The Rotary Club of Warren met Tuesday, April 18 for its weekly meeting inside First United Methodist Church. The group heard from Warren High School Junior Rotarian Felicity Crockett to start things off. Then Rotarian Jeff Wardlaw took the podium as his own program to give the club an update on recent legislative bills that had been passed. He started with the Arkansas LEARNS Act and touched on some of the key points. He also clarified some misconceptions about how it affects teachers’ retirement. He did acknowledge that it will be tough for some districts to get to the $50,000 salary on all teachers and that there were still aspects of the bill to be ironed out. The State Representative for District 94 then touched on a bill that requires educational facilities to serve as storm shelters. He said the new Eastside Elementary School already had this in place before this bill but that it was creating a financial burden for others building new schools, but he said child safety should outweigh any potential cost and mentioned the tornado that just hit the Wynne School District recently. Wardlaw spoke about the state highway department taking on the task of building bypasses around mill towns where log trucks have to drive through school zones in another safety issue for children. Another item he talked about was the checkoffs program for farmers being handled by Farm Bureau. He mentioned this was a big deal in some of his new legislative territory in Desha County and said Arkansas was the only state in the union to use a private company for this so now the Department of Agriculture will handle it. He concluded the program by answering a couple of questions from the crowd and stated he was glad Arkansas still works in a bipartisan manner. He didn’t deny there being disagreements, but he said that in his time he’s always seen people of both parties working together and hopes it will continue to be that way.
