A late applicant effectively saved the Columbus Historic Preservation Commission from temporarily losing its authority to act.
Assistant Fire Chief Mark Ward applied for commission appointment Tuesday, hours before the city council was slated to appoint members to four-year terms.
Up until that point, the city had only received two applicants to fill six vacancies, which would have left the commission with a total of five members. The commission’s bylaws require a minimum of six members and maximum of nine.
Ward, who is restoring a home he recently bought at 218 Seventh Ave. S., joins local Realtor Ann Davis as a new member on the commission. The council also reappointed longtime member Joseph Boggess.
“I kept seeing there was no one applying, so I decided I wanted to serve,” Ward told The Dispatch after Tuesday’s council meeting. “I love downtown, and I have a lot of interest in this.”
Carolyn Kaye, Fred McCaleb and Keith Gaskin are also on the Historic Preservation Commission.
Five commission members — including chair John Hudson, Bryan Brown, Sid Caradine, Mike Lowery and Betty Miller — did not apply for reappointment. The city council on Tuesday discussed the prospect of reaching out to those members to see if at least three of them would stay on for one more term.
Chief Operations Officer David Armstrong said he would contact each of them, but he didn’t know how far he’d get.
“All those individuals have given many years of service,” Armstrong said. “They didn’t have any interest in being reappointed.”
The Historic Preservation Commission oversees projects in the city’s designated historic preservation district downtown, dealing mostly with exterior renovations and signage. For instance, a business owner seeking to renovate a building exterior in the designated district must first present plans to the commission for approval. Once the commission rules, its decision is final unless appealed to the city council.
Ward 6 councilman Bill Gavin said he is pleased the commission will remain operational. Over the years, he said, the commission had balanced a strong commitment to preserving the aesthetic heritage of downtown while also being mindful of how costly it could be for property owners to adhere to rules that were far too stringent.
“The Historic Commission does a good job,” Gavin said. “We have to protect our heritage, but we have to do it within reason. Day in and day out, they balance that pretty well.”
First Riverwalk extension contract approved
On Tuesday, the council also approved engineering and project supervision contracts for the Riverwalk extension project that seeks to extend a multi-use path from Riverside Park to the Columbus Air Force Base. The project will also include an amphitheatre on the south end of the trail.
The city hopes to ultimately complete a $25 million project for the 14-mile trail extension and amphitheatre, and the legislature provided $2.25 million in this year’s session to get the project started.
The council awarded Neel-Schafer a contract for $150,000 to craft a master plan for the project, plus six percent of the total project value for civil engineering services. Project management firm J5 Broaddus will also receive a six-percent share for overseeing the project.
This year, city engineer Kevin Stafford said he’d like to complete the master plan, begin trail construction to where it extends under the Tombigbee bridge and begin design and preconstruction for the amphitheatre. He said the Mississippi Department of Transportation had verbal agreed to provide $250,000 toward the project for beginning trail construction.
Once the master plan is completed, Stafford said the Army Corps of Engineers — which owns 60 percent of the property needed to complete the trail — would need $75,000 to conduct a 12-18-month review of the plan.
Mayor Robert Smith said progress this year would be critical for receiving future state funding for the project.
“We need to show some progress before we go back to the state and ask for more funding,” he said.
In other business, the council:
■ denied, by a 5-1 vote, a request from Cindy Lawrence to sell beer at Sim Scott Park during the Juneteenth Festival (ward 5’s Kabir Karriem voted in favor);
■ approved publishing a joint newsletter twice annually with City, Light and Water at a shared cost of $9,000 per year;
■ gave the Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority an additional $1,200 to hire someone to oversee summer programs at East Columbus Gymnasium;
■ canceled its elevator service contract with Otis Elevator Company and entered a service agreement with Bagby Elevator Company;
■ approved beginning the right-of-way land acquisition for the Catfish Alley Improvement Project;
■ hired two police officers and one firefighter pending medical examination and drug screening.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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