JPs to vote on spending plan for $1M of carryover cash

The Pulaski County Quorum Court is to decide Tuesday whether to spend $1 million in carryover funds from 2014 on various technology and maintenance projects, including up to $80,000 for parking lot security cameras.

The $1 million would come from $1.7 million that the county carried over from 2014 -- money collected in taxes but not spent last year. Officials said the amount reflects a healthy margin between budget and revenue and means they budgeted conservatively. The county would move the remaining $700,000 of the carryover funds into its reserves.

Comptroller Mike Hutchens recommended the expenditures to the Quorum Court's Ways and Means Committee, which approved them 9-0 on Feb. 10. The full, 15-member Quorum Court is to consider final approval Tuesday.

District 13 Justice of the Peace Phil Stowers, R-Maumelle, serves on the committee and said after the Feb. 10 meeting that he believed $1.7 million was a comfortable carryover amount and that he supported spending on maintenance that has been long-neglected.

County Judge Barry Hyde echoed Stowers, noting numerous leaky-roof problems in county buildings, among other needs.

"If things will keep progressing well here in central Arkansas, hopefully we'll have an opportunity next year to take another bite out of our [maintenance projects]," Hyde said.

The recommendations include spending up to $500,000 on a new phone system to replace one that's more than 20 years old, and setting aside $250,000 to buy some property at the southeast corner of Second and Spring streets in Little Rock. Hutchens said he believes he can get the property for half that sum, given that the building on it is currently uninhabitable.

Some of the money would also go toward installing security cameras. Hyde and Hutchens said the county hasn't experienced any specific incidents that prompted the decision. "It's an element of trying to find a higher level of security for our employees," Hyde said.

The county has security guards in administrative buildings, Hutchens said, but not enough for employees to get escorts to their cars.

Hutchens said vandalism and confrontations with vagabonds in the parking lot do occur occasionally.

"We're in downtown Little Rock," he said. "Not everybody feels safe around here."

If the county acquires the property on Second and Spring, Hutchens said, it would tear down the building and turn the property into a parking lot of 50 spaces for now, and perhaps use it for office expansion in later years.

"At some point, we're going to have to expand," he said.

The county also owns some property across Broadway, near the Pulaski County Regional Building, but that property is not large enough for the county to use for expansion, Hutchens said.

Hyde said parking is expensive downtown and that buying a piece of property that the county doesn't have to annually pay to use is in the county's "best interest" and will eventually pay for itself.

The largest expense -- $500,000 -- would be to update the phone system, which Hyde and Hutchens said is necessary, given the current system's age.

"It's antiquated, can't be repaired and it has its problems," Hutchens said.

The update would encompass more than 800 desk phones and include new wiring through several administrative buildings. It won't include cellphones.

"Most of these things I think were brought forward before I came on board," Hyde said, "[but] I'm willing to give testimony in support of a new phone system."

Metro on 02/23/2015

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