The Yazoo County Board of Supervisors said that the Parks & Recreation board needs to get a new board attorney.
Otherwise the Supervisors said they plan to use half of the money going to the current attorney’s salary to hire an attorney who represents the county’s interests.
The board’s comments came in response to the most recent Parks & Recreation board meeting, where they said they were told Board Attorney Lilli Evans Bass was critical of the county’s recent Fourth of July celebration at Campanella Park.
Board President Cobie Collins said that Mayor Diane Delaware was opposed to the county’s fireworks celebration, and he believes that is why Evans Bass raised issues about the event during the Parks & Recreation meeting.
Collins told Parks Director Sedric Hudson that the Board of Supervisors does not believe Evans Bass is fairly representing the county.
“Your board is going to have to get a new lawyer,” Collins said. “If you’re going to keep the lawyer that the city has, we’re going to talk to Jay (Barbour) about splitting the salary. The county is not going to pay her to come and question everything we do or call the Board of Supervisors names.”
District 3 Supervisor Willie “Deuce” Wright said that he thinks the other jobs Evans Bass holds with the city make it difficult for her to equally represent the county. Evans Bass is also the city’s board attorney and a municipal judge.
“She is a lawyer for the city, serves as a judge for the city, and she is on the Parks & Recreation board,” Wright said.
“Who do you expect her to be loyal to,” Collins asked. “My loyalty would be to the city too.”
“She’s supposed to represent everybody – not just the city,” Wright said.
The county originally planned to have a fireworks celebration on Friday night the weekend before the Fourth of July. That would have taken place on the same night as the city’s Yaz Summer Blast celebration. Collins said that after speaking to Delaware about it, the county agreed to move its celebration to Wednesday night on the actual holiday so that the two events would not happen at the same time.
Collins said Delaware did not seem to want the county to have a fireworks show at Campanella Park, citing rules. Collins said the county followed the same rules that the city did when the city shot fireworks at the Wardell Leach park.
District 4 Supervisor Jayne Dew said if there was a problem it should have been worked out in advance.
“If we broke some unforeseen rule, and we don’t have a copy of the rulebook by the way, we should have been notified ahead of time,” Dew said. “This event was advertised in the newspaper, on the radio and on Facebook. If there was a problem, we should have been notified in advance. Why wait until after all of that, and then say it’s a problem?”
“It’s a shame we can’t work in unity,” said District 1 Supervisor Van Foster.
Wright said that he thinks some city leaders didn’t like the county having its own celebration for the public.
“I enjoyed what the city did downtown, and so did my grandchildren,” Wright said. “It was really nice, but at the same time what we did was nice also. We weren’t trying to outdo anybody.”
“We did something for the public, and they want to make an issue after the fact,” Dew said. “That is childish, and it’s petty.”
In a related matter, Wright replaced Paul Henderson, who he appointed to the Parks & Recreation board, with E.L. Hendrix. Wright said he was replacing Henderson because he heard that Henderson also made comments critical of the county during the last Parks & Recreation board meeting.
“Anyone who sits on that board should be there to do what is right,” Wright said. “We’re not telling them to get there and do things for us. We want them to do what’s best for the parks and for the kids. At the same time, I’m not going have someone that I have appointed to that board who has bad things to say about the county.”
