PINE BLUFF - Pine Bluff city leaders agree that the Police Department’s patrol division needs greater visibility than its current home - tucked away in an industrial part of the city off the Martha Mitchell Expressway on Commerce Road - can provide.
They just can’t agree on where the new location should be.
Pine Bluff Mayor Debe Hollingsworth on June 17 vetoed a 5-2 City Council decision to relocate the patrol division to the former -and city-owned - National Guard Armory just southwest of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
In a brief written statement to aldermen last week, Hollingsworth said she would issue her reasons for the veto at the next City Council meeting.
On Friday, she outlined much of the opinion she plans to give.
The mayor said she is in favor of moving the division to the Pines Mall, where owner Andy Weiner has offered the city a deal that includes free rent for three years.
The mall “is an excellent deal for the city,” the mayor said. “We would be able to locate the patrol division to a new, remodeled, highly visible area. It would enhance our mall, and anything we can do at the mall that will help project a positive image and increase retail shopping, I am all for.”
Weiner told aldermen at their last meeting on June 17 that he would offer a 5,800-square-foot space near the mall’s theater rent-free for three years. In addition, Weiner said he would renovate the space at a cost of between $80,000 and $100,000 at his own expense.
Weiner said moving the patrol division there would be beneficial for both his property and the city.
“I polled the mall tenants, and all said they would be thrilled by such a move,” he told aldermen. “And there are some big, national stores that I have been talking to who would be more likely to move to Pine Bluff if this move happened.”
But Weiner’s offer didn’t sit well with a majority of aldermen, who said they felt blindsided.
“We didn’t hear anything about this until we had all agreed that the armory would be a great fit for the patrolmen,” Alderman Thelma Walker said on Friday. “It was thrown at us at the last moment. Most everyone was on board at one point for the armory.”
Walker advocates moving the patrol division to the armory because the city owns the structure, and its location near UAPB would help reduce crime in that area, she said.
“[The armory] is the perfect place,” Walker said. “I think the patrolmen, once out there, will feel that it’s a good fit for them.”
Walker said she felt certain the council would attempt to override Hollingsworth’s veto at next week’s meeting. Votes from six of the council’s eight members would be needed to override it.
Hollingsworth said as much as $700,000 in renovations would be needed at the armory before the patrol division could move there, a figure Walker and others contend may be exaggerated.
The Police Department currently has about $1 million to spend on improvements as part of the city’s five-eighths percent sales tax, passed in 2011 to revitalize infrastructure.
Hollingsworth said the money would be better spent renovating police headquarters at the downtown Civic Center.
As for uses for the armory, Hollingsworth offered several suggestions, including making it a multiuse facility for several city departments.
For one, it could house the Police Department’s maintenance division, she said.
In addition, “there is a large enough space that could be used to store evidence, and that would free up space at the Police Department headquarters,” the mayor said, adding that the building could also be used to store parks and recreation department equipment as well.
“There are lots of uses for that building without us having to spend a whole lot of money on it,” she said.
As for the mall, Walker and a majority of her fellow aldermen feel that some type of police presence should be there, just not the entire patrol division.
Alderman Steven Mays has said he is in favor of a mall substation, which would house one or two officers during mall hours.
The armory sits in Mays’ fourth ward, where crime and poverty are both high.
“We need more police presence all over town,” Mays has said. “Sure, the mall is a great location, but my mind is pretty much made up as far as the armory is concerned. The patrol division should be there. It would be to the benefit of the entire city.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/24/2013