What About Other County Needs, Like the Jail?
As the Quorum Court considers how to spend Faulkner County’s almost $25 million in ARP funds, most all the talk has centered on water/wastewater projects submitted by the County municipalities last fall at County Judge Jim Baker’s invitation.
Faulkner County’s problem with jail overcrowding has hardly been discussed. That is, until JP Randy Higgins (R, Dist. 2) revealed more of what Judge Jim Baker has in mind for addressing that issue.
More about the Judge’s plans surfaced at the June 7 Infrastructure Committee meeting, where three JPs talked about their personal discussions with Baker and what Baker had told them. Although Baker and the JPs have been asked repeatedly to hold public meetings about these funds, Baker has not chosen to do so, nor has he attended any committee meetings to discuss details.
At that meeting while discussing his proposed Ordinance 22-29 for allocating some ARP funds for infrastructure projects, JP John Allison (R, Dist. 3) said Baker wanted to “set aside $5 million” of the ARP funds for the Jail, while using $10 million of the unencumbered ARP funds “for different projects.”
Roughly half the ARP funds are unencumbered and can be used for any purpose, while the other half must be spent on specific infrastructure and related projects, per U.S. Treasury rules.
At that meeting, JP Jerry Boyer (R, Dist. 12) said he’d also talked with Baker about “numbers and and how to affect the [JP] Districts” when appropriating the ARP funds, although Boyer didn’t specifically mention the Jail.
Higgins, explaining his two-page handout on Baker’s ARP spending plan, said the Jail expansion would be done “in four projects”/phases, of which Phase 1 would be the most expensive, including concrete, conduit, and all infrastructure work.
He said Baker proposes to take $5 million from ARP funds designated as “lost revenue” plus $2.5 million from the County’s capital improvement Fund along with a $5 million loan for a total of $12,500,000 for some part of the overall Jail project; however no other details were given (and the Judge was not present to answer questions about his proposal).
Higgins added
If we signed the dotted line today to build a jail, we’re two years away. That’s the bad news. The good news is that’s also a million dollars a year in two years that we’ll be adding into that [capital improvement] fund….
We are hopeful that decisions are not made about our County’s need for a new jail based on these little tidbits of information.
Because JPs are unable to discuss County business outside of a formal meeting, we join in the requests that the Quorum Court hold a public meeting to discuss all the County’s needs, including updates on the Jail situation and the 911 expansion plans before they begin to appropriate this $25 million.
