they'll focus on others on Tuesday. There's a lot of big question marks and it's somewhat of a high risk strategy (to depend on high Democratic turnout). Most would rather be high in the polls and not depend on turnout models," he said.

The only race where Clinton's campaigning in Fort Smith and Texarkana may have a net benefit is the 4th District race for Congress, where Barth's polling shows Republican Bruce Westerman leading Democrat James Lee Witt by only two points, within the margin of error.

In a statement Friday (Oct. 31), Witt — Clinton's director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during his eight years as president — said having the former president and 4th District native campaigning in and near the district the weekend before the general election was important to his race.

"I consider him a close friend and confidant," Witt said. "The President understands the importance of our race.  He knows how critical it is for everyone to exercise their right to vote, and his ability to have an impact on voters in undeniable. Right now, so many of these races are about blaming others for our problems instead of working together to get things done. Under the leadership of President Clinton, we balanced the budget and actually left office with a surplus. We didn’t balance the budget with a single party majority. We did it by working across party lines with Democrats and Republicans. I believe President Clinton reminds voters what it is like for politicians to actually work together for the good of the people.“

But during a campaign stop Friday in Mulberry, Westerman said Clinton was drawing a contrast between himself and Witt and it was something he hoped would happen again on Sunday.

"He may turn out a few more Democratic voters, but I was really appreciative of President Clinton the last time he came because he went to Hot Springs and talked to voters about how I opposed Obamacare. So I hope he'll talk about some of the same issues when he's here this time," he said.

Westerman also pointed to internal polling that conflicted with the Talk Business/Hendrix College poll showing his race neck and neck with Witt.

But Barth said it appears Clinton's jaunt through western Arkansas Sunday, with a final stop at Fort Smith's Northside High School Sunday night, was meant to draw attention to the 4th District, where Democrats are hoping to force an upset victory in a state that Parry acknowledged has quickly turned into a sea of red.

"He clearly does get media attention. They'll be big stories in all of those markets that he's visiting," Barth said. "But I think everybody sees that race as pretty close. Even the Westerman folks at this point have to recognize it is closer than they thought it was. It has been reaffirmed by some polling that I've seen. So I agree that geographically the visits this weekend seem to be targeted there, as well as enhanced turnout, especially in the African American communities that could have a benefit for statewide candidates, as well."

Third quarter net income for Fort Smith-based ArcBest was $19.618 million, well ahead of the $13.982 million in the same quarter of 2013, and thanks in large part to an almost 10% gain in ABF Freight revenue.

Per share earnings of 72 cents missed the consensus estimate of 75 cents. Excluding a one-time charge for a pension settlement, the per share earnings were 74 cents.

Total revenue in the quarter was $711.3 million, better than the $623.4 million in the same quarter of 2013, and better than the consensus estimate of $699.25 million.

For the first nine months of the year, ArcBest has recorded net income of $31.633 million, considerably better than the $5.465 million in the same period of 2013. Total revenue for the first nine months of 2014 is $1.947 billion, up 11.6% compared to the 2013 nine-month period.

"We continued to see strong demand for services from the ArcBest companies in the third quarter and are pleased that our commitment to provide customers easier access to our supply chain solutions is being well received," Judy McReynolds, ArcBest president and CEO, said in the earnings report released early Monday (Nov. 3).

Gains at ABF Freight, ArcBest’s largest subsidiary and one of the nation’s largest less-than-truckload carriers, were driven by rate increases, tighter capacity in the sector and more shipments from existing customers. Shipments during the quarter were more than 1.33 million, up 10.7% compared to the same quarter in 2013. Tonnage during the quarter was up 7.2%, and is up 5.9% year-to-date.

The company reported that it continues to struggle with inexperienced dock workers and other employees the company has had to hire to handle the increase in shipments.

“Actions are actively being taken to drive productivity improvements and to reduce total labor hours to match available freight levels. In order to reduce costs and improve the transportation services offered to our customers, returning productivity to historical levels is an important priority for ABF Freight's management team,” the company noted in the statement.

During the earnings conference call, David Ross, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, noted that operating income was up $7.5 million in the quarter, short of the estimated $15 million per quarter expected through contract labor savings. McReynolds responded by saying the company is on track to realize up to $65 million in savings from the new labor contract with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

“And just in addressing the growth over a short-term basis from existing accounts we’ve had to service that business with more expensive methods. And so we have that issue to work through. We’ve highlighted it. And we continue to see issues on the productivity side, but we are seeing improvement with the employees that have been with us for several months now,” McReynolds said.

She said employees hired between March and July have improved productivity by 35%-40%. She said workforce issues are not unexpected with the company experiencing “the greatest sequential growth that we’ve seen as a company in 15 years.”

Panther, the logistics company ArcBest acquired in June 2012, continues to perform well. Panther revenue during the quarter is $82.784 million, well ahead of the $65.851 million in the same quarter of 2013. Revenue in the division for the first nine months of the year is $236.435 million, better than the $179.533 million in the same period of 2013.

"Panther, in particular, reported one of its strongest quarters ever, contributing over $4 million of operating income and $7 million of EBITDA. Year-to-date through September, Panther's EBITDA was more than $20 million,” McReynolds noted in the report.

SEGMENT NUMBERS
ABF Freight
Operating income
2014 (January-September): $35.389 million
2013 (January-September): $164,000

Panther (premium logistics freight services)
Operating income
2014 (January-September): $11.841 million
2013 (January-September): $3.745 million

Domestic/Global transportation management
Operating income
2014 (January-September): $2.449 million
2013 (January-September): $1.564 million

Emergency/preventative maintenance
Operating income
2014 (January-September): $2.84 million
2013 (January-September): $2.367 million

Household goods moving
Operating income
2014 (January-September): $3.091 million
2013 (January-September): $2.552 million

ABF Freight had 73.5% of total company revenue in the quarter, up from 73% in the second quarter. For the first nine months of the year, ABF recorded 74.1% of ArcBest total revenue.

McReynolds has set as a goal to grow non-asset based revenue so the company is not as dependent on the whims of the national trucking sector. Non-asset based revenue during the third quarter accounted for 26.5% of the total, up from 24% in the second quarter. Revenue from non-asset-based operations was 17.8% of the 2012 total revenue, and just 10.6% in 2011.

Also, the company continues to bolster its financial position. Available cash and short-term investments totaled $203.24 million at the end of the quarter, up 43.8% over the $141.26 million as of Dec. 31, 2013.

Company shares (NASDAQ: ARCB) were set to open Monday at $39. During the past 52 weeks the share price has ranged from a $45.68 high to a $25.25 low.

The City Wire plans to update this story after the company’s conference call with analysts.

With a better than expected third quarter net income of $2.717 million, Van Buren-based USA Truck is on track in 2014 to end five consecutive years of losses.

The third quarter net income of $2.717 million was an improvement over the $602,000 loss in the same quarter of 2013. Also, the 26 cents per share in income was a big jump over the consensus estimate of 10 cents per share.

Total revenue in the quarter was $153.618 million, better than the $141.822 million in the third quarter of 2013 and just above the consensus estimate of $153.4 million.

For the first nine months of 2014, the trucking company posted $1.85 million in net income, a wide swing from the $4.474 million loss during the same period of 2013. Total revenue for the first nine months is $452.405 million, better than the $413.587 million in the same period of 2013.

USA Truck posted a net loss of $9.11 million in 2013. While an improvement compared to the net loss of $17.671 million in 2012, it marked the fifth consecutive year of losses for the trucking company.

"Both our Trucking and asset-light Strategic Capacity Solutions (SCS) businesses realized revenue gains and positive operating income, a direct outcome of our intense focus on operational effectiveness, while also benefiting from today's strong demand environment,” USA Truck President and CEO John Simone said in the earnings report.

Gains in the trucking sector were boosted by an increase in revenue per loaded mile. Total miles driven in the quarter declined 1.64%, but the base revenue per loaded mile increased to $1.819 in the third quarter compared to $1.663 in the same quarter of 2013. Overall, the base trucking revenue per seated tractor in the quarter was $3,170 compared to $2,948 in the same quarter of 2013. This overall gain was made with an average of 71 fewer tractors in the mix during the third quarter.

Simone noted in the earnings report that tractor utilization can improve.

“Our focus on unseated truck count continues to be a top priority and we believe our driver recruitment and retention efforts are making incremental inroads in this important area. We believe these efforts, as well as our strategic and operational initiatives, will continue to drive improvement in our truckload business,” Simone noted.

The star of the quarter for USA Truck was the Strategic Capacity Solutions division – the logistics and brokerage unit. Operating revenue during the quarter was $49.359 million, ore more than 32% of total revenue. That is up from 27.2% during the same quarter of 2013. For the first nine months of 2014, SCS division operating revenue was 31.94% of total USA Truck revenue, up from 25.99% in the same period of 2013.

UPDATED INFO:A direct benefit to the bottom line was $4.775 million less spent on fuel in the quarter. Michael Borrows, chief financial officer with USA Truck, told The City Wire that $3.1 million of that was from a 10.5% improvement in fuel mileage. The remainder – about $1.6 million – was the result of falling diesel fuel prices during the quarter.

The federal Energy Information Administration shows that diesel fuel prices nationwide have fallen from an average of $3.943 per gallon in May 2014 to $3.681 in October, a decline of 6.64%.

Simone said fuel efficiencies have resulted from several technological and mechanical changes, including reducing idle times to five minutes and setting road speeds. He said the company is cycling more than 2,000 trucks through maintenance shops to make the changes. The process should be finished by the end of 2014, and the upfront expense will pay off in bigger efficiency gains in future quarters, Simone said.

Economic conditions are more favorable for the trucking industry than they have been in many years, but Simone said USA Truck needed many fundamental changes to be able to take advantage of the improved conditions.

“Certainly the market has given us a tailwind ... but without the improvements in efficiencies we would not have been able to accomplish what we have,” Simone said, adding later in the interview that a “rate (increase) alone is not enough to overcome the inertia of a poorly run operation.”

The company was able to push rates higher to post a 9.4% increase in rate per loaded mile during the third quarter, which was up from 7.1% in the second quarter.

A potential drag on future gains is the ongoing driver shortage in the national trucking sector. USA Truck, which is trying to end five consecutive years of financial losses, has had to overcome a morale and image problem among drivers. Simone said early in his tenure with USA Truck that a better relationship with drivers was a top priority.

“I am pleased with the progress we’ve made with re-imaging the brand (with drivers) since I arrived,” Simone said during Monday’s interview.

He said morale among drivers driver is improving because the company is “changing the way we interact and value our drivers.” Part of that value is a year-over-year increase of $1.8 million for driver pay and benefits – an increase of 4.6%.

Overall, Simone said USA Truck began fourth quarter strong and he is “optimistic” holiday shipping will remain strong.

The earnings report also included the following information.
• For the year to date, the company reduced debt by a total of $14.5 million, and in the past 12 months, the company reduced debt by $26.5 million. Debt decreased during the third quarter by $10.7 million, sequentially to $114.4 million. 

• Fleet fuel efficiency initiatives produced a 10.5% improvement in miles-per-gallon, or $3.2 million, while offsetting higher driver-related costs.

• For the first nine months of the year, the company spent more than $2.59 million on legal and other related costs. The expense was primarily related to the hostile takeover attempt of USA Truck by Knight Transportation.

USA Truck shares (NASDAQ: USAK) were set to open Monday at $17.50. During the past 52 weeks the share price ranged from a $19.57 high to a $11.95 low.

Home sales in Arkansas’ four largest markets rebounded in September, with year-to-date sales up almost 4% and the value of homes sold up almost 2%. September sales in the four markets were up 7.26% and the sales value was up more than 9%.

August sales in the four markets were down more than 5% and sales were down more than 8%.

Jeff Collins, an economist for The City Wire, said improvements in this year's housing market can be taken as more evidence that the economy is heading in the right direction.

"This is really good news," he said of the September report. "Couple that with other economic news ... and it seems everybody is feeling the economy is righted."

Home sales in Arkansas’ four largest metro areas during the first nine months of 2014 totaled 16,469, up 3.83% compared to the same period in 2013, according to The City Wire’s Arkansas Home Sales Report. The average price per home sold in the four markets was $162,720, down 1.77% compared to the same period in 2013, and the total value of $2.679 billion in the four markets was up 1.99%.

The year-to-date comparisons are up against what was a robust 2013 in terms of Arkansas home sales and sales values. For example, the 2014 year-to-date home sales are up 18.18% over the same period in 2012 and the value of home sales is up 19.39% compared to the same period in 2012.

The City Wire’s Arkansas Home Sales Report captures home sales data in the state’s 14 most populated counties within its four largest metro areas — Central Arkansas, the Fort Smith area, Jonesboro/Northeast Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas. The report, which records closed sales, accounts for between 70% and 75% of total Arkansas home sales.

SEPTEMBER NUMBERS
September home sales in the four markets totaled 1,936, up 7.26% compared to September 2013, and up 29.76% compared to September 2012. The average price per home in the four markets during September was $164,449, up 1.89% compared to September 2013, and up 0.49% compared to September 2012. The total value of sales in the four markets during September was $318.373 million, up 9.28% compared to September 2013 and up 30.4% compared to September 2012.

There were 939 homes sold in central Arkansas, up 9.19% compared to September 2013, and up 33.57% compared to September 2012.

September home sales totaled 615 in Northwest Arkansas, down 1.6% compared to September 2013, and up 26.28% compared to September 2012.

Jonesboro area home sales totaled 199, up 26.75% compared to September 2013 and up 25.95% compared to September 2012.

In the Fort Smith area, home sales totaled 183, up 12.27% compared to September 2013, and up 27.08% compared to September 2012.

The total value of the sales during September were up 10.45% in central Arkansas, up 4.17% in Northwest Arkansas, up 21% in the Jonesboro area, and up 17.1% in the Fort Smith region.

THE REGIONAL PICTURE: 2014
Central Arkansas — Home sales
Jan.-September 2014: 7,747
Jan.-September 2013: 7,431
Jan.-September 2012: 6,699

Fort Smith area — Home sales
Jan.-September 2014: 1,504
Jan.-September 2013: 1,325
Jan.-September 2012: 1,228

Jonesboro area — Home sales
Jan.-September 2014: 1,717
Jan.-September 2013: 1,458
Jan.-September 2012: 1,314

Northwest Arkansas — Home sales
Jan.-September 2014: 5,501
Jan.-September 2013: 5,648
Jan.-September 2012: 4,695

The top five counties in terms of Jan.-September 2014 home sales:
Pulaski — 3,583, up compared to 3,425 in 2013
Benton — 3,503, down compared to 3,555 in 2013
Washington — 1,998, down compared to 2,093 in 2013
Craighead — 1,356, up compared to 1,152 in 2013
Saline — 1,268, up compared to 1,188 in 2013

Link here for a PDF document of the September 2014 data.

FED MOVES
Collins said other real estate-related economic news has to do with an Oct. 29 announcement from the Federal Reserve that it will stop its program of purchasing mortgage-backed securities. In 2008, the Fed began buying treasury bonds and mortgage backed securities as a way to stimulate the economy, but has decided that those measures are no longer necessary. Most recently, the Fed spent $15 billion a month on treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

Mortgage-backed securities are, as the name suggests, backed by mortgages and generate capital for more home loans. In 2008, there was a fear that a large number of mortgage defaults would destroy that market and greatly diminish the amount of credit available for home buyers. The Fed, then, decided to step in and prop up that segment of the economy.

Collins is also encouraged by the Fed's decision to keep short term rates at around 0% in hopes of stimulating the economy further.

Overall, Collins said he is encouraged by what he sees in the housing market and economy as a whole. He expects to see more good economic news in the months to come.

Kantar Retail released its annual price leadership study between mega retail competitors Wal-Mart and Amazon on (Oct. 30), and the results show Walmart.com had lower prices over its supercenter format and Amazon.

Price wars are the primary focus among all retailers — physical and digital formats alike, despite unequal operational costs between brick and mortar and online-only.

Retail experts say consumers don’t think in shopping channels. Instead, they think of the retailer — Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others. Wal-Mart marketing executive Stephen Quinn recently said retailers must connect with consumers on a brand level in multiple formats and price matters more than ever.

While historically the Wal-Mart supercenter has dominated from a price-point perspective, this year’s findings indicate a shift to more alignment between Walmart.com and the supercenter, with aggressive pricing in general merchandise on Walmart.com yielding the most competitive offer overall across the three venues, according to the Kantar study.

“From a brick and mortar standpoint, Wal-Mart has long held a reputation as a price leader,” noted Anne Zybowski, vice president with Kantar Retail and contributor to the study. “While Wal-Mart looks to offer consistently low prices across channels, it is also contending with the dynamic pricing realities online retail entails.” 

The Wal-Mart supercenter’s basket was 5% more expensive than the Walmart.com basket, Kantar reported. While the gap between the supercenter and Walmart.com basket is narrower this year, the advantage for Walmart.com is a reverse from last year’s iteration of the study when the supercenter was 7% cheaper.

Walmart.com execs have said they aggressively match or beat prices with all of its major online competitors and that is something they have pushed over the past year using technical algorithms. They have also added 1 million extra items to the online store which now boasts 7 million items for sale. 

That said, the message from Bentonville for Wal-Mart Supercenters has been that it has the lowest basket prices among its physical competitors daily and weekly. The unveiling of Savings Catcher helped to reinforce that promise on grocery and household consumables, and now includes top toys for the holiday with possibly other selective general merchandise, namely top gift items.

If consumers really don’t look at where they buy a product, it stands to reason that Wal-Mart prices should be the same, despite the higher operational costs of brick and mortar. Wal-Mart has routinely said it doesn’t match its online prices for in-store items, but admitted Thursday (Oct. 30) that there are some discussions and tests about that possibility. It is not clear if that’s for holiday only, or if it could be an everyday service. The test which began last month in five markets, including Northwest Arkansas, also involves price matching with other online retailers within Wal-Mart brick and mortar stores, something Target and Best Buy already do.

Kantar said Amazon’s basket was 12% more expensive than the supercenter’s and 17% more expensive than Walmart.com’s, ranking it the most expensive in three of four sub-basket categories including edible grocery, where the retailer was 37% more expensive than both Walmart channels. 

Zybowski said Amazon has built its mission around the customer, seeking to be competitive on price yet win through its vast assortment and focus on convenience.

“As shoppers increasingly incorporate digital and eCommerce into their purchase decisions, retailers are adopting more nuanced approaches that go beyond low price,” she added.

Kantar reported that third party items in the edible and non-edible baskets drove Amazon’s overall basket cost higher. The study found Wal-Mart supercenter to have the lowest edible grocery cost at $141.38, compared to $141.45 at Walmart.com and $195.29 at Amazon.

Non-edible grocery was also cheaper at the supercenter ($121.49) versus $124.79 at Walmart.com and $155.21 at Amazon. The health and beauty aids category basket was also owned by Wal-Mart supercenter at $110.03 versus $111.61 at Walmart.com and $133.22 at Amazon, according to the study.

It was general merchandise pricing that pushed Walmart.com ahead of the supercenter  by a $32.17 margin. These respective cohorts logged general merchandise basket costs of $200.31 and $232.38, respectively, and both were more expensive than the $196.02 general merchandise basket at Amazon, Kantar noted in the study.

Total basket costs at Walmart.com were $578.06, or $27.22 cheaper than the Wal-Mart supercenter ($605.28) and $100.65 savings over Amazon ($678.74), the study found.

“The results of this year’s study are not entirely unexpected,” Zybowski. said. “Amazon continues to hone its prices in the face of increased cross-channel and online competition, while Wal-Mart evolves its alignment between its store and online positions.

Kantar said the supercenter used in this study is in New England and was the same store used last year. The basket totaled 53 national brands — all of which were available at all three outlets. This study doesn’t include shipping costs or subscription discounts that online retailers offer.

In an Oct. 22 response to questions by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality about the stability of a toxic plume of potentially cancer-causing trichloroethylene (TCE), Whirlpool Corporation has again made statements it said justifies previous assertions that the TCE plume is not growing, despite ADEQ statements that have provided the opposite conclusion.

The ADEQ memo dated Sept. 22 stated that the ADEQ believed the plume was potentially growing. ADEQ Engineer Mostafa Mehran wrote to Robert Karwowski, director of environmental, health and safety at Whirlpool, regarding a report by Whirlpool about additional TCE pollution that was found near a Boys and Girls Club located in South Fort Smith not far from the shuttered factory facility.

Whirlpool had previously said the TCE near the Boys and Girls Club was not a threat.

But in Mehran's letter to Whirlpool, the ADEQ engineer said the company failed to indicate that the TCE plume could be growing. He cited several detections of the chemical used as a degreasing agent at the factory through the 1980s, noting that the levels are above detection limits and that TCE was also discovered in groundwater samples taken at the site.

"This could be an indication of plume expansion," Mehran wrote, advising the company to make changes to the August report where it wrote indicating that the TCE at the Boys and Girls Club posed no threat. The report, he said, should indicate that the plume could be growing. Mehran also directed Whirlpool to install additional monitoring wells to keep track of the TCE plume.

"Given the apparent shape of the plume, ADEQ requires an additional monitoring well in the northwest corner of City of Fort Smith property (three properties)," he wrote.

Since that time, Whirlpool and the city of Fort Smith – which owns property where monitoring wells will be installed – have come to an agreement for monitoring wells to be installed.

But in the Oct. 22 letter to ADEQ, Whirlpool's environmental consultant Michael Ellis of ENVIRON Corp. again asserted that there was no risk posed to the public and said the plume was not growing.

"The Mann-Kendall trend analysis utilizes data from all wells associated with the monitoring for the northern plume. … As described in more detail below, our determination that the plume is stable is based on the fact that 82% of these wells exhibit either little or no TCE or a decreasing or stable TCE concentration trend."

Ellis said 14 wells "exhibit a stable trend for TCE concentrations," while seven showed decreasing TCE trends and another seven showed no TCE trend. He said another six wells show TCE "below detection limits." But even with the more than two dozen wells showing stable or decreasing TCE concentrations, Ellis admitted that five "wells exhibit an increasing trend for TCE concentrations."

"TCE concentrations in 11 of the 39 (28%) have been non-detect or less than 1 µg/L since October 2011 and 21 of the 39 wells (54%) have exhibited decreasing or stable trends; therefore, 32 of 39 wells (82%) of the wells exhibit either little or no TCE or a decreasing or stable TCE concentration trend. We believe that this supports our plume stability conclusions," Ellis continued.

Other documents released by ADEQ Monday (Nov. 3) show that the agency had questioned Whirlpool's proposed removal of soil, saying the company's environmental consultants may not be removing enough contaminated soil at the northwest corner of the site, known as "Area 1."

"Please discuss in detail how the removal of limited amount of soil proposed in the work plan will remediate the soil below the RAL," Mehran had wrote to Whirlpool and ENVIRON on Sept. 23.

In response, Ellis said removing more soil than the 300 cubic yards already removed from the site would be pointless and would create "significant additional complications that would negatively affect the progress of onsite and offsite remediation, as well as the redevelopment of the overall site."

Ellis also noted that remediation plan calls for "capping" the site, which would mean a concrete or asphalt layer would be placed on the soil to prevent digging and any soil vapor rising from the contaminated site. The plan calls for the capping in addition to chemical oxidation treatments.

"The selected management method of onsite impacted soils under the RADD (remediation plan) is capping and containment, not removal of soil below the RAL. This method was chosen precisely because soil removal would neither reduce the risk of exposure to onsite workers or area residents not would it materially impact the offsite groundwater contamination."

Ellis also said soil removal above what has already been completed would present "several engineering and operational setbacks."

"Substantial additional soil removal would threaten the structural integrity of the former manufacturing building and stability of the electrical substation," he said. "It would also require de-watering operations. These issues would likely complicate and delay completion of the remediation activities required under the RADD and the ongoing redevelopment of the property."

Contamination of the site former Whirlpool manufacturing facility site in south Fort Smith along Ingersoll Road was discovered in the early part of the century and was disclosed to ADEQ. Contamination, the company said, was caused by the use of a degreasing agent that contained TCE.

The company is the defendant in a class action lawsuit, which it has attempted to settle. The settlement offer, according to Whirlpool Vice President Jeff Noel, would have the company paying 100% of the devaluation amount for properties impacted by the TCE plume, plus 33% of that total and all costs associated with achieving the settlement.

In return, property owners would release Whirlpool of all property claims and allow for reasonable testing and monitoring on property and allow a deed restriction on drilling to be placed on impacted properties. Noel said it would allow property owners to reclaim as much as 75.7% of the original tax appraised value of the properties before Sebastian County Tax Assessor Becky Yandell lowered property values in the TCE plume. According to information Noel said was compiled by Whirlpool, typical TCE settlements only recover 20% of property values.

The settlement is under consideration U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III of the U.S. Western District Court of Arkansas in Fort Smith.

Even after two rounds of finance committee meetings meant to slash the budget line item by line item, the Crawford County Quorum Court is still facing a county general budget shortfall of $372,539 for fiscal year 2015.

Requests for expenditures by all county departments totaled $7.226 million at the start of the budget cycle, but County Treasurer Beverly Pyle said the county only has anticipated revenues of $6.817 million.

Speaking Thursday (Oct. 30), Pyle said the county has been hit with decreases in anticipated revenues following the financial crisis of 2008 and has only recently began to rebound. The anticipated revenues are about $220,313 less than the 2014 county general budget of $7.037 million.

Attempts to reach Pyle for an explanation of the reduction in anticipated revenues were unsuccessful Monday (Nov. 3), though individuals with knowledge of the financial situation at the county said tax revenues for the year were simply lower than anticipated for fiscal year 2014, which lead to the downward estimate for the upcoming budget.

Crawford County Tax Collector Kevin Pixley said collections were not down too much, though he said taxes associated with mineral rights had been down the most of any in the county. He said it was due to changes in state law and was beyond the control of the county.

But he said of the funds collected by his office, only about 20% directly benefit the general fund, meaning that if an additional $200,000 were collected, about $40,000 would go to support the general fund.

"The losses are coming from other funds," he added, noting that the majority of monies collected through his office benefit the county's school districts in Alma, Cedarville, Mountainburg, Mulberry-Pleasant View and Van Buren.

He said it is difficult to determine why anticipated revenues would be down more than $200,000 for county general since the taxes that benefit the fund are not too far off last year.

"The collections are about the same as last year. We're probably within $5,000 as far as county general. I'm going to close the tax book this week, which will tell me where the delinquencies are at," Pixley said.

Putting a strain on efforts to trim the budget is a rule adopted by the budget committee that prevents the quorum court from eliminating funding from estimated personnel services, which includes salaries, according to County Judge John Hall.

He said with the county still needing to cut more than $370,000 to meet its budget, the quorum court may need to rescind its own rule and look at the possibility of personnel cuts.

"Now the Quorum Court in their diligence of trying to develop a balanced budget that we can pass in December has really not realized the urgency of the situation, I don't think, that faces us. There's no way that the process that they're going through right now will be able to take that much money out of the budget without getting some revenue somewhere or cutting some positions somewhere. We can't nickel and dime this thing like we have been doing and come up with the type of money it's going to take to get us a balanced budget."

Pixley said the county has already raised taxes on its residents, raising the millage that benefits the general fund from 1.9 mils to 2.9 mils following fiscal year 2011. That total, he said, raised "roughly $650,000 in revenue for county general."

The year the county raised taxes it was facing a budget shortfall of $1 million, which Pixley said "just filled that hole. If we hadn't raised the millage, we'd have a $1 million hole, not a $375,000 hole."

But any talk of raising the millage anymore, Hall said, would be stopped by his office. He said the quorum court and the county's departments must learn to live within its budgets and that means hard decisions will have to be made without a tax increase.

"One thing that's off the table – and you can quote this – there will be no millage increase. I will veto any millage increase if it is brought up. I will oppose it and I will veto it. We are not raising millages. We're not going to do it. I oppose it 100%."

Reached for comment, Quorum Court Finance Committee Chair Mary Jan Blount declined to discuss revenue issues and cuts, saying, "Let's just leave it (my comments) as right now, we're reviewing all the items on the budget. I can't give a clear answer as to where we are able to cut. We're looking at each budget line item by line item to see where there are possibility of cuts. … We're just separately looking at each line item to see where there are opportunities to cut expenses."