Indianola Ward 4 Alderman Marvin Elder expressed in a letter to his fellow board members this week regret about the board’s decision to hire an out of town consulting firm to help generate the city’s first comprehensive plan since the 1970s.
The board voted earlier this month to hire Oxford-based Slaughter & Associates Urban Planning Consultants to oversee the plan.
Elder passed the letter out to the board during Monday night’s regular session and provided a copy to The E-T.
“When the rezoning study and annexation study was originally discussed when it appeared on last meeting’s agenda, the mayor, nor fellow aldermen considered that we have a local planning and development business that does the same sort of work as the consultant from Oxford, MS does,” Elder said in the letter. “This local business pays taxes local, hires employees local and contributes locally in so many other ways that benefit the community of Indianola and surrounding Delta communities.”
Mayor Steve Rosenthal told Mike Slaughter (Slaughter & Associates) at the time that Ward 5 Alderman Sam Brock was concerned about the hours of operation for some neighborhood businesses that were zoned C1 Neighborhood Commercial.
The board agreed that night to hire the firm with a unanimous vote, including a yes vote from Elder who was present.
When Elder submitted the letter on Monday night, Rosenthal raised issue as to why the letter was not included in the board’s packet prior to the meeting.
“You asked to be on the agenda and got on the agenda, why wasn’t this included in our packet?” Rosenthal asked.
“We’re not fixing to change nothing that’s been done,” Elder said.
Elder assured the aldermen present that he was not suggesting the board back off from hiring Slaughter & Associates but wanted to call attention to the fact that a local business, that does similar work, had been overlooked in the process.
“It ain’t nothing controversial or anything,” Elder said. “It’s just something we didn’t do.”
However, in the letter provided, Elder did state that “In good faith to support our local businesses who are qualified to do the same work, I would like to petition that this board either consider the local business to do the study, or consider the local business to have a sub contract with Mr. Slaughter & Associates to do some of the work.”
Elder suggested the unnamed local business could prove valuable in collecting local data, holding meetings and other things related to the study.
Elder said later in the letter that he did not want the board to “set a standard or precedence that we do not support our local businesses, or that we do not give local businesses the opportunity to compete.”
“All I am saying is that if the local firm here in Indianola went to Oxford…to speak with their board of aldermen concerning a similar study, their board of aldermen perhaps would consider Slaughter & Associates first since they are local,” Elder said.
