I was ‘Shocked, Shocked’ to learn that the Management team in the Little Rock City Hall has again blundered in their fiscal foresight. (See posting titled “We Didn’t Enter into this to Make Money, per City Mgr. Bruce Moore”)
Remember the “Shovel Ready Infrastructure Projects” promised by my President Obama in 2009 under the “Stimulus Package”? Well it appears that one of those was to build a new Fire Station in west Little Rock, Arkansas. And now the leadership of the fair city of Little Rock have been ‘Shocked, Shocked’ to find out that the $2 million in Stimulus funds is a million short of what their new Fire Station’s ‘bids to build’ reflect. “Lack sufficient funds to even break ground”, since they could reach a point where there isn’t any money to put on the roof.
The frightening thing for the Leadership team is that they have to hurry up and spend this money prior to December 2012, or, Oh Alas, give it back to the Federal Government.
Fire Chief Greg Summers stated, “Something will have to come out of that project, but right now we just don’t know what that is.”
To my crude, uninformed, limited experience, and uneducated mind, a Fire Station is a large indoor parking garage with a sleeping room, kitchen, place to eat and watch TV, an office, bathroom, toilet, and a rack on which to hang hoses and stuff. Pulaski County is claiming that they will build a prison addition to house, feed, guard 240 prisoners for $5.3 million and yet the city needs $3 million for a new Fire Station to house 2 trucks and six or so men?
Like Chief Summers, I don’t have a clue as to what needs to “come out of that project”, but based on the comparison of a 240 bed prison versus the Fire Station costs; perhaps they should cancel the Olympic sized swimming pool, state of the art gymnasium, gourmet kitchen appliances, individual apartments, artist indoor decorations and outdoor sculptures and professional landscaping by the Queens Own Gardener, Ltd.
OK Shirley, I don’t really know that those items are actually in the plan, but it does seem awfully inflated compared to the cost of building a 240 bed prison.
In all fairness to the LR Mayor Mark Stodola, City Manager Bruce Moore, and Fire Chief Summers the news paper article was slightly confusing in that it stated that the “Bids came in last week at $1 million more than the $2 million in stimulus funds.” Then it stated “Estimates in January put the project’s cost at $1.9 million, not including any landscaping.” No explanation if the “estimate” was a bid or the City’s internal work versus the world’s reality, or if they planned to spend a million bucks on bushes and grass.
Oh, by the way, once this is all resolved and they spend the $2 million from the Feds, the city lacks funds to hire the Firemen to man the station.
But to be fair, the Management Team is addressing this oversight. They are frantically holding neighborhood meetings to sell the citizenry on an unspecified amount of a sales tax increase to fund this and other unspecified things they desire to do. Very similar to the “Obamacare” health care bill, “Go ahead and vote for the tax increase and we’ll see the details later.”
My normal optimistic enthusiasm for support of our elected officials is dipping to a new low ebb with this “Gang that Can’t shoot Straight”! Nevertheless I've taken it as a civic duty to help them out of this mess. I've recommended that they hire the Pulaski County Architect to design a prison to house two large trucks, and SUV with a red 'thingee' on top and rooms to sleep, feed, house upto twelve guys. Bound to come in less than the $3 million 'Taj Mahal' fire station.
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