The Crawford Elementary School gym is getting a new floor. But not the kind its district county supervisor Jeff Smith would like to see.
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Friday morning to purchase a multi-purpose floor for the gym at an estimated cost of $39,400. Smith and District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks were the two dissenting votes.
The renovation of the gym is funded through a $350,000 bond package approved by the state Legislature last year. The reconstruction of the site is expected to reach completion in May.
In an early February meeting, the board postponed the decision on the gym floor and directed County Parks and Recreation Department Director Roger Short to present more detailed floor plans and cost analysis. Smith opposed having a multi-purpose floor at the time and suggested a hardwood floor would better fit the gym.
During Friday’s meeting, Bruce Gleneck, owner of Memphis-based athletic flooring company Sports Floors who came at Smith’s invitation, told the supervisors that the choice of flooring boils down to how long the floor is expected to last.
Some people may soon get tired of the plastic floor and replace it, he said, whereas a hardwood floor lasts about 75 years, which saves money in the long run.
“It’s gonna cost you roughly $2,200 per year to have that (plastic) floor, because you are going to pull it up in a certain amount of time,” he said. “Hardwood floors would cost you $1,000 a year.”
But County Parks and Recreations Director Roger Short still recommended the Sport Court multi-purpose floor. He said refinishing a hardwood floor would cost $5,200 a year, a cost a multi-purpose floor would not generate.
District 2 Supervisor Trip Hairston opposed the idea of a hardwood floor, expressing concerns of the difficulty to protect the floor in a public facility.
“It’s gonna cost us extra maintenance every year to do a hardwood floor,” Hairston said.
Smith told The Dispatch Friday afternoon that hardwood floor isn’t a must. However, he said, he doesn’t think plastic floors are of good quality.
“It’s slippery. … I can go on and on,” Smith said. “It’s a cheap product. Cheap products provide cheap results.”
During the meeting, Brooks said the situation has developed into an “adversarial” relationship between Smith and Short. Smith responded by saying that his criticism was “strictly professional,” but said county supervisors should not fall down “the rabbit hole of listening to our department heads.”
Board president Harry Sanders said it was Short’s job to make recommendations on the flooring. He later cut Smith short by moving to approve the purchase of the multi-purpose floor, which gained three votes. The order was placed Friday afternoon, he told The Dispatch.
“We’ve gone on and on,” Sanders said. “The longer we wait, the more (the gym is) going to be out of service.”
Smith countered by abstaining from every vote at the meeting thereafter.
“I think (the decision is) being forced upon our community,” he said. “I don’t see that I have a voice for the town of Crawford.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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