OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — If Starkville wants to have pickleball in the county’s safe room, the city will have to pay for it.
Supervisors on Monday delayed approving a pickleball usage agreement with the city that has been in the works for weeks, despite having a revised interlocal agreement draft in hand.
The original draft of the agreement would have allowed the city’s parks department to manage indoor recreation in the safe room between emergencies. Chiefly, the plan is to set up temporary markings and netting for pickleball, since the facility is right across the street from outdoor pickleball courts recently completed at McKee Park. In return, the city would split the cost of utilities, which were about $5,000 in 2022.
However, an updated draft would require the city to also pay up to $25,000 for safety and maintenance requirements in the building. This includes sharing costs to seal the safe room’s floor, build an outdoor awning and splitting costs for acoustic solutions.
“They wanted us to have what they would perceive to be some ‘skin in the game,’ so we had to come up with a certain amount of funding that we thought we would support them with as well as sharing in utilities,” Mayor Lynn Spruill told The Dispatch. “So I would like to think that that will be satisfactory for them once they have the chance to look at it.”
In a text message sent Tuesday evening to The Dispatch, Spruill noted she thought the city and county reached this understanding on sharing costs, even though city citizens already pay a significant percentage of county taxes.
“I think it is important for your readers to know that the city residents share in the costs of county expenses since we provide roughly 64% of the county’s general fund budget through our ad valorem taxes as county residents,” she wrote.
County board attorney Rob Roberson told The Dispatch some of the supervisors met with Spruill last week to discuss the changes.
Roberson presented the updated version of the agreement to the board on Monday.
Still, supervisors voted to wait on approval until after County Administrator Delois Farmer and Emergency Management Director Kristen Campanella could review the new terms.
“Our county administrator just wants to be able to look at the contract and make sure in the fine print that everything is good,” District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery told The Dispatch. “… I think we shored up all those issues, and she just wants to take a good look at the contract. Then we may be able to take action on it at our next board meeting.”
The $2 million safe room, completed in 2019, is designed to protect up to 1,500 people during an emergency. County officials said up to this point it has been used exclusively for emergencies and as an election precinct, though also using it as a multipurpose space has been discussed since it was built.
Board President Orlando Trainer said county employees generally open the safe room to the public when there is an alert from the Mississippi Emergency Management Association. These openings are typically announced on the county website and to citizens through the county’s Code Red system.
“It’s been open mostly for weather-related events,” Trainer said. “… That could be extreme heat, extreme cold or any other kind of severe weather.”
On Monday, Roberson reassured supervisors the county would retain absolute rights over the usage of the space. He also said the facility’s usage as a safe space for emergency situations will take precedence over everything else.
“Any bad weather event will supersede any use, whether they leased it or not,” Roberson told The Dispatch. “It will be a part of the contract in the future that it will still be available for those bad weather events.”
Spruill said she is disappointed in the supervisors’ delay, but she is still looking forward to making the safe room available for residents of the city and the county.
“I feel sure that once they become comfortable with the concept, they will let us take an underutilized facility and make it perform in multiple ways for … our respective constituents,” Spruill said.
Roberson said the contract with the city would be separate from future contracts with other entities, but a general usage contract for the safe room does not exist yet. The board charged Roberson with creating a general contract for other entities that want to rent the storm shelter in the future.
Supervisors on Monday did approve a request from the Starkvegas Juneteenth Committee for Unity to host a health fair in the safe room this summer, even without that general contract in place. Farmer said she would be present to monitor the event.
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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 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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