Agreements with three cities to fund the Pulaski County jail are official today, after the Quorum Court approved an ordinance Tuesday night allowing the county to enter into a new five-year contract with the five largest cities beginning Jan. 1.
The ordinance passed 11-0, with four members -- District 4 Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood, D-Little Rock, District 9 Justice of the Peace Wilma Walker, D-College Station, District 10 Justice of the Peace Robert Green, D-McAlmont, and District 11 Justice of the Peace Bob Johnson, D-Jacksonville -- absent.
The North Little Rock, Sherwood and Maumelle city councils have approved contracts with Pulaski County worth just under $1 million next year.
The cities will pay 5 percent more next year -- $37,988 for North Little Rock, $6,352 for Sherwood, and $2,440 Maumelle -- for totals of $797,752.20, $133,399.35 and $51,247.35, respectively. The allocations would be subject to an annual consumer price index adjustment not to exceed 3 percent for the four years after that.
Little Rock and Jacksonville have not yet approved contracts, citing dissatisfaction with the payment amounts on which the county's contract proposal is based.
The contract negotiations come at a difficult time for the Pulaski County jail.
The 1,210-bed jail "closed" at noon Tuesday to most nonviolent, nonfelony offenders for the third time this year, citing having too many inmates over the jail's maximum capacity.
The jail crowding resulted from the doubling of the number of inmates held for the state corrections system to nearly 500 in response to stricter parole policies instituted in August 2013.
On Tuesday, Sheriff Doc Holladay said that 405 state inmates are currently being housed in the jail's population of 1,287, the lowest he's seen in the past month.
Since July of this year, the state has removed at least 75 inmates from the county jail into the sheriff's office's work center across the street from the jail. The state is leasing the previously empty, 250-bed center from the county for the next year for $1.
As of Monday, the state had filled 150 of the beds, wanting to fill the center gradually to avoid issues managing it.
District 13 Justice of the Peace Phil Stowers, R-Maumelle, asked Holladay on Tuesday night if he could start refusing to take state inmates, if state inmates were clogging the jail.
"Generally, a majority of those inmates are from circuit courts in Pulaski County, and I can't refuse them," the sheriff said. Others are parole violators in the county.
"I'm certainly not comfortable telling the state not to bring them," he said.
Jacksonville objects
Until Aug. 1, all of the cities were bound to a 20-year, $2.9 million contract to help pay for the $25 million cost of operating the county jail.
Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher has informed County Judge Buddy Villines that he has a counter-proposal he intends to present to the Quorum Court.
Fletcher, who has been upset at the rate his city pays the county for the jail, is proposing a 24 percent decrease in payments from his city for 2015 -- from $191,496 in 2014 to $145,000 in 2015.
The county's proposal seeks $201,070.80 from Jacksonville next year.
Fletcher did not attend Tuesday night's meeting because of a scheduled dinner with a delegation from Ghana visiting the city.
"The Quorum Court has got the power to change it," he said. "They were sympathetic with me when I was there the last time."
Fletcher sees the current agreement as inequitable and said he can use the money he spends on the jail to buy new police cars and fire trucks.
"Surely in the $60 million budget in the whole county, they can find [$46,000] to fix something that's so wrong," he said.
Jacksonville's budget is about $22 million this year, he said. The city, along with North Little Rock and Maumelle, used money from its reserves to fund this year's budget.
Sherwood, which is slightly larger than Jacksonville, would make smaller payments to the county for the jail under the new contract, Fletcher has noted.
The contract proposal is based on the interlocal agreement to fund the jail that was put in place Aug. 1, 1994, and which expired last month. The amounts each city paid under that agreement were based on how much each city was paying for its jail in 1990, before the cities phased themselves out of the jail business in favor of transporting arrestees to the county jail.
Back then, Jacksonville was of a similar size as it is now, but Sherwood has grown by more than 50 percent and has not been subject to a new rate based on its population.
Villines has urged cities to talk about readjusting rates for population, but has said repeatedly that the county needs an increase in payments from the cities because the county was eating the inflation-related costs of running the jail during the 20 years of the last contract while the cities only had set increases every five years.
Little Rock taking it slow
In Little Rock, Mayor Mark Stodola plans to send a memo to the city board about the new jail proposal, although he doesn't know that the board will choose any option other than the jail proposal.
"I'm sure we'll probably go forward with it," he said.
Stodola said he's been busy dealing with other city issues, such as proposed new rules for 5 a.m. clubs and discussions with Uber and Lyft ride-sharing services, but said that he plans to put a proposal on the jail together in the next 30 days for the board.
"We're good until the end of the year, so I don't see any rush on it, necessarily."
Stodola also has said that he's unhappy with the rate Little Rock pays for the jail, noting that the city effectively pays more per person it takes to the jail than other cities. He calculated the difference by dividing the amount each city paid in 2013 by county-provided statistics of the number of inmates each city was responsible for that year.
Little Rock, which paid nearly $1.8 million for 2013 and 2014 under the old agreement, was charged $199 per inmate versus $55 for Sherwood in 2013, which paid the lowest rate per inmate when calculating that way.
Sherwood has the third-highest number of inmates in the jail in 2013, but pays the fourth-highest amount for the jail.
Stodola said his biggest issue with funding the jail is reimbursements the county gets for holding state inmates there that are $14 less per day than the actual cost of housing them.
Both gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Mike Ross and Republican Asa Hutchinson, have said that they support higher reimbursement rates for holding state inmates but have not indicated what that rate would be.
District 12 Justice of the Peace Karilyn Brown, R-Sherwood, initially opposed the ordinance approving the contracts, arguing that the rates each city paid were not fair, particularly for Jacksonville.
Villines said he knew that the original contract was flawed, but that he's been discussing the matter of funding the jail for several months and that the cities did not come up with their own counter-proposals when they were given the chance.
"If people want to ride out the shot clock, they can, but they've had ample time to do something," District 2 Justice of the Peace Tyler Denton, D-Little Rock, said.
Cities operating a law enforcement agency in Pulaski County are subject to a daily per inmate fee if they do not have an agreement in place with the county to fund the jail.
The daily fee is the result of an emergency ordinance approved by the Quorum Court in July, but county officials have said cities will not be subject to it until Jan. 1, given that the county's five biggest cities have already paid their contributions to the jail for all of 2014.
The fee is $245 for the first day and $44 for each subsequent day an inmate is held in the jail for a city.
County officials have estimated that a fee would be much costlier for each city than the current proposal for a new jail contract, about doubling the $2.9 million they collectively pay now.
Metro on 08/27/2014