Update: As of Thursday morning, the property owner, Dr. Adrian Brown, informed The Enterprise-Tocsin that the city was actively working to get the drainage issue resolved. We took this photo of a crew working at the 409 State Avenue property this week.
An Indianola businessman and landlord is fed up with what he says are delays by the city that are keeping a new business from operating on State Avenue, but the city’s mayor claims no such roadblocks exist.
Brown & Associates owner Dr. Adrian Brown says the city’s inaction on drainage improvements has cost his tenant, North Yalobusha Hospice & Palliative Care, over $300,000, and that bill continues to rise each day the building is not in use, he says.
The issue came up during last Thursday’s meeting of the mayor and Board of Aldermen when Ward 4 Alderman Marvin Elder attempted to add the drainage issue at 409 State Avenue to the agenda.
“My understanding is that the holdup is on the city now,” Elder said. “He’s tearing his driveway and parking lot out, doing what he’s supposed to do. We as the city got to go take
care and knock that grade down.”
Mayor Steve Rosenthal then told Elder that he had spoken with City Engineer Ron Cassada right before the meeting, and Cassada had not informed him of any issues at that property.
Elder insisted the item be added, and Rosenthal finally relented, adding it to “old business.”
“I’ll go ahead and add it, but we will not make a decision tonight,” Rosenthal said.
There was little resolution to the issue during the discussion that followed.
Brown did not attend last Thursday night’s meeting, but this past Friday, he sent an email to City Clerk Kaneilia Williams requesting a special call meeting where he could be heard about this project.
In that email, he laid out a number of issues he has faced with this city over the past year related to this project.
North Yalobusha Hospice & Palliative Care Inc. entered into a two-year lease at the State Avenue location with Brown & Associates Holdings in December of 2019, according to Brown.
At that point, North Yalobusha began working toward the licensure requirements to operate a day services program there.
The state conducted a survey of licensed health care facilities in 2020, and North Yalobusha was approved for licensure. pending the repair of its parking lot, which had loose gravel and concrete the state deemed a hazard for potential clients and employees.
“Please be informed that this location has suffered from extreme drainage problems, as State Avenue has been overlayed higher than the grade of 409 State Avenue, in which water is pushed back on 409 State Avenue,” Brown said in his email to the city clerk last week. “There is a drainage inlet at the intersection of Baker and State Avenue which is higher or offset due to the years of overlay which we have had problems allowing for water to run from 409 State Avenue to this only drain at this intersection in the general area and vicinity.”
Brown said he contacted several contractors to look at the parking lot, but he said he was told that there were problems the city needed to resolve before the parking lot should be repaired.
“Each contractor that we spoke to advised that the city had drainage issues that should be corrected before repairs could be made,” Brown said. “In addition, the city has a water meter that was approximately three quarters located in the driveway of 409 State Avenue. Contractors advised that they could repair the parking lot from the water meter back to 409 State Avenue and that the city could make repairs from the meter back to the public road.”
Brown said he immediately contacted Cassada, City Inspector Elvis Pernell and Public Works Director Robert Spurlock.
They set up a meeting last fall.
“A recommendation was made by City Engineer Ron Cassada that the city could ‘possibly’ install a swale alongside State to help alleviate the drainage, but he needed to speak with Mayor Rosenthal,” Brown said. “It was also recommended to wait until the winter was over to move the project forward. In the meanwhile, the engineer stated that he would work with the city public works over the winter to address drainage issues.”
A swale is a broad, shallow ditch often used to prevent flooding and erosion.
The following March, Brown said he reached back out to the city to get the project moving along, as North Yalobusha was and remains on a fixed timeline to be approved for licensure.
This time, Brown said he ended up meeting with Rosenthal, as well as the prior parties.
“During this meeting at the site location, Mayor Rosenthal advised that the city would do what it needed to do to address the problems,” Brown said. “No specifics were given, other than the city engineer would work with public works to handle what the city needed to handle.”
Brown said during this meeting, the city engineer recommended he wait until the upcoming summer (2021) to start the project, because the city would have a contractor in town making street repairs.
“We were told that Double S Construction Co. of Grenada would be the one doing the work in the city,” Brown said. “The city engineer stated that perhaps Double S could address the drainage repairs and the repavement from the water meter back to the public road. It was also suggested that Brown & Associates/North Yalobusha could contract with Double S to repair the parking lot from the meter back to our building.”
Brown said he did talk with Double S, and the company indeed provided cost estimates for the entire project.
“From March 2021 until approximately June 2021, we did not hear anything from the city of Indianola,” Brown said. “However, we made several calls to the city engineer to inquire on the status of the city repairing drainage issues. The city engineer stated that there was a list of items the city needed to complete but still had not completed the work on their end.”
Brown soon called another meeting with city officials.
He said during this meeting, Peirce McIntosh represented public works.
“During this meeting, Mr. McIntosh asserted that he had received directions from mayor Rosenthal that the city of Indianola would not be placing a swale alongside State Avenue to help with the drainage issues,” Brown said. “Mr. McIntosh stated that Mayor Rosenthal had only specifically directed the public works department to clean out a ditch and drain in the area, and that was it.”
Brown said the contractor felt strongly the city had more work to do before the parking lot could be repaired.
“Mr. McIntosh disagreed, and he and the contractor got into a verbal disagreement in which our contractor ended up walking off the job in the dispute with Mr. McIntosh,” Brown said.
McIntosh told The E-T this week that the contractor was frustrated, but he was only there to do what he was told to do by the city.
“The mayor told us to clear the ditch and to go as far as we were allowed,” McIntosh said. “Public works is only allowed to go so far.”
McIntosh said public works replaced the meter at the location, but as he understood it, the contractor wanted the crew to do more, beyond the meter. He said he was only willing to do what he was instructed to do that day.
“There was no reason for me to have a verbal altercation with the contractor, because I had no dog in the hunt,” McIntosh said.
Brown said McIntosh called Cassada to the site, and Cassada confirmed that he had changed his position about the swale and the city would move forward with other drainage improvements.
“At this point, during this meeting, I personally pleaded with the city engineer that I felt like we had been getting the runaround and that the City of Indianola was not holding up to its end of the bargain,” Brown said. “I also lost my cool and gave Mr. Cassada some choice words in which I later called him after the meeting to apologize.”
Brown eventually contracted with Cassada and Gardner Engineering in hopes that would be the necessary bridge to move the project toward completion.
“My goal to hire Gardner Engineering was to take all the excuses out, take all the guesswork out and to just move the project forward,” Brown said. “It was also our goal to have a middle piece that could serve as the glue to get the city moving forward. From November 2020 until June 2021, we felt as if the City of Indianola kept kicking the can down the road and it had not had a sense of urgency to help our situation.”
Brown said he received the final recommendation from Gardner this fall.
He said the plan is to remove the entire parking lot and repave.
Earlier this month, a demolition contractor came to the site and completed the initial phase.
In the meantime, Brown said he purchased orange caution fencing himself, and his demolition contractor provided a couple of caution barrels to help prevent an accident at the construction site. Brown said he had requested the city provide the barrels and the fencing, but nothing was being done in a timely manner, he said.
Brown said he has a contractor ready to deliver four inches of crushed limestone to the lot, but the contractor said it was best to hold up on the project for now, Brown said, so that the city could address its drainage issues.
“It was the recommendation of (my contractor) that the work that he is going to provide should be done simultaneously with the drainage improvements the city needed to make,” Brown said. “It was not (the contractor’s) recommendation to haul and compact the limestone without having a timeline that the city would make repairs/improvements. He suggested that once he had finished the base, then either the asphalt contractor or concrete contractor needed to begin overlay.”
Elder insisted during last Thursday night’s discussion that Brown could not move forward without the city doing its part in making drainage improvements.
Rosenthal said he would talk to Cassada the next morning about the project.
Rosenthal sent out an email on Friday to the board and several others.
The E-T was also copied in the email.
“Please be aware that after talking to Mr. Cassada this morning I learned that Alderman Elder’s comments at the October 21st meeting were a complete fabrication(lie),” Rosenthal said. “Gardner Engineering was hired by the property owner to design the new parking area. The owner has been instructed that work can proceed with nothing being done by the City of Indianola at this time. Mr. Cassada is discussing with the city contractor to mill that section of the city street when they return to do the rest of the milling and overlay for our current street project. This is something that the city crew is not equipped to do. The City of Indianola has not held up the property owner in any way once he understood that we could not repair his parking lot since it is his private property.”
Brown insists that he has never asked the city to make repairs to his private parking lot but only to make necessary improvements to the abutting street so that the underlying issues that he says played a role in his parking lot’s initial crumbling do not persist.
The E-T caught up with Cassada on Wednesday, and he said that he thinks he has found an alternative way to alleviate the drainage issues sooner than later.
The solution, which he said he would recommend to the city, would be something the city crews could handle, and they would likley not have to wait on the city’s contractor to complete it.
Brown is hoping to be heard by the board before its next regular meeting in November.
Jyesha Johnson contributed to this report
