The Board of Mayor and Aldermen will hold a May 17 work session to review a proposal from a Georgia-based company for a feasibility and marketing study for a proposed sports complex for the city and discuss the progress of upgrades to the city’s existing parks and recreation facilities.

South Ward Alderman Willis Thompson said Monday he has been talking with representatives from The Sports Force of Canton, Ga., about providing feasibility and design services. He said he first met company officials in Austin, Texas, in 2014 at a National League of Cities conference.

Thompson said the company provides consulting, design, construction and management services for sports complexes.

He said at the board’s Monday meeting the contract will include marketing and feasibility study, a design for a sports complex and an operations plan.

“What that does is give us some suggestions on some things that we should be doing locally; opportunities that we have not pursued, and also include an economic impact study,” he said.

“I’m a guy who likes to deal with numbers, and if you’re going to ask somebody to vote for something, I think we have to do our diligence and provide them accurate information to make an educated decision,” he said.

Thompson said the board understands the economic benefits of a sports complex and its contribution to the city’s present programs and its quality of life.

“I just want to collect the data and bring it all together in a paper to show us what are the possibilities in Vicksburg, and we’ll digest that further and then proceed forward with phase two,” he said. “Once we have the numbers, the data, and what’s available for Vicksburg, I think it would answer a lot of questions of how we proceed with this project.”

He said the report would also include a site analysis, adding he wants to know what property outside of the city’s Fisher Ferry site is available.

A report by Sunrise Beach, Mo.-based Diamante Global/JCI Holdings LLC, which the city hired in 2015 to do a feasibility study on the sports complex, recommended Fisher Ferry as a site for the project.

“I just want to know what’s available,” Thompson said. “We know what property we own, the Fisher Ferry (property), but I’m not stuck on that location. If we find some place better suited, I’m willing to make that suggestion. Also, but I think we first need to start with analyzing the data and studying the market and really seeing what our opportunities are.

“Sport tourism is a growing field and I don’t think we’ve tapped into it as much as we can.”

Thompson wanted to present the proposal at the board’s May 16 meeting, but Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said he wanted to call a work session to discuss it and other recreation issues.

“I don’t think I’m ready to vote on it,” he said. “I know I won’t be ready by the next meeting. I don’t think it’s fair to talk about a $20 million project without having some knowledge.

“The public is going to know everything I know going forward, because that’s what lost the other sports complex — trying to do things without being transparent.”

The mayor said the board needed to go slow with the project, be methodical “and make certain that we’re all on the same page, and certainly with the public driving the train and not the politicians.”

Thompson, who served on the site selection committee to find a site for the proposed sports complex, said the board had taken enough time, adding, “21/2 years is long enough. I’m only interested in the committee I’m on now (the board). We either need to go ahead with the sports complex or tell the public we had no intention of doing anything.”

Flaggs in May 2014 appointed an ad hoc committee on recreation to examine the city’s recreation facilities and programs that solicited and heard public comments about the need for a multipurpose recreation complex and what it should include.

When the committee released its report in December 2014, it recommended the city build a multipurpose recreation complex featuring baseball and softball fields, basketball, tennis and volleyball courts and a multipurpose building with an indoor pool on a 270-acre tract.

Diamante Global in April 2015 recommended the Fisher Ferry site for the proposed complex, and on April 20, 2015, Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill authorizing the city to levy a 2 percent food and beverage and hotel tax with the approval of the voters to finance the project.