Officials from Sumrall are considering two possible options to replace Bethy Aycox, the former director of the Sumrall Main Street Association who left the organization in early March after receiving a full-time job offer with another company.
Option one would entail hiring a full-time person to assume those duties as well as become director of the city’s parks and recreation department, a position the city has never featured.
The second option would be to two create two-part time positions: one to oversee the Sumrall Main Street Association and another to lead the parks and recreation department.
“With our parks and recreation dilemma that we have with that soccer field (at the Sumrall Sports Complex on Mississippi 42) coming up, we kind of need somebody over parks and recreation,” Mayor Heath Sumrall said. “We haven’t decided what to do on that, but with all the stuff we’re dealing with to get that soccer field going and online, somebody’s got to monitor all that.”
Personally, Sumrall is in favor of the concept of one full-time person to oversee both the association and parks and recreation.
“Neither one of those jobs, I think you could justify full-time for either one of them, with our growth right now,” he said. “If 10,000 people moved here overnight, then yeah, we could justify both of them.
“But with our current status, we couldn’t justify a full-time Main Street person and we couldn’t justify a full-time parks and recreation. So I think that one full-time position would be great; it would be a good, complimentary position for each job. Once the board decides which way they want to go with that, then we’ll go ahead with the advertising of the position.”
Sumrall said he has recently spoken with Tony Pflaum, president of the Sumrall Main Street Association, who also agreed with the idea of one full-time employee.
“Really, they go hand in hand,” Sumrall said. “When they do get the soccer field up and going, and they have tournaments, then that Main Street director could let all the businesses know, and plan for, an influx of people that would be coming in for tournaments or any other event that would be taking place recreation-wise.
“I think it’d be a good for one person to have that position, so they could coordinate with both sides. Of course, the best money-saving effort would be to hire two part-time people, because then we wouldn’t have to pay benefits and everything like on a full-time package.”
Over the past few months, the soccer field has been plagued by drainage issues, particularly from the steady rain that fell throughout January.
During a “State of the Town” meeting that month, Sumrall said dirt had been recently installed at the site, but the work on that measure was done far too quickly.
That, coupled with the rain, had caused the dirt to settle in an improper fashion.
Sumrall is currently working on a committee that will help draw up some use agreements between the town, the schools and the soccer league, as there is more than one group interesting in using the soccer field.
The mayor hopes to fill the committee with some people that are involved in soccer, as well as some that are not, so as to balance out viewpoints.
“That way they can see it from both sides,” he said. “If we get everybody on the committee who has a kid playing soccer, they won’t listen to reason from the city side; they’re just going to be biased to help the soccer league.
“We’ve got to look at the maintenance of a field, and it’s coming out of the city’s tax money. That’s something I’ve got to consider when we do the budget, because we don’t have the money to support something like that (right now).”
Sumrall was designated a Mississippi Main Street community in February 2020. There are more than 50 businesses in the Main Street historic commercial district.
The town has a population of just under 2,000.
