Resolutions to examine pay and purchases at the Little Rock Police Department that were sponsored by at-large City Director Dean Kumpuris were not reviewed by the city's Board of Directors for possible action during a meeting Tuesday evening.
Board members voted to delay consideration of one of the resolutions for two weeks.
The other two resolutions failed to get added to the agenda. With two of the 10 city directors absent and City Director Ken Richardson of Ward 2 opposed, there was insufficient support to get Kumpuris to the eight-vote supermajority needed to add the measures.
Kumpuris' resolutions would direct the city manager during upcoming budget discussions to analyze the costs associated with three initiatives: providing police recruits compensation commensurate with new Arkansas State Police troopers; purchasing 50 new patrol vehicles every year for the next three years; and building new facilities to store police property and evidence.
The city manager would also have to present a proposed 2023 budget that fulfills those goals.
The resolutions cited a report prepared by the Center for Public Safety Management, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that Little Rock in March 2021 commissioned to conduct an $87,500 staffing study of the Police Department.
Craig Junginger, a retired police chief, presented findings from the study to the city board on Oct. 11 on behalf of the firm.
Kumpuris' draft resolution on pay noted that the city should be able to compete with other agencies on hiring the best officers for the Police Department. It endorsed the idea of increasing the starting salary of police recruits from $44,636.80 to $54,000 -- that of a state trooper recruit.
The two other resolutions echoed findings from the staffing study.
During an on-site visit, Center for Public Safety Management assessors heard about concerns regarding the department's vehicles. "In essentially every meeting, the poor condition of the department's fleet of vehicles was brought up as a concern," the report said.
The management of Little Rock's fleet was the source of "a high level of frustration" within the Police Department, the report said. Older vehicles are given expensive repairs and the department encounters "frequent delays" for maintenance while simultaneously lacking spare vehicles, the report said.
It recommended that the city stop putting resources into aging cars with high mileage.
Additionally, the report said the department's main property and evidence facility located beneath the municipal court building on West Markham Street "is in terrible condition," with water leaking into the space from overhead courthouse pipes as well as the street above.
The amount of space for storing property and evidence was called "inadequate." And with no heating system, employees had to wear sweatshirts and jackets, the report said.
"However, during the site visit additional electrical service was being installed in the technicians' work area to at least allow them to have space heaters in their work area," the report said. "[The Center for Public Safety Management] recommends the department find a new facility that will adequately meet the needs of the department. If that is not an option, it is imperative that improvements and repairs be made to the current facility."
On Tuesday, city board members had to first modify the agenda to add Kumpuris' three items.
City Director Virgil Miller Jr. of Ward 1 made a successful motion to defer the resolution on recruit pay for two weeks. Richardson then made the same motion for the other two items, but his motion received no second.
Richardson explained that he did not understand the rationale for bypassing the board's usual process for introducing legislation, but said his questioning it did not necessarily mean he did not support Kumpuris' proposals.
Kumpuris said he agreed with Miller's action, referring to ongoing negotiations, by which he presumably meant the contract negotiations between the city and police union representatives.
Nevertheless, he argued that city board members should make clear their expectations for the budget before information on a proposed budget goes before the board two weeks from Tuesday. Kumpuris said he did not present the resolutions earlier because he did not want them to be involved with the Nov. 8 election.
Richardson said that from his point of view, "this really minimizes the opportunity for us to get community input and community engagement when the community didn't know that this was going to be an item that we were going to be talking about tonight."
As a formality, Kumpuris made motions to place the remaining two resolutions on the agenda, which failed. Richardson voted no both times.