Mayor Paul Winfield’s plans to fund a sports complex with a citywide ½ percent sales tax increase have been postponed while members of the county’s legislative delegation review a request for permission to put the issue before the city’s voters.

Winfield said Tuesday he will introduce the resolution at the City of Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting scheduled for Monday, after the legislators have read over and edited it.

“We want to make sure that it’s in the right form to present,” he said, adding the resolution was emailed Tuesday to state Sen. Briggs Hopson III and state Reps. Alex Monsour and George Flaggs Jr.

Winfield wants to levy the sales tax increase to fund a loan of up to $20 million to develop a sports complex on land outside the city limits in Warren County.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Monday met with Monsour and Flaggs to discuss the sales tax plan. Flaggs told the board he wanted a package that includes the tax’s economic impact, proposed plans for the complex and the composition of the advisory committee that will recommend the site and the complex’s facilities. Winfield said the package would be ready Thursday.

He went to the citywide ½ percent sales tax increase after the Warren County Board of Supervisors did not endorse his plans for a countywide sales tax increase.

If the Legislature approves a bill to allow a vote in Vicksburg, 60 percent of voters would have to vote for it before the tax could be assessed.

The city in 2003 bought a 200-acre tract on Fisher Ferry Road for a sports complex for $325,000. City officials abandoned the project in 2009 after spending an additional $2.7 million for preliminary plans, engineering and dirt work.

Winfield has said the Fisher Ferry site is not suitable, saying part of the property, including the access route, is in a flood zone.

In 2007, the city board hired USA Partners Sports Alliance of Jacksonville, Fla., for $250,000 to determine the feasibility of a proposed $25 million sports complex at Halls Ferry Park, including Bazinsky Field, proposed by the Aquila Group of Vicksburg. It would have included baseball and softball fields and related amenities, a water park, a baseball stadium/ballpark and facilities for golf, soccer, volleyball, tennis and other activities. The Aquila Group would lead the construction and management of the fields and sports facilities.

The project died after a study by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality found the site was not suitable because part of Halls Ferry Park was built on what was once the city’s landfill.

Under an agreement between the city and USA Partners, which was hired after the Aquila Group approached the city, the company would return the $250,000 feasibility study cost to the city if the complex did not materialize. More than four years later, the city has not been reimbursed.