As Pine Bluff prepares to move into a new era in just over a month with a new administration taking over, one member of the current Pine Bluff City Council is attempting to bring back the dark old days.
Alderman George Stepps is proposing legislation that would remove the Quality of Life and Animal Control divisions from the police department.
Admittedly, the 2016 election cycle was not kind to Stepps, who in March had a majority of Jefferson County voters say he was not their choice for Jefferson County Treasurer, preferring to go instead with the experience of current Deputy Treasurer Vonysha Goodwin.
To add insult to injury, earlier this month, voters in his own Ward Four rejected his bid to win his job back as an alderman after he filed at the last minute as an independent — some of those voters were asking why they should give Stepps another term when he rejected them initially in his quest for higher office.
Perhaps Stepps has forgotten what it was like before the Quality of Life Division was created, but we haven’t.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Condemned houses everywhere you looked — old rusted cars sitting on concrete blocks — yards that looked like they hadn’t been mowed in months, and code enforcement officers who were either ignored or threatened by residents who did not want to improve their property. Now, those same code enforcement officers can and do call on police to assist, and the difference shows itself everywhere you look.
After she took office, Mayor Debe Hollingsworth instituted regular cleanups of neighborhoods in high crime areas, and the crime is down.
On Friday, Hollingsworth said code enforcement was not a high priority under previous administrations “so we realized that it had to be a priority if we were going to see a reduction in crime, a reduction in abandoned cars, nuisance abatement, just people accumulating junk in their neighborhoods, and that’s what we’ve done.”
As for Animal Control, an effort to move it from under police jurisdiction failed once before when it was vetoed by Hollingsworth after an incident when a police officer shot a pig in the Jefferson Industrial Park area that Police Chief Jeff Hubanks said was feral. Another member of the council, Alderwoman Thelma Walker, said the animal was a pot-bellied pig owned by a local resident.
In her veto, Hollingsworth said the ordinance gave no specific reason for passage, and issues discovered during the discussion of the ordinance “did not meet the legal standard for legislative action.”
We’re not sure if the proposed ordinances are just a way for Stepps to seek the limelight one more time before he fades off into obscurity on Jan. 1, or if the Quality of Life Division stepped on the wrong toes this time. Either way, the proposals are bad.
Not long ago, the council said proposals by Joni Alexander to create youth programs in the city should wait for the new mayor to decide on. That same logic makes sense here. If those divisions are to be moved, let the new mayor and newly-elected members of the council decide.