The City of Vicksburg offers no recreation programs for its citizens, its facilities are antiquated, insufficient and at times inaccessible, and it’s time for a multi-purpose recreation facility supported and funded by the city and Warren County. 

That was the verdict offered by 35 residents attending the first of three public hearings held by the city’s ad hoc recreation committee Thursday night at Warren Central High School to get the residents’ opinions and suggestions about the city’s recreation programs and facilities. Several in the group said the city should also upgrade its present facilities.

“There’s so much we can do to make Vicksburg’s facilities better,” said Warren Guider, one of the residents attending the hearing. He said he has seen facilities across the state. “We’re far behind everyone else. We’re driving a Model T and everyone else is driving Lincolns and Cadillacs.”

The committee has two more hearings scheduled at Warren Central for Thursday and Sept. 18. Both will be at 5:30 p.m.

Committee member Linda Fondren said she had hoped more people would have attended the hearing, and urged the residents to bring others to the next hearings.

“We’ve got to get hold of people and bring as many people as we can,” she said. “From the bottom of our hearts, we want to see this (a recreation complex) become a reality, we really do. We’re going to take advice and everything you give us and include it in our report to the board.

“There’s so many questions that we’ve got to get answered and things we’ve got to look at before we turn this in to the board on Dec. 31.”

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen appointed the 11-member recreation committee in May to examine the city’s recreation programs and facilities and look at the feasibility of building a multi-purpose recreation complex. The hearings are part of the committee’s efforts to get residents’ concerns about the city’s recreation programs and their suggestions about activities and facilities that need to be provided by the city.

Thursday, several residents said the city needs a new swimming pool located somewhere other than the present site at City Park on Army Navy Drive, adding it should be a year-round facility.

Complaints about the pool included concerns over safety, pool hours, and the quality of the facility.

“Our pool is olympic in size, but not in quality,” one person said.

“We need to cover our pool for year-round use,” Guider said. “Our pool is closed right now. We’ve got summertime here until October.”

Wayne Mansfield, a member of the Vicksburg Swim Association board, said safety concerns would discourage people from going to the pool at night if it remained at its present site.

“It (the pool) needs to be centrally located,” he said.

Other comments centered on the lack of safe equipment at the city’s 25 neighborhood playgrounds, the need for an enclosed multi-purpose facility for events like gymnastics, volleyball and basketball, inadequate parking at all city facilities and a lack of sites where teams can practice.

“We need to build our facilities around the programs we provide,” Mansfield said.

Other criticism was leveled at the rift between the city and the county on recreation.

 

The board in October approved a resolution asking the Warren County Board of Supervisors to meet and discuss consolidating city and county recreation facilities and programs. The supervisors have yet to agree to a meeting.

“The turf war between the city and the county has got to stop,” committee member Rowdy Nosser said. “That turf war has set this community back 50 years. And it’s the same turf war they constantly go back to. That’s what you’re fighting against (to improve recreation).

“There’s got to be come motivation. The city and county have got to be motivated and not waste our time making recommendations,” he said. “There’s no motivation between the county and the city.”

That motivation, Fondren said, lies with the people. “You have the vote,” she said.

“They (the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and the Board of Supervisors) should come together if we are to move this city past where it is right now,” Fondren said. “There’s a formula they can come up with to make it work for the city and county.”

She added members of the city and county boards all agree “they want the best for this community. So we’ve got to find what works.”

“In all the communities we’ve talked to about their facilities, the people have been behind them,” she said. “We are so impressed with what the other cities have that we get discouraged when we come back here.

The committee first met on June 5, and began discussions that indicated a move toward a multipurpose recreation complex, marking the third time a recreation complex for the city has been discussed.

In 2003, the city bought the 200-acre Fisher Ferry Road property near St. Michael Catholic Church for a sports complex for $325,000. The project was abandoned in 2009 after an additional $2.7 million had been spent for preliminary plans, engineering and dirt work. The city has spent $55,343 since August 2012 to replace the concrete in the drainage chutes on the site with riprap and grout under a Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality mandate.

The board in March put the property up for sale for a 90-day period, but there were no takers.

Former mayor Winfield in 2012 promoted an estimated $20 million sports complex funded by a half-cent sales tax. Flaggs, who was a state legislator at the time, opposed the project because he said there were too many uncertainties with it. The project died when the chairman of the House Local and Private Committee refused to introduce the bill.