TALLULAH – Tallulah Mayor Eddie Beckwith and city council members stood united Tuesday in opposition to an offer by Kansas City Southern to pay the city $250,000 to block four railroad crossings in the next four years.

At a pubic hearing before about 120 people at the Tallulah-Madison Parish Community Center, the council unanimously passed a resolution against accepting the offer, one which the Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development supports.

&#8220I asked them to come back to the table and let’s discuss their plans again,” Beckwith said. &#8220Still, I just don’t like things shoved down my throat.”

The defiant stance was echoed by all five council members, who saw the railroad’s offer as dictatorial.

&#8220If they have the power to do that, then why do we need a mayor or a city council? We can just all go home,” District 3 Councilman Eddie Fountain said.

With the vote, Tallulah is poised to be the first Louisiana city to force LDOTD to use its review authority under a law that was passed in Louisiana to speed up closings of grade rail crossings if they are perceived as safety hazards.

The railway has offered the city the money as an incentive to close the crossings, which are part of the most heavily traveled thoroughfares in downtown Tallulah. The crossings are at Massey Street and Lincoln Street, which KCS is willing to pay $50,000 to the city to close, as well as at Mulberry Street, which the railroad is offering $100,000 to close.

KCS is also tying a re-establishment of a crossing at Walnut Street if the Massey, Lincoln and Mulberry street closures take place and another one at Elm Street is closed.

Allen Pepper, director of public safety for KCS, appeared before the council along with Mark Suarez, systems engineer for LDOTD, to answer questions about the authority of the railroad and the state agency’s stance on the issue, which Suarez indicated as one of dollars and cents.

With the agency’s budget on upgrading gates and flashing lights at public crossings limited to an $8 million appropriation from the Federal Highway Administration, Suarez said, LDOTD has little choice but to partner with the railroad to close crossings on highways not maintained by the state.

Suarez said the push by the federal government to close crossings was strong. In response to questions about the program’s funding, Suarez agreed it is &#8220grossly underfunded.”

&#8220The issues of safety and convenience have to be weighed,” he said. &#8220We only have a thimbleful of money to take care of a bucketful of problems.”

In Louisiana, crossings are public if a non-private entity such as a city or parish owns both sides. Suarez said out of 9,079 total rail crossings, 3,250 are public. Of those, 1,331 do not have adequate cross arms or warning systems in the form of lights. The cost of installing those measures at all of them would cost the state up to $400 million.

As a result, he said, an effort is under way by LDODT to close certain crossings in Louisiana along the Interstate 20 corridor and along U.S. 171 between Shreveport and Lake Charles. In Monroe and West Monroe, he said, the cities have chosen to either move the lines or have &#8220quiet zones” instead of speed zones. These options are more challenging in smaller-sized cities like Tallulah because they lack enough land area to work with, Suarez said.

Pepper said the crossing closures were vital because of train traffic through Tallulah expected to increase from a daily average of 20 trains to 36, due in part to the company’s desire to create shorter, more efficient rail lines to the eastern United States and Mexico and the line between Meridian, Miss., and Shreveport becoming part of its joint venture with Norfolk Southern Corporation.

&#8220The chance for a collision drops 38 percent if (the crossings) are closed,” Pepper said.

Still, the council and a vast majority of the public who attended Tuesday night’s special called meeting took issue with the railroad and the state, questioning the right of both to close crossings with little power afforded to officials on the local level.

&#8220Everything you have said benefits the railroad and not Tallulah,” said resident James Bynum, in response to Pepper’s statistics on the closing’s impact.

Some took issue with how the railroad arrived at the total of its incentive package for closing the crossings, one that Pepper explained was determined by the nature of the work that needed to be done at each.

&#8220We have about 10,000 people living in Tallulah. What is $25 going to do for you?” said Tommy Watson, a former councilman who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in April, as he calculated a per-citizen rate of $250,000 the railroad is offering.

Mary Trichell, president of the Madison Parish Chamber of Commerce, also implored the council to pass the resolution against the closures.

A local governing body’s lone avenue of appeal, the request must be written to LDODT’s chief engineer within 15 business days of the city’s receipt of LDODT’s notice to close crossings. A rail safety reconsideration board made up of the secretary, chief engineer, and executive director of LDODT has to consider the request and issue a final decision within 15 business days of a city’s request to reconsider.

The process was written into a state law passed in 2005 that followed a deadly span of accidents involving vehicles trying to beat trains across tracks in Tangipahoa Parish in March 2004, when six people died.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, 68 motor vehicle accidents occurred on public crossings in Louisiana through September. Nineteen of them involved rail lines used by KCS, but all were protected by some form of warning system such as gates or lights.

In Mississippi, 52 motor vehicle accidents have occurred on public crossings during the same time frame. Eleven have happened on lines used by KCS, with all protected, including one in Vicksburg May 25 on Court Street involving a car that injured one and another July 24 at Depot Street involving one car and no injuries.