Supervisors delay action on Kings Point Ferry request
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Today’s scheduled seaworthiness inspection of Kings Point Ferry will not be accompanied by a request by Warren County supervisors to lower the certification level required for pilots.
In December, supervisors asked their attorney, Paul Winfield, to ask the U.S. Coast Guard, which sets operational standards and is to conduct today’s inspection, whether a qualified operator could steer the push boat and barge across the Yazoo Diversion Canal instead of a master pilot, a move that would lower the ferry’s payroll.
The request will be made, but not today, said Richard George, board president. Supervisors rehired former board attorney Randy Sherard.
Separately, supervisors are seeking a modified court order to reduce ferry hours. An order handed down in 1997 mandated 15-hour days. Operating hours on the ferry were changed Tuesday to 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. from a previous schedule of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Principals in M&M Property, LP, a landowning group on Kings Point Island, sought a contempt citation in August after the county reduced hours to 12 following an illness of one of three certified pilots. A settlement was reached, but afterward the county decided to seek a change in the order. The case is before 15th District Chancellor Ed Patten because Vicksburg-based 9th District Chancellor Vicki Roach Barnes has recused herself.
Kings Point was cut off from the mainland of Warren County when the Yazoo Diversion Canal was dug in 1903. It floods easily during high stages on the Mississippi River. Hunting and row crop tree farming have dominated the area in recent years.
Spending in the Road Department for the ferry was to run about $365,000, including fuel, according to this year’s budget. Spending in the past decade has reached more than $3 million, according to the county’s filing in the current chancery case.
The current vessel cost more than $600,000 when it was purchased in 2005. Alternatives to water-borne transportation to the island had centered on a levee road, but officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told supervisors in December an on-again, off-again levee project study is short of funding and returned more than $124,000 in matching money the county had paid for the report.
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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.