Little Rock’s longest-serving member of the City Board of Directors is being challenged by a political newcomer in the race for Position 10.
Joan Adcock was first elected to the city board in 1992. She moved to Little Rock with her family from their chicken farm in Danville, and after high school, started a children’s clothing store.
"I did that for about 30 years," said Adcock. "Southwest Little Rock was in the county, and the city decided they wanted southwest Little Rock, and they positioned the county judge and he gave it to them. We had no vote in it. We had lots of drainage problems, flooding and street problems ,and the city told us they would fix everything, which they haven't completed all that yet. I wanted to be on the board to make sure southwest Little Rock had a say in what was going on."
Blake Tierney grew up in Sherwood, and graduated from Hendrix College before attaining his Master’s in Public Service from Marquette University in Milwaukee. He returned to Little Rock and now feels the city needs a fresh perspective.
"We have had some of the same issues in the city for decades; vacant properties, dangerous streets, loose dogs, things of that nature," Tierney said. "It's things like that, that have been stuck for so long, that have led me to want to run for office."
Position 10 is an at-large role, meaning the director represents the entire city. Tierney said he has spent time since returning to Little Rock learning about the issues facing each ward.
"I've been piecing together what it is that I've been hearing from a wide swath of residents, because I wanted to make sure that I heard from every ward. Because if I'm going to be an at-large director that serves the entire city, I want to make sure I hear from everybody."
A significant issue that many Little Rock residents have been facing is a lapse in trash collection. Director Adcock says she has heard these complaints and has taken action.
"I was getting the calls from all over Little Rock, 'Trash is not being picked up.' At that point, no one in City Hall had said anything about it. We had 14 garbage trucks they said were waiting for parts. We had three garbage trucks at that time that had burned up completely. Since then we've had two more burn up, and then we had two that were wrecked. After me talking about it on the board two times, we ordered five new trucks, and now we've ordered two more new trucks."
Tierney says in many aspects, he’s seen that the city’s public services, especially waste services, are driven by complaints from residents. He wants to take a more top down approach that allocates resources to identifying problem areas without waiting for someone to complain.
"A lot of times that means the squeakiest wheel gets the most attention, but that also means that, for one, a lot of issues get missed, especially in communities that don't have as many resources to be constantly raising concerns. It means that it's inefficient. The city is wasting dollars, the neighbors are frustrated with their experience."
When it comes to fire services, Adcock says she’d like the city to take action ahead of issues that lead to a crisis.
"We've got a bunch of fire trucks ordered. It takes between one and two years to get a fire truck once you place an order," Adcock said. "We have got to start looking at replacement as a yearly thing instead of just waiting until we have an emergency."
Turning to police services, Adcock says again it’s a matter of increasing fleet vehicles and increasing salary.
"We made commitments that we were going to give police officers cars, and we have run out of cars. So we've got the same problem. We are not doing replacements fast enough to keep our fleets in order. I have been endorsed by both the [Fraternal Order of Police] and the union for the fire department."
Tierney said for him, it’s about reforms to city policing that will lessen the burden on the city’s police force.
"We need to be able to address root causes of public safety issues and empower residents," Tierney said. "So that means calming the dangerous streets that we know about, transforming some of these vacant properties that have been around for decades, and having some response teams to some of our biggest issues that can relieve the pressure that's on our overburdened police force responding to public safety issues that are not rising to the level of police response."
One major area of concern for Little Rock is its unhoused population. Tierney says he would like to see a more holistic approach that sets smaller, achievable targets. He bases this model on the ‘Zero Homelessness’ model he studied in Milwaukee.
"With Little Rock, we have a patchwork of siloed organizations that are doing homelessness work. And even though we have CATCH that is supposed to bring them together across all these counties, there is not an investment from the city or the county into CATCH that is really necessary to do that collaborative work. As someone who does collaborative work, who's built coalitions, and who does this work with governments, you have to have that investment. You have to have that backbone staff in order to that kind of facilitated work."
Adcock says she wants to promote the land bank model she founded for the city.
"Right now, between the vacant weed lots that we have where we've demolished houses already, and those that have houses still sitting on them, we have 524. You can pull up which ones we have, and you can come if you're a nonprofit, you can have the lot to build houses on, but it has to be affordable housing. I want to get the rest of those houses taken off of those lots, put the liens on them, give them to the city, and put another two or three-hundred pieces of property on the land bank."
Overall, Tierney is positioning himself as someone who will take a fresh look at the city’s policies, contrasted to Adcock’s more traditional style of governance.
"Director Adcock in the last year has voted against renter's rights, she has voted against investment in solar energy. If we are going to have a city that we know can meet its potential, that's going to be responsive to our concerns systematically, not just complaint by complaint, we need new leadership. We need someone we can count on to show up not only to citizen concerns, to resident concerns, as I plan to be, but also somebody who's going to put that into policy."
Adcock defended her “no” vote on the renters’ rights ordinance that passed earlier this year, using the former Spanish Jon Apartments on 65th Street as an example.
"It says, if the owner will not completely bring that up to all of our codes, then we are going to come in as a city and we're going to bring it up to those codes, and we are going to rehab that complex, which is going to cost between $5 and $7 million. Then we're going to look at the man in New York, and put a lien against him. But if he has written off that property as a loss, then we're stuck owning that property. If you think we are strapped now for money, if we did that we would really be strapped for money
Adcock is leaning on her record and her experience with Little Rock, saying she has not seen anything of Tierney’s record.
"I don't think I've ever seen his name on any board or commission for the city. Usually that's what people start out with, boards and commissions, and they move up to doing bigger things, and everything. So I don't really know the young man."
The candidates will both appear on all Little Rock residents’ ballots, and will represent the entire city in their role.
