The city council on Tuesday will face a question it has delayed for several months: Which comes first, naming the fledgling fossil park or setting a policy for naming any city facility?
Since announcing the effort in November to build an estimated $700,000 fossil park at the Luxapalila Creek near Propst Park, Greg Lewis, the city’s parks and recreation director, and Susan Wilder, the city’s grant administrator, have heavily hinted it should be named for the late Jack Kaye, a well-respected geologist and Columbus native.
During Thursday’s work session at City Hall, the two turned their hints into a formal request.
“At one of our initial meetings at the Lux, everybody referred back to him,” Lewis said Thursday of the committee helping plan the park.
Lewis noted George Phillips, paleontology curator at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and member of the fossil park committee, credits Kaye as his inspiration for going into the field.
“He’s more than worthy of the fossil park being named after him,” Lewis said of Kaye.
“There are a lot of people who knew him and respected him,” Wilder added.
If “The Dr. Jack Kaye Cretaceous Fossil Park” name gains council approval, Mayor Keith Gaskin said it would draw attention and prestige to the project that could more easily capture grant dollars.
The sediments at the creek date back about 80 million years ago to the Cretaceous Period.
One problem, though, is the city has no policy for naming facilities other than roadways. City Attorney Jeff Turnage has advised the council over the past several months to set a policy for naming any facility before settling on a moniker for the fossil park.
Such a policy, he said, would address issues like whether to only name things posthumously or allow a facility to bear the name of someone living.
“There’s all that and there’s also naming rights,” Turnage told The Dispatch. “Should we get paid when we name? I know universities do it that way. They don’t just put a name on (something) just because someone’s a good guy. They usually get a few million dollars.”
Kaye, who died in 2012, was a decorated World War II pilot who taught geology and earth science at both Mississippi State University and Mississippi University for Women. He was among the first to find authenticated dinosaur fossils in the Luxapalila Creek, according to information Lewis disseminated at the work session, and those fossils are on display at various museums.
Lewis also noted Kaye loved to take children fossil hunting, especially in Lowndes County creeks.
“His passion behind his family was geology and finding fossils and rocks,” Lewis said.
Despite Turnage’s advice to form a naming policy first, he said that isn’t mandatory. The council can name the fossil park at its discretion, then form a policy later.
He was clear he doesn’t have a problem naming the fossil park for Kaye.
“I’m open to it if it is going to help the city get grant money and expose the fossil park to more favorable publicity,” Turnage said. “I don’t see why not.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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