The Pine Bluff City Council approved Tuesday night a budget adjustment for $270,566.77 that will go toward paying contractors to create a municipal master plan that is a part of the Go Forward Pine Bluff initiative to change the city.
Mayor Shirley Washington said in the meeting that money was actually part of the $520,000 that already had been allocated to design firm Crafton Tull to create the plan that was discussed in December.
The municipal plan is part of the Go Forward Pine Bluff master plan titled Re-Live Downtown Pine Bluff that was created by urban designer Steve Luoni.
The Go Forward Pine Bluff website states the municipal plan includes matters such as land use, city codes, planning, zoning, enforcement, elimination of one-way streets and reviewing and updating rules and regulations.
The plan is needed to allow for future development to meet current and future needs.
The developments include creating housing near or around downtown Pine Bluff and signature projects like an arts district, a revamped lakefront, a civic center district, an aquatics center and a theater row.
Finance Director Steve Miller said the entire budget adjustment was a minor detail.
"This really was just bookkeeping that we need to do after the resolution was approved to contract with Crafton Tull for $520,000 for the initial municipal master plan," Miller said "In the 2019 budget there was $250,000 budgeted for the municipal master plan, so to get enough money in the budget to cover $520,000 contract cost that the council approved at the last meeting, we have to move the $270,000 from the downtown master plan budget that was approved to the municipal master plan."
Miller summed it up by saying officials just combined money that had already been appropriated for the downtown plan.
Council Member Steven Mays was the only one to disagree with the budget adjustment, and he said it was because it was almost half a million for just paperwork.
"We are still working from the top down for our citizens instead of working from the ground up. Most of the people who do these master plans don't even live to see them," Mays said. "We are doing things 30 to 40 years from now that we should have been doing now."
Washington said the municipal plan was more than just paperwork.
"It's a guide," Washington said. "And it's a guide that will move us into the future. If we look at it as just paperwork and put on the shelf, then you might be right. But this is something that has to be out and used as a blueprint to move our city forward."
State Desk on 01/23/2019