Petal officials are losing patience over what they see as a lack of progress on the repair and cleanup at the Petal skating rink on South Main Street.
The matter was discussed at Tuesday’s meeting of the Petal Board of Aldermen, where Mayor Hal Marx said officials have been receiving complaints from residents about the property owned by Forrest County District 3 Supervisor Burkett Ross.
“That place needs to be cleaned up a lot quicker and a lot better than what’s being done,” Marx said. “I’m not so sure this construction work is going to really fit the bill on what we needed to be done on that project.
“We gave (Ross) some time, but we also said we’d be updating and checking on progress, and my personal opinion is, it’s not a lot of progress. A lot of people make comments on social media at Petal’s expense about that property and the way it looks, and I’m getting kind of tired of it myself.”
The skating rink was heavily damaged in the EF3 tornado that struck east Hattiesburg and Petal in January 2017, and roof repairs have since been started on the building. Marx said there were some delays in repair because the building is located in a flood zone, but Ross was able to resolve that issue several months ago with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
“Then the excuse was that it was during the holiday season, and we couldn’t get people to work, and so we gave him more time for that,” Marx said. “But now, we really expect that things need to move along quickly to get that place cleaned up.
“And I’m concerned that the repairs that he’s making, it appears to me are not really going to solve the problem of the building looking dilapidated and needing to be cleaned up. It looks like he’s going to try to repair the roof … but there’s the whole front section of the building that was also partially destroyed. I believe that whole part of the building should be torn down, myself.”
Marx said there are also issues unrelated to building repair, such as an abundance of trash on the property that needs to be cleaned up.
“We let Mr. Ross have time to address this, and our patience is running out,” he said. “I think the public expects us to enforce our codes on everyone, evenly and fairly.
“There’s other people that we’ve made clean their property up, (who) had a lot shorter time to do it than Mr. Ross has had.”
Ross did not return calls for comment.
Marx said if the issue isn’t addressed, city officials may begin looking into legal options.
“I don’t know what remedy we have … legally on that kind of situation,” he said. “But if there’s any kind of penalty fees, or fines, or any other kind of remedy we can use as sort of a (push) to try to get things done a little bit better or more quickly, I think we need to start looking at that as an option.”
In October, the skating rink was scheduled for demolition, but Ross was given 30 days to begin repairs before demolition began. According to regulations from FEMA and MEMA, if city officials determine a building’s repair would cost more than 50 percent of the building’s cash value, the city is allowed to decide between repair and demolition.
Ross had previously submitted reports from an architect and a construction firm in an attempt to prove the building was less than 50 percent damaged.
“I’m hoping that (Ross) is going to appear at our next meeting, and we’ll have a chance to discuss that with him and find out his plans are for that building,” Marx said.
