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COUNCIL EYES $2,000 FOR NEW CHAIRS

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL
Friday, November 16, 2007 11:23 PM CST

On Monday, Pine Bluff aldermen will consider a proposal to spend $2,000 of the city’s money to replace the chairs they, the mayor and the city clerk sit in during public meetings.

The request, made on behalf of Ward 4 Alderman Janice L. Roberts, would replace the eight blue swivel chairs in the council chambers that the aldermen sit on and the two white swivel chairs that the mayor and the city clerk sit on.

“They are absolutely terrible,” Roberts said. “They will not roll, they are uncomfortable, the cushions are worn. They’ve probably been there since the creation of the Civic Center.”

Actually, the chairs are about 18 years old, said City Treasurer Greg Gustek.

And $200 per chair to replace them, he said, is a pretty good price.

“That’s really an excellent buy,” Gustek said.

The money, as proposed in a budget adjustment request sent to the City Council members this week, would be taken from the $6,800 that is leftover from the $368,000 in state turnback funds the city received two months ago. The turnback money is a variable amount the city receives each year to spend on any project it desires; most of it has already been earmarked by the aldermen and mayor.

Unlike previous turnback spending requests however, the request to spend the $2,000 was submitted through the head of the city’s maintenance department — meaning that although it appears as a budget request in the council’s papers, it does not appear on the council’s publicly distributed agenda.

City Finance Director Steve Miller said it was all on the up and up.

“Both the resolution and the budget adjustment, if approved by the council, authorize funds to be spent,” he said, adding that aldermen typically use resolutions and city employees typically submit budget requests. “The amount of turnback funds remaining is very small, so I think we were just being expedient in dealing with this issue.”

Roberts said she asked Chuck Mitchell, the head of the city’s maintenance department, to find money for the new chairs, but she said she did not request that state turnback funds, in particular, be used.

Bill Brumett, chairman of the council’s Ways and Means Committee, which will consider the request before it heads for a vote of the full council, chuckled when he first learned of the chairs request. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but I haven’t seen that yet,” he said. “I didn’t know we needed new chairs.”

Pine Bluff resident John Tate laughed, too, when he heard about the request, but Tate, a frequent visitor to council meetings and a retired sergeant major in the Army Air Defense, said he will not be amused if it passes. “I don’t know the condition of the chairs, but I think we could better spend the money someplace else,” he said.

Also on Monday, the council will consider budget requests to transfer $27,518.40 from the city’s general fund to pay for 45 days of vacation days and 90 sick days for Human Resource Manager Ken Ferguson, who is retiring Friday and taking a new job with the state.

Another $18,000 is also requested from the general fund to pay for increased electricity costs, and $3,210 is requested from the general fund because the city’s unemployment claims have exceeded the premiums paid, Miller said.

Also at Monday’s meeting, the second readings and public hearings will be held for two proposals to increase local business taxes and water user fees. The ordinances will be voted on Dec. 3.

Under the two ordinances sponsored by Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr., the council will consider increasing local taxes for most businesses by 60 percent, increasing water rates for commercial and industrial customers by 100 percent and adding a new tax for residential water use equivalent to $12 per meter per year.

Redus said the business taxes have not been increased since the early 1980s, and the last time the city raised its franchise fees was for cable television tax rates in December 2006.

United Water, however, last increased its residential users’ rates in August by 14.7 percent.

The increases are expected to generate an additional $413,200 annually for the city, according to figures from the city’s finance department.

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