Winter showed signs of moderating, so I decided to make a trip down to visit the self-proclaimed “Best mayor in Arkansas.” Mayor Furlow Thompson took my phone call and invited me to head toward the city of Potluck. He sounded in good spirits.

When I arrived at his office, though, the first thing I saw was his assistant Rosie Aberdeen giving me the warning sign indicating that the mayor was in a bad mood. Nevertheless, she motioned me go into his office.

“What do you want?” he asked from behind a framed photo on his desk of a young Furlow in full combat gear. He gave me what his staff refers to as “the look.”

“Just to visit,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“My council,” he said. “What a bunch of ….”

“Mayor!” Miss Rosie yelled from the next room. After many long years, she knew his speech patterns in advance.

“Fenderheads,” he said by way of compromise—a Navy term and not a complimentary one. “Shut that door.”

I complied. “What did your council do?” I asked.

“Passed a stupid regulation that the planning commission sent up that I don’t have the people or money to enforce.”

“Oh,” I said. “Did you ask them to restudy it?”

“No, I used the Andrew Jackson approach.”

“The Andrew Jackson approach?”

“Like when he didn’t like a court decision and said of Chief Justice John Marshall, ‘He has made his decision; now let him enforce it.’ Developers love to use that one on us.”

I didn’t dare respond. He continued. “Know what I call passing regulations that the people don’t need and the city can’t enforce? Ones that just make people mad?”

“No sir, what?”

“Suicide by regulation. And I’ve told you not to call me sir.”

“Right. So I assume you have trouble with code enforcement?”

He leaned back. “Not since I fired our regulatory bully I called ‘Swaggerin’ Sam.’ What an embarrassment. Biggest mistake I ever made was letting him carry a pistol.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Something about holster leather hitting his leg turned him from a quiet sort of feller into Attila the Code Man. I have a nice enforcer now we call ‘Sally the Sweetheart.’ She settles more than 75 percent of complaints with one face-to-face, but she ain’t afraid to take further steps when conditions justify it. She does it in this calm way, too, always explaining why the regulation is there to protect us. She says if she can’t explain why we have it, it ain’t a good reg to begin with.”

“And it works?”

“Almost always. If not, she’s liable to say she’s gonna tell their momma.” He laughed. and I felt relieved although sometimes I don’t know when he is kidding. He says it’s not important that I know. I let him continue.

“Like most cities,” he said, “we must conduct our code enforcement on a complaint-based fashion. Lack of resources and all that. Problem is that sometimes she receives a complaint and heads out to the offending address. When she gets there and talks to the property owner, they can see five other properties with the same problem, or a worse one. She has to handle the complaint and drive past several sites in worse conditions on her way back to City Hall. That doesn’t make your citizens love city government.”

“Does it work?”

“Somewhat. But when we can, I practice what I call ‘systematic code enforcement’ and that works a whole lot better.”

“How so?”

“When we have some capital improvements planned in an area, we let the residents know in advance. We tell them it is part of a targeted neighborhood improvement program, and it will include concentrated code enforcement. I tell them they have been specially chosen for a TNIP. That helps sell it. They can even brag about it down at the bingo parlor.”

“Isn’t that deceitful?”

“Nah, lyin’ and blaming problems on your predecessor is deceitful. Of course my predecessor has been dead for 20 years, so it won’t work for me anyway.”

“How about your zoning regs?”

“We didn’t have any trouble until this current thing came up. Our policy has always been simple. If a zoning regulation gets three requests for a variance, we pull it out and make it fight for its life. Not many survive.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what is this current thing?”

“You won’t believe me, but I’ll try. You know them accessory dwelling units that we allow now?”

“Yes. I thought that was a good idea.”

“It was, but now they want to say we can reduce the parking requirements if a person rents them to disabled veterans.”

I didn’t respond.

“How,” he said, “are you going to enforce that?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Ain’t zoning supposed to be about land use and not about who is using the land?”

“That’s what they taught me.”

“I’d like to see one of them planning commissioners on the witness stand telling the judge why a person has to leave their unit vacant because there ain’t no disabled veterans needing a place to live at the moment. I guess you can see I don’t care for overregulation.”

I nodded.

He continued. “Of course we might have an ordinance or two that we only enforce when we must.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Like the firearms restriction. We ain’t gonna arrest someone for shootin’ a snake that has their kitten cornered in their backyard and relocation ain’t an option.”

I said I understood.

He continued, “But it’s nice to have the law when Otis Holmier gets tanked up and wants to go out in his backyard and show his boy how an assault rifle works.”

“Is he a veteran?”

“Nah. He just has this thing about guns and a penchant for bourbon. As we used to say back in the day, that’ll foul your rigging. What else you want to know?”

“I’m good for this trip.”

“How’s Mark Hayes?”

“Mark is fine. Working with him is one of life’s blessings.”

“Yeah, me and him get along fine as long as I don’t borrow money from him. You know, on a quiet night, ever once in a while I can imagine I can hear him talking all the way from Little Rock. You tell him I said hi.”

“I will. And good luck with your council. I hope they don’t hold what you said against you.”

“No worry. They’ll be busy enforcing that new law they just passed. Besides, what they gonna do, cut my hair off and send me to war?”

With that I headed home, thinking about wars and TNIPs.