OPINION - Guest writer

Signs ignored

City not dealing with problems

As a resident and investor in Little Rock's Central High area, I remain dismayed by the city's chronic inability to deal with complaints about problems all around me.

Years of frustration with poor city administration leave me shocked, but unsurprised, to read in the July 30 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that "local and state authorities responded to at least 37 civil and criminal complaints at Power Ultra Lounge over four years before 28 people were injured after a barrage of gunfire at the downtown Little Rock nightclub ..."

Welcome to my world. I have spent 13 years buying and renovating mostly unsafe and vacant historic homes, often crack houses. I watch helplessly as this area struggles to revive, too often despite rather than because of City Hall.

Owners of multiple vacant, unsafe properties flout the law for years without consequences. It appears city management tolerates established and open drug-dealing and prostitution locations for decades. Everybody knows it. Little is done, other than occasional shows of force, followed by perfunctory, revolving-door paper-shuffling. If City Hall cannot stop the crime, please at least move it away from our children, and into a warehouse district. That must be within its competence.

I do not blame hardworking code enforcement and police officers. Lack of attention from our city manager and city attorney, and lack of vigorous use of available tools from city judges leaves line officers frustrated, while a stuck administration ties their hands. Whatever the reasons, our neighborhoods suffer when laws are not enforced, or are only enforced in response to complaints from the well-connected, or from those able to scream loud enough and willing to risk retribution.

I volunteered hundreds of hours 10 years ago to help pass state laws to provide Arkansas cities with more effective tools to enforce code violations and stop needless demolitions. The city, in its sclerotic myopia of people too long in office, has not used any of them. Exhausted by the black hole of administrative indifference, I no longer volunteer for City Hall.

Although judges could charge high fines, actual fines charged for residential code violations are reportedly pitifully small, providing no incentive to correct behavior. The city punishes innocent and salvageable houses and their neighbors, rather than fixing roofs and then prosecuting irresponsible owners. The city does virtually nothing to deal with absent owners of dilapidated homes, though it may jump with both feet on the people it can find, often for trivial offenses. Simply switching ownership to a shell and post-office box out of state can win years of reprieve for speculators in ruins. Neighborhood associations are, perhaps intentionally, kept too small and weak to represent themselves effectively. Houses predictably burn, after sitting illegally for years without proper securing.

While there are good ways for the city to charge negligent owners for the costs we all bear for their stingy laziness, they are not used. Instead, our sluggish management lets neighborhoods suffer while scores of complaints remain ignored. The administrative system seems unable to set priorities beyond jumping when a city director says "boo," fueling discretionary and selective enforcement, without strategic direction.

A good start would be to follow the reporting of Aziza Musa and Messrs. Eric Besson and Scott Carroll with an independent, compensated and transparent investigation reporting to the mayor and vice mayor. Instead of stonewalling, city management should try to understand why the Power Ultra Lounge slipped through the cracks for so long, to Little Rock's national shame.

This can of worms needs to be opened. This house needs to be cleaned.

Those years of unanswered complaints tell a story about a badly managed city, in deep trouble and denial. We need to understand the story and change the script and, perhaps, some key actors. We need to stop the endless buck-passing, blame-storming and ball-dropping. We need to reconsider the outdated "negro removal ordinance" of 1961 that forms the basis for current residential code enforcement, as well as review the commercial ordinance enforcement framework that failed so badly at the Power Ultra Lounge.

The city must get honest, and look at the underlying system, funding and personnel flaws that make incidents like Power Ultra Lounge so unsurprising. Until then, Little Rock citizens, visitors and investors remain defenseless, while those who should protect us twiddle ineffectually, feigning powerlessness.

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Paul Dodds is managing director of Urban Frontier LLC in Little Rock.

Editorial on 08/10/2017

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