NLR council OKs $60.1 million ’14 budget

City aldermen approved North Little Rock’s $60.1 million general fund budget Monday night, though several spoke with caution about how to approach the city’s future budgets.

The budget passed, 7-1, with Alderman Bruce Foutch voting against it.

The budget had no changes from what was presented at a workshop Dec. 12, the last of three budget work sessions held by council members.

Mayor Joe Smith and the City Council talked during those budget workshops about how the city needs to increase revenue and cut expenditures in 2014 to keep from using large parts of its cash reserves to balance its budget every year. North Little Rock used $1.15 million in reserves this year to achieve a balanced budget for 2014.

Smith said officials need to start working very early in 2014 to prepare for 2015.

Two issues are already looming, but weren’t discussed Monday: An agreement to fund the Pulaski County jail between the county and its cities expires in 2014 and will be renegotiated, and Central Arkansas Transit Authority will be asking for an extra $250,000 from North Little Rock over the next two years to convert its fleet’s fuel source to compressed natural gas.

“It’ll be on your mark, get set, go, once January is here,” Smith said.

Alderman Debi Ross said that though she didn’t approve of everything in the budget, she was for it because the City Council had input into the process this year and learned more about what needs to happen.

“We’re going to have hard decisions next year,” Ross said.

Aldermen Steve Baxter and Charlie Hight made similar statements.

“We’ve got some work to do, and we need to start early next year,” Baxter said.

Hight said that the “cost of doing business in the city of North Little Rock is going up every year, but our revenue is on the slide.

“We need to start thinking of creating additional ways to benefit the city of North Little Rock,” Hight said.

Foutch, who didn’t vote for the budget’s approval, challenged his fellow council members to live up to their “tough decisions” pledge during the coming year.

Basic needs, such as crime prevention, Foutch indicated, should be the budget’s focus. He said he had read a newspaper article about six break-ins reported during one recent month in another county. That would only be news in some North Little Rock neighborhoods, he said, “because six break-ins would be less than they’ve ever had.”

“We had two proposals to balance the budget without going into our reserves,” Foutch said. “We’re losing sales tax revenue [to other cities] while we’re spending millions of dollars on trolleys, submarines and bicycle trails.

“All this stuff we couldn’t cut this time is stuff we can’t afford anymore,” Foutch said.

Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/24/2013

Upcoming Events