A committee has been named to study private child care facilities in Vicksburg and city building codes, then recommend compromises where necessary.

The task force of nine people will report to elected officials, said Victor Gray-Lewis, the city’s director of buildings and inspections.

Members of the committee include day-care owners and operators and are Daphne Bagley, Melanie Allen, the Rev. Tommy Miller, Sonny Jones, Clarence Latham, Gail Albert, Lovie Bailey, Melba Davis and Danielle Warnock, Gray-Lewis said.

Existing codes are not being met in the buildings that house hundreds of children while their parents are at work.

&#8220The (committee) has been formed to look at existing facilities and establish some middle ground that is agreeable to both code-enforcement and existing child care facilities,” Gray-Lewis said.

Existing requirements include built-in sprinkler systems and other fire-prevention features and exit doors that many now lack. The city adopted the code in about 2004, Gray-Lewis said.

A sprinkler system is among the requirements for buildings that house facilities classified as &#8220institutional.” Such facilities include those in which small children and nursing-home patients may sleep or be cared for, Gray-Lewis said.

The formation of the committee was prompted by the move of a child care facility, which had to upgrade to meet the current standards, Gray-Lewis said.

&#8220We thought, ‘What better time than now to go and look at these’” standards, Gray-Lewis added.

The idea is to equip the buildings to help prevent or mitigate possible damaging accidents, Gray-Lewis said.

Day-care operators met with city officials last week. The group is to meet again at 6 p.m. Thursday. The committee has yet to select a chairman, Miller said.

Gray-Lewis called the group’s meeting to develop a recommendation to the board &#8220an ongoing process.”

&#8220I suspect it may take a couple of meetings,” Gray-Lewis said.

The county has 38 licensed day-care facilities, 32 of them within Vicksburg city limits, Mississippi Department of Health records show.

&#8220Some have been here a long time,” Gray-Lewis said.

A new city child care facility, Cradle to Crayons, 2713 Drummond St., obtained its city business-privilege license this week, said its owner, Cassandra Kelly. The facility is to be open around the clock with a child capacity listed as 16 each shift, Kelly added.

Kelly said a Jackson contractor, Love Sprinkler & Supply Company, installed her system at a cost of $10,974. Code requirements called for four exit doors and other improvements including emergency-lighting and signs for those doors and a venting hood for the business’ kitchen, adding about $5,300 to the cost of opening the business’s, Kelly said. And her annual city privilege license cost about $32, she added.

The improvements took about six months to make and the city did not allow the business to open during that time, Kelly said.

Warren County has no building-inspection code or zoning ordinance and facilities outside the city must only meet state requirements.

IF YOU GO.

Child care operators and the City of Vicksburg’s Buildings and Inspections department will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday at the department’s offices, 819 South St.