Council backward looking on projects

One of the projects that Go Forward Pine Bluff, through the city’s Urban Renewal Agency, has been working on is a go-kart track. The project is planned for the old Admiral Benbow Inn property on East Harding Avenue. Things have been moving ahead on the plan until they weren’t.

At the most recent Urban Renewal Agency meeting, the project was tabled because the budget for Go Forward Pine Bluff has yet to be approved.

That money stoppage happened at the City Council level where certain members are trying their best to diminish and/or demolish Go Forward’s efforts.

They at first looked hard at simply grabbing Go Forward’s hard-earned funding for their own purposes. Shying away from that, at least for now, they have moved on to simply holding up Go Forward’s funding until the agency supplies the city with an itemized statement on how Go Forward wants to spend its money.

By extension, if the council doesn’t approve of how the agency is spending its money — and there are some on the council that haven’t liked Go Forward from the start — we suppose Go Forward will not get those dollars.

It’s an ingenious plan. Without funding, Go Forward can’t move ahead on its many projects, and if it’s not moving ahead on projects, it’s not spending money. And if it’s not spending money, voila, look at all the money piling up in the city’s coffers just waiting for the council to spend.

Perhaps it won’t come to that. But this is what happens when a council meddles in an agency’s affairs. Pretty soon, the agency isn’t running its own show, the council is. And if that happens, the city will end up with a bunch of unfinished and unstarted Go Forward projects that the residents in Pine Bluff supported with their overwhelming vote but the council isn’t allowing to happen.

Let’s not go there, shall we?