Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. assured at-large City Director Antwan Phillips during a meeting Tuesday that the city is examining ways to obtain new funding for targeted community development when Phillips asked about the initiative with an eye to the city's 2022 budget.
At the same time, the mayor noted Little Rock's existing efforts and suggested the city does not do a great job of recognizing the ongoing work in those targeted areas.
"When you take into account bond dollars, grant funds and things of that nature that we have with federal funds, as well as within city funds, we're doing a lot of work with the existing funding," Scott said. "Clearly, we know the city board, the intent was to get new funding. We're looking at ways to get some new funding [for] those particular areas."
In January, board members adopted a symbolic resolution that expressed their intent to allocate at least $5 million every year for the next five years to improve living conditions in four of the city's seven wards. The measure named certain areas in Wards 1, 2, 6 and 7 and said the targeted locations had suffered from continually ineffectual efforts to address poverty, housing, infrastructure and crime.
Those living conditions had effectively created two cities in one, the measure said. The four targeted wards mostly encompass Little Rock's southern and easternmost areas while three wards -- 3, 4 and 5 -- are in its northwest corner.
Passage of the resolution was marred by a procedural glitch in which members thought they were voting on a first reading for the measure instead of final approval; nevertheless, members deadlocked 5-5 when given an opportunity to expunge their earlier action, meaning the resolution would stand.
At that time, Phillips served as one of the resolution's sponsors.
The city in August released the names of a seven-member working group meant to oversee efforts, but the delay of seven months drew criticism at the time from City Director Doris Wright of Ward 6, a leading proponent of the community development initiative.
Phillips' inquiry came during an agenda meeting Tuesday as city directors weigh whether to adopt a proposed general-fund budget of slightly more than $222 million for next year.
The budget ordinance is scheduled to be read for the first time during next week's meeting, and it's unclear whether board members will vote to adopt it immediately. They must take action to approve the budget measure sometime before the end of this month.
The 2022 proposal does not represent a significant change from the 2021 amended budget, which revised general-fund revenue and expenses to approximately $224 million and 222 million, respectively, but it does represent an increase of roughly $12 million from the original budget adopted for 2021.
To tee up his question, Phillips said officials had recently received correspondence from City Manager Bruce Moore that addressed challenges regarding the targeted community development allocation.
"I don't want us to give up that easy," Phillips said.
He added that he was wondering if there was "something else we can do to ensure that we're being targeted with the dollars."
"I understand we have limited dollars," he added, "but that doesn't mean that these families and neighborhoods shouldn't get the attention that we told them we were going to give to them back in January of this year."
After Scott gave his response, Moore said that going forward, meeting agendas will identify items that fit within the parameters of the resolution. And like Scott, Moore noted the city's existing efforts.
"We are doing a lot," he said, and referred to the city's Prevention, Intervention and Treatment funding.
Moments later, Scott added that the advisory committee created as part of the resolution will present additional recommendations, too.
The mayor said "when you really start to think about it, I think we're going to find that we're doing more than the $5 million each year that the board wants to do," though he said he understood that the board members "want additional money as well."
Phillips sought confirmation from Moore that future agenda items would identify an initiative as taking place in a targeted community development area, using Ward 1 as an example, to which Moore responded by saying yes.
In response to another question from Phillips, Scott suggested that it would be hard to show line-items from "a budgetary standpoint," but said officials could share with them "what dollars are there, and you'll be able to see that in forthcoming agendas as well."
City Director Ken Richardson of Ward 2 said the city ought to do a better job of using existing funding to bring in dollars from outside foundations.
City Director B.J. Wyrick of Ward 7, the sole board member who has been named to serve on the advisory committee, also said the city ought to focus its spending on the areas with the greatest needs as opposed to "shotgunning" the money all across the wards.