A special election on whether to extend a local property-tax levy tied to capital improvements and issue bonds is set to take place Aug. 9 in Little Rock after members of the city board adopted an ordinance Tuesday to call for the election.
Board members approved the election ordinance in a unanimous voice vote.
Voters will be presented with six ballot questions asking them to authorize funding for streets, drainage, fire apparatus, parks and recreation (including the zoo), the Little Rock Port industrial park and construction of a new district court facility.
They will be able to vote for or against each item.
If voters give approval in August, three mills will be extended at the current level. The city plans to issue bonds with the maximum aggregate principal amount of $161.8 million, according to the ordinance approved Tuesday.
Each mill equals the dollar amount of tax paid on every $1,000 of the tax-assessed value of a piece of property.
A 1958 vote enacted the Little Rock capital-improvement millage. Since then, it has been extended repeatedly at different amounts in a series of elections.
The last time the capital-improvement millage was extended via referendum was September 2012, when voters approved funding street and drainage improvements with a millage reduced from 3.3 to 3.0 mills.
Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore shepherded the bond proposal through the city board over the past few months.
City board members previously voted to pursue a 20-year stated term on the debt with two bond issuances and later adopted a framework for the planned spending.
According to the election ordinance, bond proceeds will be distributed to the following projects:
• Streets ($40.5 million)
• Drainage ($40.5 million)
• Fire apparatus ($19.5 million)
• Parks and recreation, including the Little Rock Zoo ($37 million)
• New District Court facility ($8.5 million)
• Little Rock Port industrial park ($15.8 million)
Before the vote, city officials on Tuesday discussed how to gather input on infrastructure projects via community meetings with an eye to dividing up the dollars between wards.
At-large City Director Antwan Phillips raised the issue. He asked about how conflicts might be resolved in the event his at-large constituents' desired infrastructure improvements do not align with those of a ward director.
With seven ward directors and three at-large directors, Phillips described it as "a real practical issue that we kind of keep seeming to push down the road."
Moore said the measure before the board was just the ordinance calling the election.
He recalled the 2012 bond referendum, when officials agreed to reserve 10% of the funding for immediate or citywide projects, and divided the rest of the money evenly among the seven wards.
Moore suggested the board could deal with the issue separately by voting on how to divide up the $81 million of streets-and-drainage funding, but asked that city staff be allowed some flexibility for certain projects.
Phillips asked that a resolution be drafted and placed in the queue for the next meeting.
After further discussion, Moore suggested the board would have to make a policy decision soon on how to divide up the money for each ward and citywide, explaining that it would drive the conversation with members of the public.
Phillips indicated he agreed with Moore and said he would work with the city attorney's office to draft the resolution as soon as possible.
Board members ultimately agreed to schedule a May 31 special-called meeting to take up Phillips' forthcoming resolution.
Jay Chesshir, the president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, indicated the group's leadership had yet to take a position with regard to the bond proposal.
"We've not yet had the opportunity to review the proposed referendum," Chesshir wrote in an email prior to the city board meeting Tuesday.
Kathy Wells, the president of the Coalition of Little Rock Neighborhoods, said the group may ask its members if they want to take a position following the primary election later this month.
"Some tax elections [the coalition] takes [a] position; some not," Wells wrote in an email.