Video: City And County Leaders Talk Columbus Lowndes Recreation Agreement

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – One department or two? That was the question that brought Columbus and Lowndes County leaders to the table Monday morning.

At issue is the city and county agreement that is the heart of the Columbus Lowndes Recreation Authority.

County and city officials went back and forth for almost two hours expressing the why’s and why not’s of splitting from the agreement.

The city is against splitting, but the majority of the county supervisors are for it.

To split or to not split? Both sides voice their reasons as they pass off the microphone.

The Director of the Columbus Lowndes Recreation Authority, Greg Lewis, wants the county to reconsider their motion.

“It brings everybody together. I mean, if you’re going to, everybody comes in for the soccer program, and everybody plays together in the baseball program. Everybody plays together, so I think that togetherness is there, and as the attorney said earlier, when you start dividing, you weaken, and I do believe that it will weaken the program.”

Councilman Charlie Box feels like it’s a done deal, and fears the decision could have a domino effect.

“We have a lot of other local agreements. I think there’s like eight or nine inner local agreements with the county. My fear is, and I expressed this, is if you start picking away at one, some of the others might fall, and some of these things are critically important.”

Box also fears that breaking the partnership could break future project ideas, like the Field Of Dreams at Propst Park, a handicap facility for handicap children to play.

“We’ve got pretty close several times, but it’s been left off the table, as far as budgeting for it, so I’m kind of afraid that if we split, that’s going to be a casualty of this because we’re short of money.”

Supervisor Bill Brigham believes the city can do a better job running the parks alone, and splitting would benefit the 40,000 county residents.

“Ownership. When you take sole ownership of something, you have more pride in it. You take some action on your own. You want it to be the best that it can be, and I think partnership is one of the hardest things to make work, and I just think it’s time for the city to take ownership.”

Restructuring the current agreement is an idea, but Brigham doesn’t think it will change anything.

“It makes me think about some things, and I want to be very careful in what we do. I don’t want to compete with the city. I’m not trying to pull their kids out to the county, that’s the last thing I want to do, but there’s some things that we can offer maybe that we haven’t been able to offer together,” says Brigham.

Monday’s meeting is just the first step.

Any split of the department and the million dollar budget would take at least a year to happen.