The Greenwood City Council will have another vote Monday on a request to the state Legislature for a 2 percent lodging tax to fund the renovation of the Russell Building.
“We’re bringing it back up. I think we can have a unanimous vote,” said Mayor Carolyn McAdams.
The special call meeting will be at noon in the council’s chambers in City Hall.
The council will also vote on a proposed 3-percent raise for city employees.
Last Tuesday, the council voted 5-1 to approve the proposed tax increase. The money would help fund the renovation of the Russell Building for a period of five years.
McAdams said the measure, if approved by both houses of the Legislature and signed by Gov. Phil Bryant, still requires a public referendum before it could be implemented.
The lodging tax increase is seen as a way to secure funds for economic development projects without using to taxpayer funds.
The proposal has been sent to the Legislature twice before. Both times it passed the state Senate but was defeated in the House of Representatives.
McAdams has made renovation of the nearly 100-year-old Russell Building a centerpiece of her downtown revitalization efforts.
She and other tourism advocates such as Bill Crump, chairman of the Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation, have said the building could be used as a convention center and offer office space for entities such as the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau or Main Street Greenwood.
The lone vote in opposition was Ward 7’s Carl Palmer, who at the time claimed the Russell Building was dilapidated.
“I can see spending a lot of money on that building to get it where it needs to be. Personally, I just don’t see that being the smartest way to go,” Palmer said last Tuesday.
According to McAdams, Palmer later indicated that he didn’t want to hold up progress, so a second vote of the council was scheduled.
Palmer did not return phone messages Friday.
Ward 6’s David Jordan, an longtime opponent of the proposal ,was not present Tuesday. He was in Jackson, where he serves as a state senator.
Council records show that Palmer and Jordan were both absent when the council voted on the proposal in 2011 and 2012.
McAdams’ hope for a unanimous vote isn’t likely if Jordan attends Monday’s meeting.
“I’m against awarding this for the Russell Building. I’m not against a tourism tax,” Jordan said Thursday from Jackson.
Jordan said he would like to see the tourism tax be used for the construction of a entirely new building.
“I’m not for pouring money in a sinkhole,” Jordan said.
After finding out that the measure did not require a unanimous vote of the council, McAdams said that after discussing it with Palmer, she decided to submit to the council again.
Since the council was meeting already to vote on the pay raise, the lodging tax proposal was added to the agenda.
McAdams said the last two times the lodging tax proposal was sent to Jackson, it passed “with a breeze.”
But the measure failed in the House. In 2010, state Rep. Willie Perkins, D-Greenwood, chaired the Local and Private Committee, where the bill was referred.
“We hit a roadblock in the House,” McAdams said.
Perkins, whose wife, Sheriel, was defeated by McAdams in the mayoral race in 2009, lost the chairmanship in 2011, when the Republicans took control of both houses of the Legislature.
“He’s only a vote this time,” McAdams said.
When reached by phone Friday night, Perkins said, “I don’t know anything about that tax. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Perkins wife recently announced that she will run again for mayor.
The mayor said the legislation will be shepherded in the House by Rep. Linda Whittington, D-Schlater, who’s vice chairman of the Tourism Committee, and in the Senate by Sen. Lydia Chassaniol, R-Winona, who chairs the Tourism Committee.
“The more I look at the scheme of the River to the Rails and the Linear Park, it does expand Greenwood’s tourism possibilities,” said Chassaniol, whose district includes North Greenwood.
“I hope we’ll be able to get the bill passed,” she said, adding that a downtown location capable of hosting meetings and other events is a plus for tourism.
Whittington could not be reached for comment Friday.
The city bought the historic but dilapidated former warehouse from Reveilee Construction Co., which is owned by attorney Lee Abraham, in December 2010 after Abraham said he planned to tear it down. The city paid $150,000 using money provided by Greenwood Utilities.
If the city doesn’t find money to renovate the building by the end of 2013, Abraham has agreed to buy it back for $150,000.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
