Court approves funding for Felkins, UCA cases

Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden's office received funding from the Faulkner County Quorum Court on Tuesday to examine information about two ongoing investigations, the 1990 unsolved murder of Pamela Felkins and the recent findings by Legislative Audit concerning the University of Central Arkansas.

Vaden said his first priority will be the case involving UCA.

"With the audit case, I want to do the right thing," Vaden said about a timeline. "I want to move on it quickly."

One of the state audit's findings is the transfer of public funds to private funds in payments from an advertising agency to the UCA athletic department. Other findings include concerns over bonuses privately approved for former president Lu Hardin, legal issues related to Hardin's buyout package, unpaid debt for the Oxford American, a $6 million line of credit and discretionary scholarships.

Vaden said there was no timeline on the Felkins case but stressed that work is being done frequently on the case.

"What we're looking at is we're going to go back and start we've already started actually at Day 1 and see what else needs to be done and what interviews need to be done. Some of those we've already identified," Vaden said.

Vaden said some individuals that may need to be interviewed now reside out of state. Vaden said his department will incur expense either traveling to conduct interviews or bringing individuals here to be interviewed.

Vaden requested that special prosecutor Jack McQuary of the Little Rock-based Arkansas Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator work with his office and local law enforcement agencies to gather all evidence and information about the Felkins case.

"(McQuary) and I both have been working on it. He's spending days up here meeting with sheriff's office investigators," Vaden said. "We're going to keep working on that as long as we got something to look at."

The court also approved an ordinance increasing citation fines by $15 to help defray costs associated with the county detention centers. Pursuant to Act 209 of the state Legislature, counties and municipalities have the ability to increase this amount from $5, which it is now, to $20 per citation.

The additional sums collected from the fine can only be used to "assist in defraying the costs of construction, maintenance and operation of the detention center; transporting and incarcerating county or city prisoners; purchase and maintenance of equipment for the detention center; and training, salaries and certificate pay for detention center personnel."

In other business, the court:

Approved an ordinance allowing the Twin Groves Volunteer Fire Department to fund a special election for the department to allow the county to collect the municipality's volunteer fire dues. The $25 dues, if approved by Twin Groves voters, would be collected by the county tax collector and remitted to the Twin Groves VFD by the Faulkner County Treasurer.

Approved an ordinance establishing the geographical area for which the Twin Groves VFD is responsible.

Approved an ordinance granting a variance to the setback requirement of the wireless tower ordinance, which will allow a new cell tower at 273 Highway 64 East in Conway.

Passed a resolution acknowledging the line of succession for the position of Faulkner County sheriff. The resolution states that if a vacancy exists in the office of sheriff due to death or disability to the degree of inability to perform duties of the office, the position shall be filled on an interim basis until the Quorum Court can fill the vacancy. The order of succession according to the resolution is the chief deputy sheriff, the major supervising the enforcement division and the major supervising the detention division.