City Council passes $37M budget for ’23
The Pine Bluff City Council passed a budget for 2023 of almost $37 million on Thursday evening, but it was an appropriation for $2 million for a Delta Rhythm and Bayous Cultural District Project that took the majority of the discussion during a two-hour meeting.
Back in November, when council members were in the early stages of hashing out next year’s budget, members voted 8-0 to support Jimmy Cunningham Jr.’s cultural district project. There were a couple of procedural hangups after that vote, but eventually those were worked out.
In the end, the money was to be taken from tax dollars that would have gone to Go Forward Pine Bluff from a five-eighths percent sales tax passed in 2017 — the first time the council had taken money earmarked for Go Forward and spent it on a project of its own choosing.
The project is an initiative headed by Cunningham, the city’s tourism director, the Pine Bluff-Jefferson County National Heritage Trails Task Force in partnership with the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission, and the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Alliance.
But by the time the budget was finally up for a vote, Cunningham and some members of the council expressed displeasure because the money for the project was going to stay in the Go Forward account. An upset Cunningham took to the podium, his loud baritone voice filling the council chamber as he railed against the move.
“It is my understanding that the Ways and Means Committee voted to put the authority of this project under Go Forward,” Cunningham said, adding that Go Forward has for years had a “deep aversion” to the project. “And this is the entity that would be over this? This doesn’t happen in Bugtussle, Hooterville or Hazard County, but it happens in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”
Cunningham said he and
Go Forward CEO Ryan Watley had butted heads over the proposed project before, and when the various sides had scheduled meetings to work out their differences, “everyone showed up, everyone except Go Forward. They never showed up. They always had an aversion to this because they see it as competition.”
After Cunningham returned to his seat, council members Ivan Whitfield, Steven Mays, Glen Brown Sr. and Joni Alexander spoke in favor of protecting the project’s funding from Go Forward control. To that end, Whitfield made a motion to take $1.9 million from the Urban Renewal Agency — a Go Forward offspring — and create a separate line item in the budget for the tourism project. Go Forward has $6 million in unspent reserves, and Whitfield said Urban Renewal could be funded out of that money. Whitfield went on to say that pressure from Go Forward officials had caused the mayor to change the budget regarding Cunningham’s project to reflect Go Forward’s wishes.
Mays, Whitfield and Brown Sr. all talked about what they called the undue influence that Go Forward has on the council, with Brown Sr. saying he wondered sometimes why council members should bother attending hourslong committee meetings if what they do is overruled by a call from Go Forward to Mayor Shirley Washington.
“I blame the mayor for this,” Brown Sr. said. “She is the one that has allowed this to occur.”
Whitfield’s amendment to the budget, however, failed on a 4-4 vote, with council members Bruce Lockett, Glen Brown Jr., Steven Shaner and Lloyd Holcomb Jr. voting against it, and Alexander, Mays, Whitfield and Brown Sr. voting for it.
Cunningham did, however, elicit some support from several members of the council as well as from Washington.
“We will not renege on this,” said Lockett. “Everything Mr. Cunningham has come to this council with has been approved by all eight of us. Have faith we can do this.”
Washington said the commitment had been made to Cunningham and would be kept, saying that invoices from Cunningham for the project would be sent through the city’s Economic and Community Development Department, which would turn the bills over to the Finance Department to be paid, thereby leaving Go Forward out of the equation.
With the issue over the $2 million settled, council members quickly moved on to the reason they had attended a special called meeting, which was to pass a budget for 2023. That bit of legislation passed quickly on an 8-0 vote, giving the city a budget that is virtually the same as the one passed for 2022.
After the meeting, council member Shaner, who had said little during the meeting, approached Cunningham to offer assurance that the council stood behind him.
“I want you to protect our funding,” Cunningham told Shaner. “I want you to build a moat around it so there’s no funny business.”
After Shaner walked away, Cunningham was asked if he was satisfied that he would be in charge of the project or did he think Go Forward would be in charge of it since the money for the work still sits in a Go Forward account.
“I would be lying if I said I didn’t have serious concerns,” Cunningham said, “because the money is in their pot. A project like this might require expanding or contracting or any number of other changes. What if they disagree with those changes? How will that work if they are in control of the money? But you play the cards you get so we’ll see.”