Talks falter, LR hunts new police site in west

— Little Rock City Hall and Police Department officials were told last week to keep looking for possible locations for a northwest patrol substation.

City Manager Bruce Moore pulled a resolution from the Little Rock Board of Directors agenda last week that would have approved the substation moving into the unfinished Pankey Community Center. Under the agreement, the city would pay up to $1 million to finish the center, about a fourth of which would be police station rooms. Property taxes and utilities would be paid and the building’s owner would be paid rent.

City directors, other officials and staff members raised questions about the possible terms of a lease between the city and owner of the property, the Pankey Community Improvement Association Inc.

Negotiation documents between the Police Department, the city and the association from the past year, obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the association increasing its demands as the city got closer to approving the agreement, with requests that included asking for the remaining money if the city did not use all of the $1 million to renovate the center.

The documents also show increasing doubts and reservations from some city officials as the negotiations moved forward.

Moore confirmed Friday that he has asked for other properties to be considered but added that the Pankey Community Center is still on the table.

“I asked the chief [of police] to continue to explore all of the property options out in west Little Rock,” Moore said. “I’ll have a meeting with the Pankey community in two weeks to speak with the neighborhood. We’re going to have to secure a location in northwest, regardless of whether the city comes to an agreement for this property.”

An e-mail from Mayor Mark Stodola to Moore and the city attorney’s office Monday said he had talked with other landlords in the Taylor Loop Road area and in the Pleasant Ridge shopping center and had found better prices than those proposed by the association.

He also mentioned that the Central Arkansas Library System was interested in building a library branch farther west in a few years to follow the growth of the city’s population.

“Under your current scenario of leasing 1,100 sq. feet at $10 per sq. foot per month, the square footage rent is $120 per sq. foot per year. I would like to visit with the Chief about what a police substation should look like for our presence in that part of the city over the next 25 years,” Stodola wrote.

The city began exploring options in the past few years to buy or build a substation in northwest Little Rock. The Northwest Patrol Division currently operates out of the substation on Kanis Road in Ward 6.

After the citywide sales tax increase passed in September 2011 and funding was in the works, the city began looking for property more seriously.

According to Police Department records for the past few years, the northwest patrol division surpassed the other two patrol divisions — downtown and southwest — in terms of handling major offenses. In 2011, the northwest patrol had 6,567 major crimes, while the southwest patrol had 4,831 and the downtown division had 5,283.

Property crime occurred 50 percent more in the northwest division compared with the other patrol divisions for that year.

Complete 2012 statistics on major crime will not be available for a few more months, but as of the beginning of this month, the northwest patrol had recorded 19,432 calls ranging from burglaries to false home-security alarms.

“There’s definitely a need for a substation to have those officers be able to stop close by during their patrols to refuel, take care of other issues and go back to their patrols,” Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said last week.

Moore said he started the conversation with the Pankey Community Improvement Association in late 2011. He was working for the city when the association ran into some trouble with the Arkansas Legislative Audit Division in 2002 after the building was half finished. The association ran out of money to pay its contractor and had kept poor financial records for the almost $480,000 it spent on the building, auditors had found.

The Pulaski County prosecuting attorney’s office declined to file any charges related to the audit report. The building at 13700 Cantrell Road has been vacant since, with most of the outside of the structure finished and a large portion of the inside unfinished.

A search of nonprofit tax records through the Internal Revenue Service showed that the improvement association has not filed a 990 tax form in more than three years, which would trigger the IRS to revoke a nonprofit’s taxexempt status.

Calls to several people listed as association members were not returned Friday.

According to the negotiation documents, the association did not begin asking for rent until late September, after almost a year of negotiations. The amount of the rent sought varied from $18 a square foot a month to $10 a square foot.

One of the concerns with the potential agreement last week was that it did not spell out whether the price would be $10 per square foot per month or $10 per square foot per year, which would have been a price difference of more than $100,000 a year.

Some of the other requests from the association included a full gymnasium; access to any workout room or equipment built for the police officers; a guarantee that the facility would be built by December 2013; and a guarantee that the city would pay for any damage from wear and tear.

According to the negotiation documents, Moore and Police Chief Stuart Thomas turned down the larger requests, including the request that the association receive any money left over from construction, saying they could not hand over taxpayer money. Many of the other requests also were turned down for liability reasons, cost or other contractual issues.

Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/09/2012

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