By Ray King
In their final meeting of the year, the Pine Bluff City Council on Monday voted to suspend the rules, read three times, then adopt an ordinance allowing the Police Department to buy additional surveillance cameras without the need to take competitive bids.
The city will pay $50,000 plus taxes for 20 cameras from Flock Group, Inc., the same company that loaned the department surveillance cameras earlier this year.
Council member Glen Brown Jr., sponsored the ordinance and after the meeting talked to Deltaplex News about it.
Council members also suspended the rules to amend a previously approved ordinance that changes the inspection fee charged for gas (house piping) and gas (service line) from $20 to $30.
All eight council members signed up as sponsors on a resolution renaming the old library building in the civic center in honor of Detective Kevin Collins, who was killed in the line of duty last year.
The resolution originally called for the building to be named the Detective Kevin D. Collins Conference Center, but Mayor Shirley Washington called for dropping the word conference from the title since the building will be used for multiple purposes, including offices, training space for the police department and larger council chambers.
Interior work on the building will begin early in 2022.
A proposed ordinance rezoning 6806 Sheridan Road from residential (R-1) to Neighborhood Business (B-1) which was up for the third reading was also approved by the council.
