Dentech Remnants Rotting

Dentech Systems Inc. of Springdale must be liquidated quickly or the company’s assets will diminish through vandalism and exposure to the summer temperatures, says Jill Jacoway, the Fayetteville attorney appointed to handle the bankruptcy.

The company’s plant building has been broken into and some of the company’s assets inside were vandalized, she says. She also is concerned about the stability of the chemicals still inside the company’s warehouses as the daily temperature increases.

At the same time, James Dennie, the company’s president and sole stockholder who is serving a two-year prison sentence for felony DWI, is asking the court to dismiss the bankruptcy proceedings. Dennie claims the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over the matter because he never received approval of the company’s board of directors to file the bankruptcy.

Unless the court agrees to dismiss the case at the June 27 hearing, the remnants of Dentech are headed for the auction block next month.

auctions to sell the assets of the company have already been scheduled . The first auction is set for 10 a.m. on July 16 to sell the 3.3 acres the company owns in Springdale, along with the four buildings on the land and others items.

A second auction is scheduled for 10 a.m. July 19 to sell six vehicles, two boats, two jet skis and assorted other personal property. The third auction will dispose of the company’s office furniture and equipment beginning at 10 a.m. on July 22.

The University of Arkansas and American Family Radio, a religious organization based in Tupelo, Miss., are competing for two available radio frequencies in Northwest Arkansas.

Rick Stockdell, director of KUAF, 93.1 FM, the UA’s National Public Radio station, says UA students have been working for about two years to acquire a station of their own, and KUAF is looking for a second frequency for jazz and other programming that can’t be aired on KUAF.

When the UA filed last September for FM frequency 90.1 MHz (550 watts) for the student group to use, it discovered a competing application had just been filed by American Family Radio for the same frequency.

A similar incident occurred in May when the UA filed for FM frequency 88.3 MHz (470 watts) for KUAF. American Family Radio had asked for that frequency, also.

Stockdell says the Federal Communications Commission currently has no rules for dealing with competing applications. A UA attorney says it may take three or four years to settle the issue.

“It’s deflating for those guys [the students] who’ve been working so hard on this,” says Stockdell. “They’ll be gone before this gets done.”

American Family Radio plans to establish one station in Fayetteville and another in Springdale that will broadcast the same programming via satellite, Stockdell says. The organization already has a station in Bentonville that broadcasts throughout Northwest Arkansas, he says.