[06/04/02]An attorney for the City of Vicksburg demands in a letter written Friday that a fence keeping people off property intended as part of Riverfront Park be taken down.

The letter written by Bobby Robinson instructs the Isle of Capri Casino to relinquish possession of the property that has been used by the casino as a gravel parking lot. A wooden fence has separated the plot of land from the rest of the the park since 1996 and is now threatening six acres leased to the city and Warren County for the park.

Under provisions of a 1989 agreement, Vicksburg Printing and Publishing Company leased six acres it owns north of the Riverfront Park to the city for $1 a year for 100 years. The plan was to have the private acreage used with 11 publicly owned acres to create a larger river park. But the lease says if the private property is not used as the lease says for a period of 10 months, the lease is terminated and the land reverts to the owners.

That 10-month period will expire in August, effectively terminating the original agreement with the city and county.

“I wish the fence would have come down back in August of last year,” said Pat Cashman, president of the publishing company that owns The Vicksburg Post. “I just want the property back as a park as we intended.”

Other than a road and landscaping, no improvements were made on the six acres when the park was first developed. In 1996, the casino approached the city and county about leasing a part of the property as a staging area during the construction of its hotel.

The publishing company and the Isle of Capri entered into a temporary sublease-type agreement for that purpose, but Cashman said he was not informed until 2001 that city officials had not completed the paperwork as he had been told they would.

“I think it was a deliberate act by the City of Vicksburg not to let me know,” he said.

During an audit of the city’s budget, Mayor Laurence Leyens, who took office in July, said he discovered that the city was paying the property taxes on the property being used by the casino. Under terms of the original agreement between the two governments and the publishing company, the city and county are responsible for those taxes, but Robinson has said that since the land is not being used for the park, someone else owes those taxes.

In his letter to the casino, Robinson also demanded a copy of the 1996 agreement with the publishing company to determine who should have been paying property taxes for the past six years.