The Pulaski County Quorum Court approved motions Tuesday night that endorse a tax incentive for a rubber-container company’s $2.5 million expansion, move funds for sheriff’s office radios and allocate donations to the Youth Services Department.
Justices of the peace also heard an update on the Lake Maumelle Watershed Task Force.
If endorsed by local governments, Ring Container Technologies, located at 9000 Frazier Pike in Little Rock, would receive sales-and-use tax refunds from the Consolidated Incentive Act of 2003’s Tax Back Program for “new or expanding businesses with a $100,000 minimum investment.”
The company is investing about $2.5 million to expand a building.
The expansion doesn’t create jobs but follows up on a previous program that did, District 15 Justice of the Peace Shane Stacks, a Republican, reminded the Quorum Court on Tuesday.
The Quorum Court voted 12-0 to endorse the company’s participation in the Tax Back Program, with District 2 Justice of the Peace Tyler Denton, District 4 Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood and District 9 Justice of the Peace Wilma Walker, all Democrats, absent from the meeting.
The Quorum Court also approved shifting funds around for radios for the sheriff’s office and apportioning a $5,000 private donation to the department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.
For the radios, $11,000 will be moved from the Act 1188 fund, which levies a $5 court fine on misdemeanor and traffic defendants who aren’t acquitted, into the detention budget for jail radios. Another $43,000, which will go toward vehicle radios, will come from the Commercial Mobile Radio Service Fund and be moved into the Sheriff’s Commercial Radio Service Fund/911 Department budget.
The measure passed 11-0. District 11 Justice of the Peace Bob Johnson, a Democrat, was temporarily absent for the vote.
In a 12-0 vote, the Quorum Court approved $5,000 in donations made to the Youth Services Department, nearly $3,000 of which would go toward the Youth Initiative to Encourage Learning and Development program.
After the votes, Kristin Higgins, a program associate at the Public Policy Center for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service, told the Quorum Courtthat the Lake Maumelle Watershed Task Force is making progress and is aware of its April deadline to submit recommendations to the Quorum Court for changes to the area’s zoning ordinance.
District 5 Justice of the Peace Lillie McMullen, a Democrat, said she wanted to remind everyone that the zoning ordinance passed last year would go into effect even if no changes were made.
“It’s been adopted,” County Judge Buddy Villines said.
Higgins told the Quorum Court that the task force, which is made up of Central Arkansas Water customers, people who work in the watershed, and people who own property in the watershed, is operating on consensus and that its top priority is water quality, followed closely by property rights.
Stacks, whose district is part of North Little Rock, told Higgins he is concerned that the task force’s main goal is water quality, because he believes that the zoning ordinance is an “onerous attack on property rights.”
“All sides have come together to say water quality is [the highest priority],” Higgins said, adding that property rights was a near second. She said task force members were all asked to air their biggest concerns and did during the task force’s first few meetings.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 01/29/2014