Mayor Receives Weird Calls and Letters

When Dan Coody became mayor in a town as diverse as Fayetteville, it came as no surprise to him that he would hear from some of its more interesting citizens.

The phone calls and letters he has received have ranged from comical to disturbing, ridiculous to downright dark.

Coody beat longtime incumbent Mayor Fred Hanna in January 2001 to take over the leadership role in Fayetteville. Since then, he has seen and heard things that boggle the mind.

A new position was created to handle some of the traffic for Coody and other city employees. Joanna Main became Fayetteville’s public information representative on June 17. In the following five months, Main answered 8,438 phone calls and handled 4,129 walk-in customers either looking for information or wanting to give some.

Of course, Coody still handles dozens of incoming calls a day and is always returning calls well after 5 p.m. He answered 40 calls on Oct. 15.

“If I don’t get to return a call during the day, I’ll call and leave a message after hours just so they know I tried,” he said. “I don’t want people thinking I blew them off.”

There have been some calls and letters that Coody admits were not worth a response. There are others to which he wasn’t sure how to respond.

One man from Fayetteville asked Coody how to get to Springdale. Another caller wanted Coody to tell him how he could sign up for Cox Communications’ cable television.

“I get some strange calls in here,” he said. “Usually, unless my wife calls for some reason, it’s never personal. It’s always about city business. People will call to complain about a garbage problem or voice a problem. It’s about anything across the charts.

“I give people a chance to vent. That usually calms them down. When people are hollering, they’re probably mad at a situation more than they’re mad at me. I try keep that in mind. But by and large, people are pretty polite. Generally, they’re pretty decent about things.”

Coody said he speaks to someone from the media about twice a day.

He wishes there was one group that would dial his number more often.

“Our [city] council members don’t call me enough,” he said. “Very few of my calls come from the council. I’ve told them on a number of occasions that when they’re in the building to swing by or call. I guess they’re too busy. I probably get from of all eight of them maybe two calls per week.”

There is caller I.D. on Coody’s office phone, but he said he usually picks up the receiver without ever looking at the number.

However, a recording system was placed on the office phone after two post-Sept. 11 bomb threats to the University of Arkansas. One of the calls went to Coody’s office, while the other was placed to the Fayetteville Police Department. The caller said he was going to “take out half of the university,” recalled Coody.

The letters Coody receives are, if possible, even more odd.

“I keep a weird letter file,” he said. “I make it a point not to get in touch with some of them.”

One of the darkest letters came with a Springdale postmark and was addressed to Fayetteville schools Superintendent Bobby New, Coody and Dr. John Kendrick. The author of the letter claimed to be an angel, then used profanity to to try to get across a point that is very unclear, other than it believes soft drink machines at Fayetteville schools have caused a woman to lose her dignity.

Another odd letter asked Fayetteville to pass two ordinances. One asked the city to “deny professional employment and sex to anyone from Long Island just as they have done to me for 17 years. Long Islanders are hard-nosed people who listen only to economic pressure.” The second suggested ordinance asked citizens of Fayetteville to call people from Long Island “stupid people and treat them like second-class citizens.”