City aldermen in North Little Rock on Monday approved a $66.3 million general-fund budget for 2017 , which includes transferring the management of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum to the Parks and Recreation Department.
City Council members had agreed on the museum transfer earlier this year, but the move doesn't designate the museum as a park so the city can retain ownership of the downtown riverfront property and control of any future development of the property, if desired. Museum employees will become city employees Jan. 1.
"All we're doing is transferring the management and oversight and promoting of the property to Parks and Recreation," Mayor Joe Smith explained "The land itself will remain with the city. It will not be part of the parks [department's] land."
The city also owns all of the museum's assets, which includes the World War II-era Razorback submarine and the tugboat Hoga that survived Japan's Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
City Attorney Jason Carter told the council that a municipal park designation under state law carries certain restrictions that North Little Rock doesn't want to attach to the museum property that is on the Arkansas River on the east side of the Main Street Bridge. Certain outdoor recreation grants also would restrict the property's use if the site is designated as a park, he added.
The council passed the budget without discussion. Aldermen held a budget workshop in November to fine-tune a preliminary budget. The main difference in the final version is taking an additional $327,476 from the city's carry-over, or reserve funds, raising the amount of reserves needed to balance next year's budget to $2.62 million.
Smith had expressed concern during the November budget workshop about the city continuing to use carry-over funds for future budgets from its approximately $15 million in reserve. The 2017 budget is a 3.057 percent increase from this year.
Metro on 12/13/2016