The city is still in the running for a $20 million grant that would build an $8 million multipurpose facility on part of the old Kerr-McGee Superfund site and improve more than 400 homes in the surrounding neighborhoods.
It would also provide more than $1.2 million in salaries and benefits for Memphis Town Community Action Group staff over three years, including $221,000 for its executive director – a position currently held by independent mayoral candidate Darren Leach.
Leach told The Dispatch on Friday he would step down from his CAG position if he is elected mayor in June.
“This is a big job,” he said. “You can’t do both.”
The city applied in February 2024 for a $20 million Community Change Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, partnering with the CAG, Columbus Community Housing Development Organization and East Mississippi Community College on a plan to revitalize the Memphis Town Community. At the center of this community is about 90 acres once occupied by a cross-tie mill that contaminated the ground with creosote. An effort, led by the EPA and the Greenfield Multistate Trust, to clean up that property for redevelopment has been ongoing since 2014.
But questions have swirled lately around the grant, specifically the administrative and equipment costs it would fund.
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones, who is also running for mayor, questioned city grant writer Susan Wilder about some of those specifics Tuesday during a city council meeting. He also dug in on why the city’s application was “denied” and resubmitted.
Wilder, who couldn’t readily provide details to Jones, wasn’t on the city’s payroll until July. Chief Operations Officer Jammie Garrett submitted the city’s grant application. While that application wasn’t awarded, both Wilder and Mayor Keith Gaskin explained it scored well enough that the EPA gave the city an opportunity late last year to strengthen and resubmit it. The city hopes to know by spring whether funding will come, officials said.
Jones, along with Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Stewart and Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard, have also publicly cast doubt on whether anything should be built on any part of the old Kerr-McGee site.
Gaskin said Friday while he believes the pushback is misguided – based on “rumors” and inaccurate information – he hopes its basis is genuine concern for the citizens.
Leach believes the resistance is political posturing. Further, he said the details of the application have long been public and he can “defend everything in the grant.”
“Listening to them talk about this grant and this property displays a clear lack of understanding,” Leach said. “(That is) cleared up if you have good-faith conversations.
“It’s almost like what we’re looking at is the ‘gotchas’ as opposed to what is good about this,” he added. “… It’s almost like we don’t want to get (the grant), which is weird to me. … Who, in their right mind, would say, ‘I don’t want to get money to help them because I don’t understand your whole grant?’”
What’s in the grant?
The $8.1 million central resilience hub and multiplex is the largest single expense in the grant. That would serve as a storm shelter and community center. The 36,000 square-foot facility would sit on part of the old Kerr-McGee Pine Yard property that EPA has deemed developable and that the Greenfield Multistate Trust has agreed to deed to the city for that purpose.
Another $2.75 million would go to the Columbus Community Housing Development Organization, a nonprofit arm of Columbus Housing Authority, to build 15 solar-powered homes in the project area. Applicants would have to live in the project area, own their home and meet certain income requirements, Leach said. This initiative would “dovetail” with the city’s Blight Elimination Program, by replacing blighted homes that are torn down.
The CAG would receive just less than $6.1 million, most of which would support programs to retrofit home roofs with solar panels, weatherizing and upgrading residents’ HVAC, plumbing and sewage. These programs would be available through subgrants to residents who apply.
About $200,000 will go to small storm shelters for residents with limited mobility, and $600,000 would fund EMCC apprenticeships, as well as high school and college interns, to do the work.
Another $1.2 million for personnel management and staffing would fund the CAG executive director’s salary and benefits to “oversee these projects,” Leach said, as well as salaries and benefits for an office manager, finance manager and various project managers.
About $117,000 is set aside for CAG office space rental, with another $38,000 earmarked for office supplies (computers, printers, etc) and furniture that Gaskin said the CAG could keep after the three-year grant term ended.
The city would hire a grant coordinator for $75,000 per year plus benefits (a total cost of $285,750 over three years) to assist Wilder, Leach said. Wilder’s annual salary to coordinate all other city grants is $65,000.
“A grant this size requires its own facilitator to make sure all the people who have to get paid (do) because the city is responsible for all of that,” he said.
The grant sets aside $1 million for “indirect costs,” which Leach said are contingencies that must be reported if the money is spent, as well as $350,000 for EMCC to create classroom training for apprentices.
A governing board, made of members appointed by the city and each community partner, will provide additional transparency, Leach said, holding regular public meetings to report on finances and project progress.
Jones: Let the people vote
The Memphis Town project area lies almost entirely in Wards 4 and 5.
Still, Jones admits he doesn’t entirely trust the CAG, or the grant, and that mistrust predates him and Leach entering this year’s mayor’s race.
He felt a lot of the details, like the CAG getting to keep office equipment from the grant, were unclear and “I knew there was a lot in there for administrative costs.”
For Jones, he’s more concerned about the city taking ownership of part of the pine yard, building a facility there and EPA discovering 15 years later the ground was more contaminated than it thought.
“I don’t feel like putting that kind of liability on the city,” Jones said. “I’ve always told them, I would not be comfortable taking the land. I think it should be on the ballot for the people to decide.”
Beard’s problem isn’t with the CAG or the grant, he said. He thinks the EPA has more work to do before a shelter/community center is built on the Pine Yard.
“The grant is a great grant, don’t get me wrong,” Beard said. “It has great things in the grant. But when it comes to the portion about the Kerr-McGee site, I’m not for anything over there until it’s all clean. There’s no bad blood with the CAG. I’m all for clean energy, solar energy, whatever type of energy you want to bring down here. But as far as building stuff that kids will play on on that site, I’m not for it.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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