It sounds like an aggressive plan, which is what Pine Bluff needs.
At a recent press conference, Mayor Vivian Flowers laid out the outline for where she wants her administration to head. Her so-called “People’s Plan” was pulled together after a series of town hall meetings in which interested citizens gave their thoughts on various topics. The 10 committees involved also conducted surveys and led focus groups on the topics. It was a lot of effort.
In the end, which is, given that it’s about 100 days into her new administration, the beginning, the plan covered the waterfront in terms of topics: budget and finance, economic development and infrastructure, education and workforce, faith and community engagement, government transformation and public safety.
Some of the results and recommendations had to do with how her administration should operate. Under the budget and finance heading, there was more transparency, with more involvement from various departments as well as from the public at budget time.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Topics such as the skill level of the local workforce, underutilization of the assets the area has and housing development were raised. In the government transformation area, recommendations ranged from designating a procurement officer to beefing up the city’s website, and from streamlining blight management, to creating better ways to review city boards and commissions.
The public safety sector also included some hard-hitting recommendations for addressing police and fire department concerns, the crime rate, inadequate staffing, recruitment and retention, low institutional knowledge, policy inconsistencies and too many supervisors for the number of employees being overseen.
Some of the recommendations were to fix what was broken and some involved outside the box bits — things that Flowers called “very creative ideas that may take some time to implement.”
Flowers says she wants to publicize the plan, giving residents time to take it all in, and then to digest each piece individually rather than everything at once — all of which will require collaboration.
Having a plan for the city is a powerful move, taking the city from fuzzy ideas about this and that problem to precise measures that clearly identify the issues facing the city and what exactly can be done to address them. A plan, once implemented, also becomes its own way to judge its effectiveness. In a year or two or three, it will become clear if, indeed, the police department is in a better place or the public is actually being invited to take part in the budgeting process.
And in the end, plans also draw a line in the sand inasmuch to say we are heading this way as a city and not that way. If anything, Pine Bluff is ready for that, Pine Bluff is ready for some distinct, transparent and bold moves toward better days. The engine now appears to be running. We look forward to Flowers shifting to drive and hitting the gas.