County, city to get together on disaster plans|[05/05/07]

Published 12:00 am Saturday, May 5, 2007

Officials from Vicksburg will participate in emergency strategy sessions scheduled next week by Warren County Emergency Management Agency, a turnaround from the city’s saying last week it would craft its own plan.

The meeting arranged by agency director Gwen Coleman was in the works just before Mayor Laurence Leyens announced the city would create its own plan for emergency operations during natural disasters and manmade catastrophes.

Coleman told county supervisors she spoke with both the mayor and aldermen this week as &#8220a peace offering” to ease tensions and consternation about local emergency plans.

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&#8220He assured me they will be there,” Coleman said, adding they spoke about the number of critical facilities and functions to be considered in the county’s plan, the first phase of which was approved by supervisors in April.

The city has directed Anna Booth to help craft a city-specific plan and be the point of contact with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in times of emergency declarations.

Leyens said Friday that the city will contract with Vicksburg-based research firm Applied Research Associates Inc. to assist in drafting the plan.

&#8220We will work with (the county) but expect reciprocation,” he said. &#8220We’re going to build something first class.”

By state law, MEMA maintains communication with county-level emergency managers during crises, natural and man-made, not municipal. However, cities are still free to draft their own list of resources, functions and critical facilities if they so choose.

Supervisors have backed Coleman’s efforts in updating the county’s comprehensive plan, saying emergency plans by nature are merely inventories.

The effects of Hurricane Katrina, which was still a Category 1 storm when Warren County felt its effects, remains in the backdrop of all discussions.

&#8220The community that stayed here will pull together again and do fine,” District 5 Supervisor and Board President Richard George said.

In other business, the board briefly discussed a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration that said local governments on both sides of the state line that fund basic operations of the Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport are bound to agreements to do so until 2025.

Officials with the FAA’s Airports Division, Southwest Region, said six grants have been issued to the airport’s oversight authority since the agreement was signed in 1983, the last of which came in 2005.

The letter also confirmed a request by Vicksburg officials within the past six months to re-enter Vicksburg Municipal Airport into the systems of airports the federal agency funds.

It flatly refused the request, the letter said, because the regional facility at Mound became the &#8220airport of record” for Vicksburg, Warren County, Madison Parish and Tallulah when it was built for $6 million in 1993.

Airport authority members had been asked to come up with ways to delineate its long-term funding goals after the representatives of the four governments met in April. Vicksburg officials called the meeting to find ways to shorten the contract.

VTR was built for $6 million, with the FAA providing 90 percent of the funding.

It was conceived as a replacement facility for Vicksburg Municipal due to an FAA stipulation that said it would fund regional facilities but not municipal facilities. Another issue was that industrial development and terrain issues prohibited expansion of Vicksburg Municipal, which the city owns and funds.

It was saved from extinction from its industrial users when a lawsuit blocked the city from closing it following a 1998 vote to do so.

In October 2002, a ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court allowed the city to close the airport on U.S. 61 South, an option the city has chosen not to take.