Little Rock's police union is hosting city directors and the union's out-of-town consultant Thursday to discuss the consultant's report that accuses the city's Fleet Services Department of being inefficient.
The report, released to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last month but not yet made public, cites the way the city handles its parts department as a major inefficiency in Little Rock government spending.
In light of Thursday's meeting, the city board postponed a vote on a $500,000 vehicle-parts contract with auto-parts company Bumper to Bumper that had been scheduled to be approved at Tuesday night's meeting.
The Fraternal Order of Police is planning to brief the board on its report at 6 p.m. Thursday at its lodge at 1700 E. Second St. The union paid Ohio accountant Wade Steen $18,000 to audit the Fleet Services Department.
"We'll have the auditor explain the report from his point of view and how he arrived at the conclusions he arrived at. We are just hoping for some kind of productive meeting where we can start asking the directors to I guess be asking [City Manager] Bruce Moore to come up with a comprehensive plan that would include replacing, retiring and fixing our safety issues with our fleet," union President Jarred McCauley said.
Steen's report says only 68 percent of the city's inventory was serviced last year, or 1,077 out of 1,574 vehicles and pieces of equipment.
Assistant City Manager James Jones has since said that about 500 of the items on the city's inventory list are equipment, such as trailers, that don't need to be serviced on an annual basis. So while it may appear that some vehicles weren't serviced by looking at Steen's audit, that is not the case, Jones said.
No city official has been provided a copy of the report yet. Mayor Mark Stodola asked for a copy during Tuesday night's board meeting when John Gilchrist, vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, extended the group's invitation to the board. Gilchrist said the union doesn't plan to release the report until after Thursday's presentation by the accountant.
"We simply want to be able to communicate to you what's in there. I don't want anybody to have the ability to manipulate these numbers," Gilchrist said.
McCauley told the newspaper before the meeting that the union isn't interested in Moore's response to the audit right now.
"We are more interested in educating the people who the taxpayers elected and who Bruce Moore reports to than Bruce refuting all of this information as the city has been trying to do without even having knowledge of it," McCauley said.
Moore said Tuesday that he's requested the union's consultant meet with the director of Fleet Services.
Joan Adcock, city director at-large, said she's looking forward to Thursday's meeting to get more information.
"I really want all the facts and all the details. If there is a savings we can do, I'm 100 percent for it. But also, after I get their details, I plan on having Mr. Moore and Mr. Jones check the details. People can see something and two people can see it differently. But I do think it's something we should research completely. I appreciate the help from the [Fraternal Order of Police] and them looking into this matter," Adcock said.
The audit report showed that the Fleet Services Department charges an 18 percent surcharge above the actual cost of parts for the vehicles it services. Other city departments pay that surcharge and the parts cost when taking in their vehicles for repair.
The profit is used to pay the salaries and benefits of the parts department's five employees as well as overhead expenses, which combined totaled $227,751.57 last year, the city said.
The 18 percent fee raised about $367,000, according to Steen's report. Revenue that comes in above the cost to run the parts department is used for large projects, like a fuel station that's being installed at the Pankey police substation, or for the purchase of new vehicles, city officials said.
Steen said it is rare for a city to employ a five-person parts department and that Little Rock could see savings if it contracted out that task.
Vice Mayor and Ward 5 City Director Lance Hines said the surcharge on parts doesn't concern him, but that the police union's report might start the conversation of how the city needs to do base-line budgeting.
"If we were doing zero-dollar base-line budgeting, we probably would not be having this conversation. It's not just Fleet [Services], I think it's across the city. We really need to go away from the model of 'My budget was X last year, I need 2 percent more this year,'" Hines said. "This may just be a good way of having that conversation."
Metro on 09/02/2015