Group named in LR to focus on four wards

7-member panel to oversee community development

Little Rock has released the names of seven people who will serve on a working group tasked with overseeing an effort to steer resources to four underserved wards.

They include a government attorney who represents Pulaski County and the Little Rock Board of Directors’ Ward 7 representative.

According to a resolution adopted by the city board in January, the seven-member working group was to be selected by the mayor in consultation with board members representing the targeted wards.

Ward 6 City Director Doris Wright, who served as a driving force behind the resolution, criticized the pace of the city’s efforts when reached by phone Friday.

“I’m very disappointed that it took that long given the situation in our communities, especially with this being a directed initiative to address the concerns in our low- to moderate-income areas, and areas that have suffered substantially from lack of development and high crime,” she said. “I’m very disappointed.”

She added, “I felt like it could have been done a lot sooner — and this is August, and we did this in January — so to me, this shouldn’t have taken any more than two months.”

During a July 13 meeting, Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said the city had a “majority” of the names for the working group, but he wanted to announce all of the names together and still needed to visit with two board members.

The resolution on targeted community development was approved Jan. 19.

A series of tangled procedural steps saw board members mistakenly approve the resolution in a voice vote — the city clerk had been told, erroneously, to give the resolution a first reading as if it were an ordinance — then fail to expunge their action a short while later when the board deadlocked in a 5-5 vote.

The resolution called on city officials to address substandard living conditions in four of the city’s seven wards. Wards 1, 2, 6 and 7 had long suffered as a result of ineffectual efforts to address housing, infrastructure, poverty and crime, the text of the measure said.

The four targeted wards roughly encompass the city’s southern half, as well as its easternmost section that includes downtown and a significant portion of the riverfront. Wards 3, 4 and 5 occupy the northwest corner of Little Rock.

The resolution called for $5 million to be deployed annually over five years in areas of the targeted wards based on the availability of funding.

It suggested the money be used as “leverage” to attract outside investment from government and private-sector entities, and stipulated that the funding regime can be renewed repeatedly every five years until conditions in the wards improve.

City spokesman Spencer Watson provided the names of the individuals selected to serve on the targeted community development working group to the Democrat-Gazette via email Friday.

Robert Webb will represent Ward 1 on the committee. Webb, a frequent city board candidate, most recently ran for the seat in Ward 1 in 2018 but lost to the incumbent, City Director Erma Hendrix.

Tara Bruce was selected for Ward 2. She is the co-founder and vice president of operations of Aegis Field Services, a Little Rock-based handyman company, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Ward 6’s representative will be Tamara Farisa. Though her contact information displayed a littlerock.gov email address, Watson did not immediately respond when asked if Farisa is currently a city employee.

City Director B.J. Wyrick, who represents Ward 7, also will serve as the representative for her own ward on the targeted community development panel.

The three at-large members selected to serve on the working group are Dr. Anika Whitfield, Kimberly Enoch and Adam Fogleman.

Whitfield is a podiatrist for CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, according to the hospital’s website.

Enoch works as a grant writer at Southern Bancorp Community Partners, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Fogleman serves as the government attorney for Pulaski County.