Little Rock will take a short-term loan to buy 60 new police vehicles and a new computer-aided emergency dispatch program after the Board of Directors gave unanimous approval Tuesday night.
The $5.25 million loan, which must be repaid within five years, will also cover a new online performance-management tool and other software upgrades -- items that directors previously approved the city to acquire but without the funding.
City Manager Bruce Moore in a late May memo to directors described a $10.5 million plan to buy 255 police vehicles over five years to replace most vehicles that have surpassed 100,000 miles. The 60 vehicles directors authorized the city to buy -- at a cost of $3 million -- are the plan's first phase.
Cities can take short-term debt without voter approval under Amendment 78 to the Arkansas Constitution as long as the debt does not exceed 5 percent of the assessed value of taxable property in the city.
Moore suggested that the city purchase 120 new vehicles over 2017 and 2018 and 135 over the following three years. A short-term loan, such as the one directors approved Tuesday, can pay for new vehicles this year and next, but the city should establish a replacement fund to pay for purchases between 2019-21, Moore said.
Sixty-five percent of the Police Department's 362 vehicles have registered more than 100,000 miles and about 40 percent have gone farther than 150,000 miles, Moore's memo says. About 17 percent have eclipsed the 200,000-mile mark.
New dispatch software, estimated to cost $1.3 million, would improve emergency response times, Assistant Fire Chief Doug Coney said.
One feature relevant to the Fire Department -- called "text to speech" -- would alert relevant fire stations to a call without requiring a dispatcher to use the radio, Coney said. The dispatcher would instead verify information that comes through from a fire alarm and then click a button for that information to be routed directly to speakers at nearby stations.
"The dispatcher doesn't have to say anything," Coney said.
Under the current setup, each station has to be hand-keyed, which saps time, he said.
Little Rock, which will solicit bids for the new software, is also looking into a feature that will better identify specifically which fire station or police vehicles are close to the scene of a call, Coney said.
Directors also unanimously authorized the Police Department to lease nine unmarked vehicles, at a cost of roughly $68,000 per year, that will be distributed to various units and divisions.
Directors' approval changed a standing lease agreement with Enterprise Fleet Management, bumping the total annual contract to $251,000 and the total number of leased vehicles to 46, department officials said.
Three vehicles will go to the Violent Crimes Apprehension Team; two to the major crimes division; two to the special investigations division and two to the department's emergency management unit, said Capt. Ty Tyrrell, who oversees the Police Department's special investigations division.
Tyrrell said the city did not solicit bids for a new agreement because it is still in the process of obtaining vehicles in the original lease.
The vehicles are rental cars ranging from pickups to compact cars. Because the vehicles are not marked with police decals, officers can take them on surveillance runs without being easily detected.
Other unmarked cars in the Police Department's fleet are frequently parked at crime scenes or in public lots, so they are easily recognized as police vehicles, Assistant Chief Wayne Bewley previously said.
Information for this article was contributed by Ryan Tarinelli of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 06/21/2017