After nearly 20 years, the Palmer Home for Children’s stay at the former Mississippi Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch will soon come to an end.
The county board of supervisors voted Monday to approve the termination of Palmer Home’s lease agreement.
“It terminates their homeowner involvement for that piece of property, and they are turning it over to the county,” Board President Trip Hairston told the board during the meeting. “So they are releasing any lease they have on that property, effective July 1.”
Palmer Home has leased property from the county at the former Mississippi Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch on Motley Road since 2005, though it has not hosted programming for children there since relocating its main operations from Columbus to Hernando in 2019. The nonprofit’s use of the property has decreased since then, Hairston said.
In 2021, the county petitioned the chancery court to void the lease, given the property was falling into disrepair. Ultimately, both parties entered into a new lease, giving Palmer Home one year to resume residential programs for underprivileged children on the site.
In May, the Dream Center Golden Triangle pitched another use of the still-empty property to the board. The nonprofit hoped to sublet Palmer Home’s portion of the ranch to run a residential rehabilitation program for young adult women rescued from sex trafficking or exploitation on the property.
But a September 2022 chancery court order dictated Palmer Home, or a partner organization, use the property specifically “as a residential setting for underprivileged, abused or neglected children or children in similar situations.”
Palmer Home proposed an amendment to the lease that would allow The Dream Center to serve women between ages 18 to 25. But with the board undecided on approving the amendment, the nonprofit chose to terminate the lease instead.
“They felt like there was no use in that property anymore,” Hairston, who also serves on the Palmer Home board, told The Dispatch after the meeting. “So the county will have the use of that property, and it will be up to us to maintain, to mow and to do upkeep on the buildings.”
In April, the board voted to deed the majority of the 320-acre sheriffs ranch property — besides the 60 to 65 acres Palmer Home has been leasing — to the Lowndes County Industrial Development Authority to be marketed for development.
As for how the Palmer Home section will be used next, Hairston said it will be up to the board, keeping in mind that most of the property is now beholden to industrial development.
“We may get some … nonprofits that could use the (property) to benefit what the original intent was of that property in the beginning when it was the Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch,” he said. “We know that the balance of the property is industrial development property, so whatever happens … has to be mindful of a growing industrial area.”
‘Anywhere between half a million to a million’
The board of supervisors also received updates on the county’s hospital trust fund.
The trust was established with $30 million the county received from the sale of the county hospital in 2006. In 2013, state law changed to allow the county to invest a certain amount of the money in stocks and bonds.
Each budget year, the county may make a withdrawal of up to 3% of the value of the investments unless the balance goes down.
Hairston said the board is in a good position to make a withdrawal this year if the next few months go as planned. Typically, the board will have a valuation done on the trust in August to be prepared by September.
“If you can pull out around a million dollars give or take, you’ve had a good year, and we’ve not hit the corpus,” Hairston said. “That corpus went down a little bit with the lower valuations, and I think it’s $37 to $38 million now. We can’t go below that. Anywhere between half a million to a million, we’re very happy with it.”
Over the years, money from the hospital trust has been used for capital improvement projects, like constructing the health department building on Lehmberg Road and the Justice Court building on Martin Luther King Drive.
“If you think about what the growth is and what benefit that has been to use over time, you can see it’s a very good investment,” Hairston said.
“… It decreases the debt burden on the county, but it actually goes into something that provides infrastructure. … It’s not just paying recurring costs.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
