The Maumelle City Council approved its share of a new funding contract for the Pulaski County jail Monday night and also called a bond election for Nov. 4 to ask city voters to decide on three capital improvement projects.
Maumelle joined the North Little Rock and Sherwood city councils in approving individual city contracts to continue funding the jail. Little Rock and Jacksonville haven't moved forward with their shares of the new contract.
The current jail contract with all five cities expired Friday.
The new contract represents a 5 percent increase in payments for all cities in the first year and a consumer price index-factored increase of no more than 3 percent over the next four years.
Maumelle aldermen voted 8-0 for the new contract.
Maumelle's share will be $51,247 in 2015, a $2,440 increase over the previous amount paid.
If Maumelle didn't approve the new contract, Mayor Mike Watson said, the city would have to pay a per diem rate that, based on the past year's arrest rate, would cost the city $98,000 a year, figuring a three-day jail stay per inmate, he added.
"Each city's funding mechanism is different," Watson told the council before the vote when asked of the effect if the remaining two cities didn't come to terms. "Each city is independent of the others."
The City Council also approved 7-1, without discussion, to call a bond election to be voted on during the Nov. 4 general election. Alderman Steve Mosley voted against the proposal. The election would extend Maumelle's current property tax rate of 6.6 mills to fund the bonds, without an increase in that rate.
The bond projects on the ballot will be: $4.6 million for a new Senior Wellness Center; $2.7 million for City Hall renovations; and $1.1 million for additional T-ball and softball fields at the city's Diamond Center Complex. The ballot measure also will ask voters to approve the refunding of $13.8 million for two previous bond series. If the refunding isn't approved by voters, no other bonds will be issued.
Monday's vote came after three meetings to discuss the bond projects. Those meetings followed a series of City Council meetings in which aldermen and the mayor pored over bond proposals and a city survey sent out detailing those and other bond project possibilities recommended by a task force in January.
Metro on 08/05/2014