LITTLE ROCK — Cities in Pulaski County used “wrong, outdated and irrelevant” figures in proposing to pay 15 percent less than the county had requested for their share of the cost to house 80 additional prisoners at the county jail, according to Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines.
In a letter to the mayors of the county’s five largest cities dated Tuesday, Villines reiterated that cities must pay the full $640,000 he proposed or the extra space won’t be opened because the county cannot shoulder any more than the $320,000 it has already agreed to pay. That amount represents one-third of the total cost of housing the additional prisoners.
Villines was formally responding to a letter earlier this month from the mayors of Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle in which they proposed to pay $544,053, as their share of the cost of guarding, feeding and providing medical care for 80 more inmates. Villines wants the cities to pay $640,000
“The county simply cannot afford to assume more than one-third of the cost of opening the additional beds, or $320,000,” Villines said in the letter. “Unfortunately, your proposal would leave us with insufficient funds to go forward with opening the additional beds.”
Tuesday night, the Pulaski County Quorum Court voted 13-0 with two absences to adopt a $69.2 million budget for 2013 that assumes the cities would pay $640,000. But Villines said the Quorum Court could amend the budget at its final meeting of the year on Dec. 14 if the cities don’t agree to the original figure by that time.
“We’re not going to magically find more money,” said Justice of the Peace Shane Stacks said after the meeting.
The new part of the jail has capacity for 240 prisoners, but county officials want to open the space in phases — 80 at a time. Under previous agreements, the county pays a third of the cost to operate the additional beds, while the five cities kick in the other two-thirds, with Little Rock and North Little Rock covering most of that.
The additional money is on top of jail costs that the cities already are shouldering. In Little Rock’s case, that is about $1.4 million.
Adding space for 80 prisoners would increase the official jail capacity to 1,210 from the 1,130 it has now. The jail held 1,126 prisoners as of Tuesday morning, said Lt. Carl Minden, a sheriff’s office spokesman.
The annual cost of the additional 80 prisoners — at least $936,186 — is included in the county’s proposed 2013 jail budget of $20.9 million, up from the $20 million budgeted for the current year.
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays, Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman, Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher and Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson used a three-step process to calculate their jurisdictions’ shares of paying for more jail space. The cities:
Allocated $1 per person, using 2010 Census population figures. That amounted to $333,760, with Little Rock apportioned the most — $193,524 — and Cammack Village the least — $768.
Allocated $17.88 per prisoner arrested in each jurisdiction annually, calculated on the basis of a July 10 memorandum from Randy Morgan, the jail’s chief of detention. The total amounted to $306,302.28. Little Rock police had the most arrests, 7,815 from July 1, 2011, to June 30, according to Morgan, and would pay $139,732.20. By contrast, Maumelle had the least number of arrests with 196 and would pay $3,504.48. Cammack Village arrests weren’t listed.
Together, those calculations add up to about $640,000, the amount the county judge had asked the cities to pay.
But the third step in the formula called for a 15 percent reduction in the total amount the cities would pay based on the actual expense of running the jail in 2011 — $19,709,405 — rather than what was budgeted for the jail that year — $23,281,190.
But Villines said the actual budget for the jail in 2011 was $24,109,506, and total expenditures were $21,937,756, or 91 percent of what was budgeted. For 2012, the county has spent $23,452,492 million on the jail, or 93 percent of what was budgeted.
“These figures do not include any maintenance and operation expenditures for the latter part of November and all of December,” Villines wrote. “Adding those amounts will bring the expenditures closer to 100 percent of the amount budgeted.”
Villines defended the county’s budgeting practices, noting it always budgets for the “worst case scenario” when it comes to the jail’s medical budget because “it only takes one or two seriously ill inmates for the entire amount budgeted for medical care to be consumed.”
He also noted that in 2011 and 2012, the average jail expense was $22.6 million, of which the cities contributed about $2.6 million in both years, or about 12 percent “of the total cost that is necessary to provide the ‘strong and economically viable jail’ that we have all agreed is necessary in this community.”
The judge also took issue with the cities faulting the county for “using budget surpluses for various other county priorities.” He reminded the mayors that in addition to shouldering 88 percent of the cost of jail operations, the county also shouldered the entire cost of building the added space for 240 prisoners, or $4.1 million.
“Would this be one of the various other county priorities to which you refer?” he asked.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/28/2012