The decision last week by the Warren County Board of Supervisors and the expected concurrence Monday of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to go ahead with soil tests for proposed repairs to a slide area at Riverfront Park represents a commitment by city and county governments to try and keep the city’s most used park open for residents and tourists.

The city and county will split the $52,000 estimate from engineers Burns Cooley Dennis to determine the cause and recommend a plan to repair it.

Opened in 1994, the park is owned jointly by the city of Vicksburg and Warren County and features picnic pavilions, playgrounds, a view of the Mississippi River and until recently a walking trail, part of which was taken by the slide, which was discovered during the Easter holidays. A playground area and its equipment are also threatened by the slide.

Several areas of the park have been in disrepair over the past few years because neither local government had the money to fund anything but routine maintenance until recently, when the city’s financial picture improved and members of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen decided the time was right to dedicate the park’s $59,800 budget toward making improvements, and have been developing a plan to install additional parking, repave the park’s access road, replace the park’s plumbing, add more lighting, increase the number of trash containers and possibly add security cameras at the park.

All that, however, is on hold until the slide problem is addressed.

The two governments face a difficult decision once the engineer’s report is released. The biggest issue is whether the recommended repairs will be too expensive to perform, and that would leave city and county officials with a serious dilemma of either closing the park or relocating pavilions and equipment far enough from the river to eliminate or reduce the slide’s potential threat to the public.

Closing the park could be just as expensive — or more — as fixing the slide. As Vicksburg’s City Attorney Nancy Thomas pointed out to city and county officials at a joint meeting in the park two weeks ago, the requirements under the state Wildlife and Fisheries grant used to help develop the park require the city and county to purchase another tract of land in the county the same size as Riverfront Park to build a new park.

A lot is riding on the decision that will be based on test samples of soil and the numbers from machines installed in the earth to determine how fast and how far the ground along the slide’s fissure is moving. And any repairs will require the approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

With any luck, the tests will show a minor problem and the recommended repairs will affordable for both governments.

Either way, the city and the county will have a lot to consider. Hopefully, that decision will save the park future problems and allow it to continue as the major attraction it is.