• Dr. Good

Dr. Mary Good, the chairman of the board of directors of the Little Rock Technology Park Authority, said today that while the board isn't legally required to file statements of financial interests, she believes they will do so. "I think everyone has agreed to do it anyway," she said.

There has been a push from citizens for members of the public board, which will receive $22 million in tax dollars, to disclose their financial interests, as do other public board and commission members. The legislation that created the Authority did not include language requiring disclosure, and the city attorney has opined that it doesn't have to.

Now, Good said, the board is researching what state agency should receive the forms.

Good said no one on the board had a conflict of interest and that the main objection was the time it would take for directors to gather up information for the statements. She said the board's decision will be "finalized" at the May 16th meeting of the board.

Board member Dickson Flake confirmed Good's statement, saying the board took a poll on the idea and all agreed to voluntarily file the forms. "Didn't take me long," Flake said. "Mine is just about completed."

At the last meeting of the Authority board, Joe Busby of the Fair Park Neighborhood Association, a member of the University Development Board, asked the board to adopt what he called a "Social Contract" with the city that, among other things, would require financial disclosure.

In response to a question by City Director Ken Richardson, City Attorney Tom Carpenter issued an opinion today that the city-appointed members of the board of the Little Rock Technical Park Authority do not have to file statements of financial interest.

The statute setting up the Authority allows the mayor to appoint two members to the board and to "participate in the appointment" of a third. Mayor Stodola's appointees to the board are commercial realtor Dickson Flake and Allied Wireless vice president C.J. Duvall; his joint appointment with other sponsors is Chamber of Commerce president Jay Chesshir.

Carpenter writes that the statute governing financial disclosure requirements, Ark. Code Ann. Sec. 21-8-701, is specific about which governmental elected or appointed officials the law refers to. It does not include public research park authority members.

Carpenter's formal opinion echoes what he told the Times several weeks ago. Members of the Authority have indicated that since they are not required to disclose financials, they don't intend to.

I've got a call in to Richardson to see if he thinks the city, which is pumping $22 million into the park in taxpayer dollars, should require authority members to file statements of financial interest as do elected officials and commission appointees. City directors out there? Feel free to comment.

UPDATE FROM MAX: E-mails circulating among city directors indicate Ken Richardson and B. J. Wyrick support this financial disclosure. They all should. A lot of money is about to be spent by taxpayers here. We're owed full knowledge of the background of those spending it. Mayor Mark Stodola has told me directly he'd support a law change to require disclosure. The current exemption — about which I won't argue with Carpenter, for once — is not carved in stone. It could be amended to provide disclosure and should. Though this thing is a creature of state law — necessary for all manner of endeavors the city undertakes — the city's hands are not tied. It should asks its legislators to extend disclosure to this agency. What, please, Director Lance Hines, would be the reason for you to raise questions about this, as the e-mails seem to indicate you did?

The Little Rock Technical Park Authority board of directors today had exchanges with a still-unsettled group of residents at its monthly meeting, at which the board voted to hire a consultant to advise them on the location of the proposed $50 million park.

At the conclusion of the meeting, University District Development Corp. board member Joe Busby, a longtime activist for the Oak Forest and Fair Park neighborhoods, asked the board to sign a “social contract” (on the jump) with the people whose property could be taken by eminent domain by the Authority. The contract asks the board to treat people uniformly and equitably in acquisition; ensure relocation assistance is provided to all displaced persons; ensure that no one is displaced without making sure that “decent, safe and sanitary” housing is available within their financial means; be open to the public and make financial disclosures; to encourage acquisition without coercion and to make public all factors that have gone into the process of site selection before taking any action to acquire properties. Board chair Mary Good said she thought it was an “extraordinarily nice piece of work” and that the board would consider it.

Afterward, State Sen. Joyce Elliott told a small group that she intends to amend the state's eminent domain legislation to require a people impact study and provide counsel for property owners. She noted that the Authority board will use tax dollars in their negotiations with land owners and that land owners should get some legal help from those dollars as well.

• Charles Dilks

Dilks is the former president of the Association of University Research Parks and is retired from the Science Center research park in Philadelphia, where he worked for 35 years negotiating financing and development for buildings. He also created the property management company Research Park Inc. Dilks was a source on construction costs for the Angle Technology Group's research park report commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce in 2009.

The need for a contract has not come up in board meetings to date. Civil engineering firm Crafton Tull has been engaged to do site evaluation (and will make a status report today). Flake characterized the contract as a “very small assignment” and said inviting competitive proposals would have been “impractical and unfeasible.” Flake will propose a maximum pay of $10,000 on the contract, including travel expenses.

I asked Flake about a couple of other things: Will the board have a public comment period? Flake said the board had not discussed that, but that there “probably needs something like that.” Will he disclose his financial interests, even though the legislation creating the Authority apparently does not require him to? He said he would “defer to others” on that, rather than putting his fellow directors “in an awkward position” by voluntarily disclosing.

The Forest Hills Neighborhood Association gave the Little Rock Technology Park Authority board a piece of their minds tonight in a meeting at the Willie Hinton resource center. Speaker after speaker addressed the board, a one-way. emotional conversation for nearly 45 minutes, in which residents wearing "Not for Sale" stickers expressed fear and anger over the board's right of eminent domain to take their homes to make way for the park and at which at times grew heated. One woman said the plan to take about 30 acres of a residential area for development of the park was part of a racist "pattern of our experience when the opportunity for wealth arises" — a pattern of making the poor suffer for the goals of the upper class. Residents described their homes, their gardens, their years in the neighborhood.

State Sen. Joyce Elliott Williams, speaking to both the board and the neighborhood association, said that the market value of a home threatened with a taking by eminent domain "should be a minimum" price in negotiations and that pain and suffering caused by moving should be taken into account. Dr. Anika Whitfield, who lives near the Forest Hills neighborhood, told the board that instead of leveling a neighborhood "we should be talking about another location," including the War Memorial Golf Course.

A low point of the evening came when Authority board member Bob Johnson, the former representative and senator, told the crowd of mostly black, lower middle class residents that he had been in their shoes in the 1990s when a utility "was abusing eminent domain" and he fought to protect his Pawpaw's land. Please. The residents of Forest Hills are the equivalent to Deltic Timber, which sought to take Central Arkansas Water's right of eminent domain away so it could make big bucks developing big homes in the watershed of the city's water supply? Johnson bragged about writing "the most restrictive eminent domain law" in history and getting the Senate to pass it, though it failed in the House. If you have forgotten the details of what sparked years of fighting to protect our drinking water, read here.

Joan Adcock was the final speaker, noting the commitment the city got from UAMS Chancellor Dan Rahn and UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson that they would act in a fair manner to develop the park. Can't post the letter from home; will in the a.m. at work.

The board of the Little Rock Technology Park Authority chose Crafton Tull civil engineers to evaluate the three sites the Authority is considering for the park for park construction at a meeting this afternoon at the Willie Hinton Neighborhood Resource Center.

Five companies — McClelland Consulting Engineers Inc., the Cromwell firm, Development Consultants Inc. and White-Daters & Associates in addition to Crafton Tull — responded to the Authority's request for proposals. The members of the authority, with Ed Drilling abstaining because of a family connection to one of the businesses, voted on the companies after individual studies of the proposals. They ranked the companies on a piece of paper and tallied up the rankings. White Daters came in second. It's not known how members voted; I'll ask for that information tomorrow. Only three members of the Authority board were at the meeting; a fourth, Jay Chessir, was on a speaker phone. Absent members had previously sent in their choices.

Authority member Dickson Flake noted that the voting process was unusual in that the Authority has no staff to evaluate and recommend to the board. He said copies of the proposals will be posted on a website scheduled to go up in a week to 10 days; the address will be lrresearchpark.com lrtechpark.com.

Flake said that the board initially asked for cost estimates from the bidders but on the advice of City Attorney Tom Carpenter informed bidders that it was contrary to a state statute to ask for bids and not to submit the estimates. The board returned an estimate provided by Crafton Tull, Crafton Tull senior vice president Jerry Kelso said.

Crafton Tull's proposal was the only one to include preliminary notes about the three sites, and it found several problems with a site proposed by Flake. Crafton Tull's pluses for the site, south of I-630 between Monroe Street on the west and Elm on the east, were that it is visible from the interstate, adjacent to a children's library being built and that UAMS employees could easily get there by car or on bike on the Jonesboro street bridge. Negatives: It will require the removal of 272 inhabited structures, will cause a "major disruption of a city grid," has no direct access from the interstate and has limited access from 12th Street, and is the furthest site from UALR, which like UAMS is supposed to provide the "intellectual capital" for the park.

An area off 12th Street between Fair Park and Jackson Street has better access from I-630, Crafton Tull said, but would require the removal of 123 inhabited structures. Grid disruption would be moderate. The third site, which encompasses the Methodist Children's Home campus, would require less demolition than the other two, but is the furthest from UAMS and would require the destruction of 113 inhabited structures (including the Methodist campus, presumably). The Methodist Children's Home is not, unsurprisingly, supportive of that area, since it has just invested in improvements there.

Board member Dr. Mary Good said it should take a couple of weeks to negotiate a price with Crafton Tull, and should one be agreed on, another six months for the study to be complete. A site could be selected 60 days after the study.

Flake and Good stressed that the engineers study would not provide the final word on the site selection. In fact, Flake said he is recommending that the board seek input from Angle Technology, which did the feasibility study on the park for the Chamber of Commerce.

The Crafton Tull proposal:

crafton_tull_tech_park.pdf