shortfall with money in the street fund reserves and cuts in special project expenditures. Here are some examples of how the city is dealing with its leaner budget: Going after more federal dollars to handle city responsibilities: The city won a $4 million COPPS (Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving) grant to fill 20 vacancies at the Little Rock Police Department, and a $2 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant to upgrade 20-year-old police software. A federal SAFER grant is paying for 18 firefighters, and city buildings are getting new HVAC systems. Thanks to the feds, sidewalks, 2.7 miles of them, are being built in the First Ward, which includes some of the poorest neighborhoods in town. Since the start of 2009, the city has eliminated 44 and a half jobs to save money, 20 of them at the end of last year. There are now 171 vacancies — 111 of them funded from the general fund — saving the city around $5 million. Like the uniformed employees, non-uniformed employees have gone without a raise since 2009, when they got 3 percent. The last time city code enforcement — the folks whose job it is to resolve problems with high grass, trash dumping, property neglect and so forth — was fully staffed was in 2007. Then, there were 32 CITY MANAGER code enforcement officers coverMOORE: Employees ing 122 square miles. Until the city answer to him. manager authorized Housing and Neighborhood programs to hire two “too involved” in the manager’s job to let him know. According people last week, the department was 11 employees short. to some people who know, that’s happened a time or two. The Parks and Recreation Department — usually the first to take a hit when budget overruns threaten — is down 14 he greatest challenge Stodola, Moore and the city direc- employees. Our city parks are categorized as Class C parks tors face right now is finding a way to pay 4 percent because we don’t have the manpower to mow and maintain raises agreed to in contracts with police and firefighters them. A $7 million bond re-issue is allowing the department — raises the public safety employees have deferred for a year to remake War Memorial Park, fix up neighborhood parks already. The city needs $1.4 million for police, $900,000 for and buy land — but there’s no maintenance budget to keep firefighters and about $600,000 for American Federation of the new landscaping alive, the weeds from taking over, State, County and Municipal Employees members (sanitation, the trash cleaned up. The only reason the city’s two public pools stayed open this summer is that private companies street, fleet mechanics). That’s close to $3 million. This bill is coming due at a time the city is scraping by. kicked in $20,000. At the Planning and Development Department, the permit The budget for 2010 had $6 million less in its general fund than it did in 2009, and the city had to cut $2.7 million more desk is closed during the lunch hour because there aren’t enough mid-year, thanks to a substantial change in utility rates that employees to man it. City planners who used to work with produced a 16 percent decline in franchise fees to the city. neighborhoods on action plans are making maps because the When Moore and the board suggested the gap could be employees who used to do the graphics are gone. The departpartly made up by using insurance money that would have ment has gone without a building inspector for five years (he rebuilt the burned Adult Leisure Center on Twelfth Street, was promoted to commercial inspector) and the building codes supporters of the center rose up. The board backed off, manager, Chuck Givens, is out doing electrical inspections. leaving Moore to suggest that employee layoffs might be “We’re down to the bare minimum,” Givens said. Three alert centers were shut down. There are potholes. required, which in turn put pressure on the police, fire and AFSCME members to agree, for a second time, to forgo One resident complained to Stodola his street here was worse than those he’d seen in Afghanistan. raises that had been due at the first of the year. Continued on page 14 The city was able to make up its (now much reduced) brian chilson
He says he “engineered” the compromise with the Little Rock Zoo, War Memorial Stadium and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences that sold park property to UAMS (for an amount still under negotiation). Indeed, the former minor league baseball park at the heart of this swap still silently rots, a growing eyesore. He notes the location of the $150 million Welspun pipe plant here (after getting a $2 million incentive from the state), Windstream’s decision to stay (after a $5.5 million incentive from the state and in no small measure due to its pre-existing footprint here). Millions of dollars in federal stimulus grants to revitalize neighborhoods south of Interstate 630. A new soccer field out west, on land previously owned by Central Arkansas Water. He’s worked with the new Land Bank Commission, whose members he and city directors appointed, to obtain and resell abandoned properties around Central High School and other areas. Less intriguing is his boast that he triggered a study of downtown redevelopment — one that joined other studies on a shelf somewhere. He also said he is enlisting the Department of Correction to help get public areas cleaned up. He put cigarette butt containers in the River Market district along Clinton Avenue. Sometimes, his influence is limited. He was not able to persuade the Little Rock Zoo’s board to make smoking at the zoo illegal. He did not get a no-knock ordinance passed that would have kept door-to-door solicitors away. And though Stodola could fire the city manager if he decided he wanted to work with someone of his choosing, someone with no history with the city board, politically it would be a bad move. City Manager Moore, who has been on the job for eight years, is more than competent, has lots of support on the board and is African-American in a city with a black population somewhere near 40 percent of the total. To get rid of the city’s most high profile black leader since Mahlon Martin would be impossible. That’s something that Stodola raised in a recent interview. “He represents a significant part of the community,” the mayor said, and his position helps combat the perception that only wealthier parts of Little Rock benefit from action by the city board. Moore said the mayor-manager dynamic hasn’t changed as much as people might think. He noted that he worked for Mayor Jim Dailey, who while not a full-time mayor worked full time. As city manager, Moore said he’s brought in talent from across the country to head up city departments — Fire Chief Rhoda Kerr, for example, who after five years here now heads up the Austin, Texas, department. Moore acknowledged there was some getting used to. Early on, however, Moore said the mayor told him if he was getting
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