Mayor Paul Winfield and North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, the two City Board members who voted to increase sales tax in Vicksburg to build a sports complex, disagreed late Tuesday on why the proposal failed in the Legislature.

“People have got to share the responsibility of educating the public on the program and putting it out of the realm of politics where some local leaders failed to step up to the plate,” Winfield said.

Mayfield said the plan to raise taxes to cover $20 million for a proposed complex to be developed on an undetermined site should have involved the public a lot sooner than it did.

“This thing got off on the wrong foot and stayed on the wrong foot all through the process,” he said. “We needed to have brought in the community on the front end instead of the rear.

“We should have appointed a committee and let them do their homework and the legwork and kept the politics out of it,” said Mayfield, who voted along with Winfield to seek legislative approval to hold a city election on a referendum to increase the city 7 percent sales taxes by ½ percent to raise up to $20 million for the complex. “It would have put a different set of eyes on it and kept the elected officials out of it.”

South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman, who voted against the tax, declined to comment Tuesday.

It was Beauman’s vote, combined with a general opposition to tax increases, that influenced House Local and Private Committee Chairman Joseph L. Warren, D-Mount Olive, to kill the bill in his committee, thereby killing it in the House.

Sen. Perry Lee, R-Mendenhall, chairman of the Senate Local and Private Committee, killed the bill in his committee, citing the same reasons.

“The feeling in the House has been not to vote for tax increases because we are still in a recession,” Warren said.

He said his committee killed eight bills proposing tax increases before Vicksburg’s was introduced Friday.

Stephanie Gilliam, a parent whose son plays tournament baseball and soccer, said city officials should have done a better job of telling the people about the project.

Gilliam was one of nearly 20 people who posted on Facebook Tuesday their disappointment with the legislation’s death.

“A lot of people I talked to didn’t know about it,” she said. “There was nothing about it unless you read the paper or Facebook. I would have paid the extra taxes, and my friends would have paid the extra taxes to have something nice here. It would have cost more up front, but it would have paid for itself in more hotel and restaurant business.”

“They (the board) moved too fast. If everybody’s interested in what’s best for Vicksburg, everybody needs to get together and work on the same page,” restaurant owner Rowdy Nosser said. “If you’re not for what’s best for the children, what are you for?”

The board on April 16 voted 2-1 to send a resolution to the Legislature seeking authority to levy the sales tax increase to fund up to $20 million for the sports complex, if 60 percent of voters approved the measure in a referendum.

During his campaign for the complex, Winfield was criticized for not providing sufficient information about the complex, including plans and a proposed location.

The plan received mixed support from the city’s chapter of the Mississippi Restaurant and Hospitality Association and the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau Board of Directors.

The association said it supported the sports complex project and would support the sales tax if hotels and restaurants were exempt. The VCVB Board said in March it supported the sports complex but not the sales tax.

Rep. Alex Monsour said Tuesday he believes the legislation would have passed if it had made it to the House floor because it required a referendum and the tax would have been repealed when the sports complex was paid off.

Sen. Briggs Hopson III and Rep. George Flaggs, the balance of Warren County’s delegation, declined to comment Tuesday.

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 was 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.