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I must admit to slight disappointment when I read recently in the newspaper of Nate Coulter’s frustration at the city of Little Rock’s pursuit of a $2.5 million study of a deck park over Interstate 30 near downtown.
Not because I disagree with the executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, but because he stole my thunder.
In truth, he articulated better than I could how profoundly wasteful this predictably fruitless study will be.
The study, Coulter wrote in his monthly report to the CALS board, “defies common sense and fiscal accountability.” I couldn’t agree more.
In case you need me to catch you up, the city board last month voted to move ahead with hiring Garver to conduct the deck park study. The city expects to pay $500,000 and the rest of the money will come from federal grant funds. (I’d like to append my periodic reminder that federal funds are our tax dollars too, just in case anyone tries to use that tired excuse as cover for this ill-advised expenditure.)
Deck parks, if you’re unfamiliar, are generally green spaces built over the top of highways and often intended to reconnect communities divided by interstates.
They are certainly interesting and cool, but interesting and cool things built over interstates cost a lot of money. There haven’t been official estimates, but going off what similar parks have cost elsewhere, Little Rock’s deck park would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Such a project is never going to happen. I repeat: Not. Happening.
What makes this decision even more bewildering is that the city’s own downtown master plan adopted last year by the Board of Directors recommended against pursuing the deck park, which has long been a pipe dream of several city leaders. The city paid $750,000 for that advice, which it is ignoring. But why listen to your own commissioned experts when you can pay new consultants $2.5 million to study something you’ve already been advised against?
Furthermore, Little Rock voters have repeatedly rejected tax increases to fund new park projects. Now, I personally would love to see the city invest in more parks, even a deck park, but I know it’s not in the cards and see no need to light $500,000 on fire to study something that residents apparently don’t prioritize.
There are so many better uses for that money, including — as Coulter suggests — for park-like developments in all of the green space in downtown Little Rock now freed up as a result of the 30 Crossing project.
This deck park study represents poor fiscal judgment. But more than that, it reveals a continued disconnect between city leadership and residents’ actual needs and preferences. Voters have repeatedly signaled their priorities, yet the city continues to pursue projects that serve the ambitions of officials and consultants rather than their constituents.
The lesson seems to be that if voters won’t fund your vision through taxes, find creative ways to spend their money anyway.
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