Civic Corner: Board of Aldermen Recap PLUS Pinehaven Bridge Eminent Domain, Arrow Drive Lighting, & City Tourism Program
By Ricki Garrett, PhD, Alderwoman-at-Large
Mayor Fisher began the Board Meeting with a proclamation in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Hindu denomination in Jackson. Distract 2 Election Commissioner Bobbie Graves came before the Board to request that, since Precinct 5 Fire Station on Pinehaven had requested that it not be used as a voting place in future elections, that the Board of Aldermen give permission to use the Visitors Center as the voting precinct. The Board voted unanimously to approve this request.
The Department Head report was presented by Marlee Price, Director of Communications and Tourism. She announced that Clinton had been presented with a Scenic Communities Recognition Award. Director Price is currently attending marketing college and is enjoying the networking and information. It was recommended to her that Clinton work to become established as a DMO. She commented on the importance of data in tourism and the role that tourism plays in economic development.
The Mayor also called on Donna Yowell, who has been appointed by the Board of Aldermen to do a city-wide horticultural project, to update the Board. She said she had applied for a grant for the City and is working on three others. The first is unusual in that it would provide for the first pollination gardens or corridors in the United States and would be established on the interstate. This pollination corridor would draw beneficial insects to the area.
In early action, the Board approved authorization for the Mayor to enter into an agreement with Spy Gass Group to provide Telecom audit services for the City. The Board also declared a list of five recovered/abandoned vehicles the property of the Clinton Police Department, which will allow them to be sold. The Board of Aldermen also approved a Memorandum of Understanding between the Clinton Police Department and the Clinton Public Schools to provide School Resource Officers.
A final payment in the amount of $16, 604.51 to R&W Electric was approved for the Arrow Drive multi-use path proposed lighting project.
A request to consider a counteroffer by Rob Logan for right-of-way and temporary construction easement acquisition for the Pinehaven Bridge project was denied, with the Board of Aldermen voting to approve the original fair market value of the professional appraisers. In action related to other easement acquisitions for the project, the Board approved moving forward with eminent domain proceedings with Social Storm Properties, LLC and approved and ratified actions taken regarding moving forward with Gilbert Henderson and Kenneth Henderson for right-of-way and temporary construction easement acquisition for the Pinehaven Bridge project. The rationale is that heirs have not been located to provide approval for the easements.
The Board of Aldermen also approved the submission of small purchase letters to MDOT for CE&I services for the following projects: Arrow Drive pedestrian path lighting improvements; Springridge Road overlay; Clinton Boulevard overlay (College Street to Morrison Drive); Clinton Boulevard overlay (Morrison Drive to Shaw Road); and approved the selection of an engineering firm for each of these projects.
Payment was approved for the new pumper truck for the Fire Department in the amount of $734,560.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Space will be provided in each issue of The Clinton Courier to the Board of Aldermen for a recap of each meeting. Aldermen are asked to volunteer to provide this recap for the Courier.
City working to build tourism program
By Randy Bell
Marlee Price went back to school. Now, she’s ready to do some homework.
Clinton’s director of communications and tourism spent a week last month at the Southeast Tourism Society Marketing College at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, learning more about how to attract visitors to the city. And, while some of the strategies discussed were too advanced for a community that’s still taking baby steps in building a solid tourism program, Price says one immediate priority is to make Clinton eligible for some federal COVID relief funds earmarked for tourism.
“I recently discovered that you actually have to be a legal DMO or Destination Marketing Organization [in order to receive tourism funding],” Price says. “So, my first step will be to start that process. The second thing is to establish some next steps, to assess our current situation [and identify] the assets that we have. What do we have in our toolbelt and how can we use them?”
Price says, after that, the City will need to focus on branding its tourism image and doing a marketing campaign to push that brand out to potential visitors.
In addressing those three areas, she’ll be turning to experts for assistance.
“[I’ll be] working with someone to help us with the legal process of becoming a DMO, working with a destination marketing solutions company to do a destination analysis and give us some targetable objectives for tourism, and I’m also working with an agency in Hattiesburg to do some brand collateral, an extension of what they did for our website but shifted more to a ‘Visit Clinton’ perspective to drive people to Clinton, once we get those objectives in place.”
Tapping into data shedding light on the people who visit the city will be a key component in building a successful tourism program in Clinton. Price says that was one of the points that was hammered home at Marketing College.
“There is a lot of great data out there, and one thing they kept pushing is ‘data is King,’” she says.
But most of that information isn’t currently available to Clinton.
“From a tourism perspective, really, all we have to look at right now is how many people are staying in our hotels,” she says. “But what we don’t know is why those people are staying there.”
The hotel numbers don’t indicate if visitors are in the city for work-related reasons, if they’re here for a family reunion or if they’re simply tourists.
But through companies which specialize in the use of geolocation, the city could learn a lot more about those who visit Clinton.
“To tell us where people are coming from, how long they’re staying, where they’re going – and you can even get data to tell you how much money people are spending in your city and what they’re spending it on,” Price notes.
She says a recent snapshot from a data company was eye-opening.
“They did a six-month look at Clinton, and we had over 500,000 visits and over 68,000 organic visitors [who] may have visited a number of times. If they’re coming from fifty miles outside of Clinton, [they’re] considered a visitor.”
The leader of the Georgia city which hosts Marketing College gave Price and the other students something to think about regarding the revenue tourism generates.
“When the mayor of Macon got up to speak, one thing that he kept repeating was that, as mayor, he has been able to decrease taxes, because of the influx of money that tourism has brought to the city of Macon,” says Price. “I don’t think that’s something that people [realize]. It can actually [provide] tax relief when more money is pumped into your city from outside.”
She says it can also help to build the local tax base. According to Price, “Creating a place where people want to live starts with creating a place that people want to visit.”
City waits for word on next phase of Arrow Drive path lights project
By Randy Bell
The City of Clinton is closing the books on work that was done to light a portion of the Arrow Drive multi-use path, and it hopes to move ahead soon with the completion of the project, even though there are some who believe the lights are too bright.
At its June 18 meeting, the Board of Aldermen approved a final payment of $16,604.51 to R&W Electric Company of Meridian for the first seventy bollard lights, which were installed along the path from Pinehaven Drive to just west of the Clinton High School (CHS) campus. The work was paid for with money left over from $1 million in legislative funding, most of which was spent to pave Northside Drive.
The City is not yet accepting bids for adding lights along the remainder of the path, even though it’s gotten a $640,000 grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation to do so.
“We are still in the design/review process with MDOT,” says Consulting City Engineer Bill Owen. Clinton will contribute a local match of $180,000 for the installation of one hundred forty more lights from the edge of the CHS campus to Traceway Park.
But there could be some dark spots along the path. The National Park Service has been opposed to any lights being located on the Natchez Trace right-of-way, a position which, if it stands, could leave areas leading to and under the Parkway bridge without illumination.
Mayor Phil Fisher has called it “a safety issue,” saying he wants people to be able to walk under the bridge at night and not be fearful. Fisher says his request for the lights to be allowed has been sent up the chain of command at the Park Service.
But Ward 4 Alderman Chip Wilbanks says he’s heard comments from people complaining that there’s too much light along the path.
“Those lights are extremely bright,” Wilbanks said at the Board meeting. “It’s like a runway when you’re driving down there at night.”
Wilbanks asked Owen if dimmer bulbs could be used to reduce the amount of light, but the engineer said the project design dictated bright lights.
“There’s a certain amount of lumens you have to provide over a certain distance for safety on a multi-use path,” Owen said.
Eminent domain to be used for Pinehaven bridge project
By Randy Bell
The bridge in its current state has a 3 ton weight limit.
The City of Clinton has agreements from five property owners whose land is needed for the replacement of the Pinehaven Drive bridge over Bogue Chitto Creek. The City hopes to acquire the sixth and final parcel through eminent domain.
“It was a property that was owned by two brothers, and it’s my understanding that both of those are deceased,” says Consulting City Engineer Bill Owen. “And the right-of-way agent has not been able to contact any heirs to the property. So, that basically requires condemnation or eminent domain [to acquire the land].”
Owen says he’s been told by people familiar with eminent domain that it could be a two- to three-month process.
Even though the new all-concrete bridge and the road surface leading to it won’t be any wider than what’s there now, the additional land is needed because both the bridge and road will be higher, which requires a wider roadbed on the northbound and southbound approaches to the bridge.
This file photo from July 2023 shows the underside of the Pinehaven bridge and the repairs that were made to the rotted pilings.
“The reason for the property acquisition is because we’re having to raise the bridge about six feet to account for all of the regulations from FEMA and MDOT requirements to provide a certain amount of freeboard [additional space for floodwaters to flow] underneath the bridge,” Owen says.
Appraisers hired by the City had set fair market values for each of the six pieces of property. The owners of three of the parcels had already accepted the City’s offers prior to the June 18 Board of Aldermen meeting.
Owen was notified during the meeting that a fourth owner had done so, and the fifth property owner agreed to accept an offer after the Board rejected his counter-offer. Rob Logan said he was being paid less per acre than a neighboring property owner for identical land.
After the meeting, Ward 1 Alderwoman Karen Godfrey said she was concerned about setting a precedent if the City didn’t stick to the fair market values the appraisers had established.
“If you’re going to hire professionals, you have to take their opinion once they have given you a report,” said Godfrey. “It makes us liable if we don’t go with their recommendations.”
As to Logan’s complaint, Godfrey suggested it’s not as cut and dried as it might seem.
“It’s not really a price per acre,” said Godfrey. “It’s how much [taking a parcel of land] diminishes the value of the property [from which it was taken]. And that’s what [the appraisers] were looking at.”
Bridge repairs being made in July 2023
Last year, MDOT awarded the City more than $5 million to replace the bridge, with the money coming from the Emergency Road and Bridge Fund. Clinton has been told that a local cost share will not be needed, as long as the project comes in under estimate.
Knowing that a new bridge was required but that efforts were needed to keep the old one viable a little while longer, the City paid a contractor more than $83,000 last July for a temporary fix, splicing rotten piles to reinforce the bridge, which is almost sixty years old.
Owen says he believes it’s served the City (and, prior to the area being annexed, Hinds County) well.
“If you consider that the bridge was built, I think, in 1967, even with timber piles, it’s had a pretty substantial lifetime,” he says.
Now, attention is focused on the replacement project.
According to Owen, “Once we acquire all the property and get our final approval from [the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality], we’ll be ready to advertise, conceivably by the end of the year.”
“[The] construction timeline, I’m guessing, will be at least six to nine months.”
Owen reminds the public that there’s a three-ton weight limit on the old bridge.
“Heavy trucks don’t need to be using it,” Owen warns. “I know they still do. [And] a heavy truck could go across it and force it to be closed before we’re ready.”
Once the work begins to replace the bridge, Pinehaven Drive from Williamson Road to Kickapoo Road will be closed. Drivers who take the detour using Williamson, Clinton-Tinnin and Kickapoo roads will be traveling almost four miles out of their way.
