The bill amended by the state House of Representatives to hand 26 donated “Katrina cottages” over to a local nonprofit was killed when it went back to the Senate for approval Thursday.
Rep. Willie Perkins, D-Greenwood, amended Senate Bill 2933 to specify that the cottages be donated directly to Three Rivers Community and Economic Development Corp., a Greenwood nonprofit. The bill originally intended to give the city of Greenwood authority to donate the cottages to a nonprofit of its choosing.
The cottages are the kind of small structures used to provide housing on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency donated the cottages to Greenwood in 2011, but the city does not have the legal authority to donate them. Rather, it can only sell them as surplus property. A nonprofit is needed to intermediate between the city, which currently possesses the cottages, and the potential recipients of the affordable housing in Baptist Town.
The team working on the Baptist Town revitalization project negotiated an agreement with the Fuller Center for Housing, an international nonprofit with a local chapter in Leflore County that regularly takes on projects such as the one in Baptist Town. But Perkins attempted to donate the cottages to Three Rivers instead.
Leflore County terminated an agreement it had with Three Rivers in 2008, when the organization, which was in charge of managing the county’s business incubator, failed to pay rent for more than a year on the building.
The organization had gotten a grant to manage the incubator in 2005. When that grant money ran out in 2007, it stopped paying rent altogether.
Angela Curry, executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation, said Thursday that she was not certain Three Rivers was still active in community development projects of the kind in which it was active in the past.
Curry, along with Bill Crump, chairman of the foundation, said Three Rivers has never taken on a project of this scale. Jacqueline Littleton, chairman of Three Rivers, said Thursday that it has.
Crump said Thursday that the amended motion was a road block for a project well on its way to completion.
He said the bill’s post-amendment failure is a good thing.
“I was totally opposed to the cottages being given to an organization that couldn’t handle the responsibility,” he said.
Perkins, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, is the husband of former Mayor Sheriel Perkins, who lost her seat to Mayor Carolyn McAdams four years ago. Perkins is running for mayor again. If she wins the May 7 Democratic primary, she will face McAdams in the June 4. general election.
McAdams’ Baptist Town revitalization efforts have been seen as a pinnacle of her tenure as mayor.
In recent campaigning, Perkins has criticized McAdams for a lack of progress in Baptist Town over the past four years.
Another initiative McAdams has been trying to get off the ground during her mayoral term also hit a wall Thursday.
Two bills that would have allowed a sales tax on hotels in Greenwood died in committee Thursday. The money raised from those taxes would have gone toward the renovation of the dilapidated Russell Building in downtown Greenwood.
The city purchased the building from Lee Abraham in March 2011 for $150,000 with money from Greenwood Utilities, with hopes of converting it into a conference center.
McAdams has said that the tax would not affect Greenwood residents, since it would only be imposed on hotel and motel guests visiting or doing business in Greenwood from out of town.
If the city does not raise the money needed for the renovation, Abraham has agreed to buy it back for the same price he sold it for.
As for the cottages, Crump said the next step in the getting them installed is to try to tack on a discussion of the bill to a special legislative session Gov. Phil Bryant will call to discuss Medicaid, which the Legislature left in limbo after it adjourned Thursday. That session will have to be held before July 1, when Medicaid is set to expire.
If that doesn’t work, said Crump, the governor could direct authority to the city by executive order. Until then, the 26 cottages are ready for installation but won’t be used for their intended purpose.
“The city will continue to have the houses, but it can’t donate them,” said Crump.
• Contact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
