P ine Bluff didn’t need another financial problem.
This city, the largest in southeast Arkansas, needed to confront the truth that somehow, deep in its operations, the amount of funds unaccounted for and purchases not allowed within its Parks and Recreation Department totaled more than $300,000. It was no secret State Police have been investigating the department since June, but on Friday, the numbers were made public through a Legislative Joint Auditing Committee meeting.
The audit didn’t give Mayor Vivian Flowers much opportunity for denial, sitting across the way from some of her former colleagues in the state Legislature.
To the credit of city officials — Flowers cited current department Director Prutty Holman –they alerted the Arkansas Legislative Audit about a discrepancy in deposits. The audit revealed that from Jan. 1, 2023, through May 21, 2025, $179,629 in manual receipts could not be traced to the city collector’s receipts and deposits. Some receipts were missing and others were not issued.
The total of unallowable purchases — namely holiday décor, personal hygiene items, fashion accessories and various electronic devices, among others — was $48,415. The bill for questionable purchases of snacks and office décor ran up to $13,174.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
What kind of return were the citizens supposed to get from these investments? If five vendors made questionable purchases and three lawn mowers weren’t made available for an audit inspection, as auditors say, how did that help Pine Bluff?
As if that were not enough, the audit revealed that numerous invoices were altered to conceal the type of items purchased and the shipping address of the items in question.
To put it into a larger framework, Pine Bluff spent nearly $8 million more than it received in revenue. Factor in $1,323,113 from “other sources and uses,” and the city’s balance in 2024 dropped from $80,425,983 to $74,057,072. Flowers told the committee a procurement director has been hired and a professional consultant has been contracted to help centralize and document standard operating procedures across all departments.
We’ve seen a Pine Bluff native receive a 35-year sentence in Circuit Court after he was convicted on 79 counts of accepting $667,384 from the city’s Urban Renewal Agency for asbestos abatement work he didn’t do. He has 48 months left before he’s eligible for parole.
This is the same Urban Renewal the City Council fought so hard for in overturning Flowers’ veto for additional funding. At least Urban Renewal has an opportunity to pay bills to contractors of a go-kart track and finish the job that started with tax dollars, even though Flowers heavily criticized how the money would be spent.
All of this has happened in a city in dire need of more capital improvements.
Parks and recreation — referring to both in nature and not just the department — are a necessity to the quality of life in a city, one that’s hard to value in dollars. That makes stealing from any department unfathomable.
If Pine Bluff is to provide quality of life and have resources for necessary capital upgrades, its employees must be held to the fullest extent of the law if any theft occurs. That’s just fine with us. So is firing department employees the city determines responsible for letting the transactions happen.
So we don’t question Elm Springs Rep. Robin Lundstrum’s characterization of the transactions “plain old theft if people in trusted positions stole from the city of Pine Bluff.” If, of course, is an important conjunction here.
But the crime — if determined in the justice system — needed to be called out. It just didn’t need to happen.