Leavell Woods park in south Jackson used to host some of the best baseball around.
“Everyone wanted to come to play at Leavell Woods because that’s where the competition was,” park president and coach Eric Barbour said.
Over its more than 60-year history, Leavell Woods has saved hundreds of kids’ lives, Barbour said, as home to a successful baseball little league. The park hasn’t held tournaments for over a decade, but Barbour is aiming to bring the park back to its heyday.
“When you have kids out there that are getting in trouble at 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, they have nothing to do. That’s the problem. They don’t have strong and positive mentors these days to try to steer them away from trouble,” Barbour said.
After years of neglect, churches and community members pooled resources and elbow grease in 2022 to renovate the fields so Barbour could begin recruiting players again with spring training camps. The volunteers replaced the tops of the dugouts with aluminum, erected new batting cages and gave the structures a fresh coat of paint. But more investments are needed to make it a safe place for play, Barbour said, especially new floodlights.
Rep. Grace Butler-Washington, D-Jackson, is seeking $150,000 in funding from the state Legislature this session for such additions at Leavell Woods. Similarly, Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, is asking for up to $4 million to renovate various community centers, senior citizen centers and gymnasiums across the city.
Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, has requested $2.2 million for urgent upgrades at the city’s airport, such as new escalators, and Rep. Zakiyah Summers, D-Jackson, wants to see $100,000 go towards infrastructure improvements at the Boys and Girls Club on Capitol Street in west Jackson.
These are the kinds of requests that lawmakers from across the state make every session, often by filing individual bills that quickly die. They then try to get the appropriations included in the large projects bill, known as the Christmas tree bill because of the gifts it provides local communities across the state. House and Senate leadership craft this legislation just before they leave the Capitol for the year.
But proportionate to its size, Jackson is frequently shortchanged by the end-of-session earmark legislation, a process driven by politics as opposed to studied need. In the past three sessions, Jackson, the state’s largest city with a population around 150,000, has received just $5.9 million for improvement projects. That’s in comparison to $38.6 million for the 28,000-resident Tate County, the home of House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, Mississippi Today reported in its 2024 investigation on earmarks.
When Jackson does receive love in the projects bill, Gov. Tate Reeves is apt to strike appropriations for the Capital City, such as $1 million for the downtown planetarium, which lawmakers have passed and Reeves has vetoed multiple times.
A Christmas tree bill hasn’t been released yet as the 2025 session nears its end. There is talk about the Senate blocking passage of one this year over its fight with the House over eliminating the state income tax. In years past, lawmakers have forgone a projects bill, either over political differences or because the state couldn’t afford to pay for or borrow for the spending.
Having hired an aggressive lobbyist this year, city of Jackson leaders crafted an ambitious 2025 legislative agenda that asks for a total of almost $60 million – a pie in the sky figure.
Some of the requests include $14 million to rebuild the No. 5 station and purchase new trucks for the Jackson Fire Department, $6.4 million for continued upgrades and renovations to Thalia Mara Hall, $2 million to renovate the parking lot across the street from the Convention Center and several million for improvements to various park and community centers.
Christmas tree spending is done with the political spoils system – areas with the most powerful lawmakers reap the rewards, and Republicans control state government with supermajorities in the Legislature. With its mostly Democratic city leadership and legislative delegation, Jackson typically gets scraps.
While Speaker of the House Jason White set up the Select Committee on Capital and Metro Revitalization last summer to study ways the Legislature can bring improvements to Jackson, lawmakers said the Senate, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, hasn’t been as receptive to requests.
“We’re cautiously optimistic as we get ready for the final days of the session,” the city’s lobbyist Donna Echols said Tuesday. “We have momentum coming from the House side and hope that the Senate picks up the slack and helps push some of these issues through for the Capital City.”
Bell said that during a meeting Tuesday, White supported appropriating the portion of the delegation’s request for the Jackson airport dealing with building new escalators. “The speaker is on board with it 100%, it’s just the other end of the hall,” he said.
Bell said he believes the contention greatly stems from a years-long fight between the city and state over control of the airport, which started under former Gov. Phil Bryant and continued under current Gov. Reeves.
“Delbert (Hosemann) and Tate (Reeves) despise the city of Jackson. They despise the leadership of the city of Jackson. That’s what it all boils down to,” Bell said.
Last year’s federal bribery indictment against Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, to which he’s pleaded not guilty, hasn’t helped.
Has that discouraged Jackson lawmakers from pressing? “Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Bell said. “We are going forward with what we’re requesting and we’re gonna keep requesting.”
Hosemann, the only statewide official whose personal home is in the city of Jackson, pointed to past years of legislative spending when asked about the project requests this session.
“We recognize and prioritize the primary needs of every municipality,” Hosemann said in a statement on Tuesday. “Since 2020, the legislature has allocated over $40 million for projects for the City of Jackson, supporting infrastructure, tourism, safety, and more. Additionally, $30 million in ARPA funds have been designated for the Jackson area. I remain committed to supporting our capital city by addressing critical issues such as the Property Cleanup Revolving Fund, to remove dilapidated properties, as well as other pressing needs.”
If there’s anything Capital City and state leaders can get on the same page about, it’s the need to clean up dilapidated, abandoned structures across the city. Leaders recognize blight both hampers economic development and invites crime.
“It’s a double-edged sword if you don’t get things cleaned up,” Echols said.
Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, who sat on the revitalization committee, introduced three policy changes to address blight – speeding up the process for the Secretary of State to assume tax-forfeited properties, utilizing Land Maintenance Records Funds to clean and maintain these parcels, and giving tax incentives to developers willing to tackle them. While the House passed the bills, the first two died in the Senate and the chambers are still negotiating on the third regarding tax incentives, Echols said.
The policy changes don’t provide the resources Jackson needs to clean up the roughly 1,900 state-owned tax forfeited property in the city – a large driver of Jackson’s blight. That funding has come in piecemeal appropriations.
Last session, Butler-Washington and Rep. Ronnie Crudup Jr., D-Jackson, who both represent parts of south Jackson, successfully teamed up to secure $250,000 in the projects bill to demolish the abandoned Coca-Cola bottling plant Gipson Grocery Store buildings on Highway 80 in south Jackson, work that is getting underway today.
“These are quality of life issues for me,” said Crudup, who also filed several bills for improvements to Forest Hill, Livingston, Sykes and Flowers parks.
City officials are making its biggest legislative request this session – a whopping $25 million – for blight removal, including $20 million for residential and $5 million for expensive, complex commercial demolition.
“It’s easy to get a lot of support for doing something about blight, now you’ve got to be able to turn that support into funding, and that’s sort of the big challenge,” said Jackson City Councilman Ashby Foote.
The city’s figure is far-fetched, but Butler-Washington said it’s been helpful to point to the blight removal underway in south Jackson while discussing additional requests with legislative leadership this year. The city solicited bids for the demolition last fall and announced in late February that the crews would begin work shortly.
“In general, but specifically for Jackson, the question comes about when we talk about requesting funding for certain things within the city, ‘What is the city doing with that funding?’ Or, ‘What have they done with what we have given them so far?’” Butler-Washington said. “… So it was great to be able to say, ‘Here’s where we are with that funding. The city of Jackson is utilizing money to do this particular project on Highway 80.’”
“Every area of the city has needs, and so just being able to have some accountability for the funding that we are requesting, it goes a long way,” she added.
State-owned tax forfeited blighted property in the Capital City isn’t the only area where Jackson lawmakers believe the state has a responsibility to contribute to the solution.
While the city is asking for $5.5 million to build a new No. 5 Fire Station – the station that serves the state’s only teaching hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center – Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson has another proposal: funding for the University of Mississippi Medical Center to build its own station, which the Jackson Fire Department would operate.
“The state does not have a fire department. The medical center, if there’s fire, or a state building catches on fire, they’re going to call the Jackson Fire Department and the Jackson Fire Department is going to respond,” Blount said. “The state should shoulder some of the responsibility for financial support to the fire department it relies on.”
Blount’s bill to do this also died. If Jackson doesn’t receive its requests in the projects bill historically hashed out in this part of the session, or if the leadership forgoes the legislation altogether, it’ll have to wait until next year to take a shot at this avenue of funding.
Blount looked at it another way: 2025 being a quiet legislative session for Jackson has been a reprieve. Inattention is better than the alternative, when in recent years, sessions have been dominated by what Jackson describes as “state takeovers” – efforts to wrest assets from the city, such as the airport and the historic Smith Wills Stadium, or expand state police jurisdiction to more Jackson neighborhoods.
“I’ve been happy that this session, the state Legislature has focused on state issues and not bills that attempt to take away the rights of people of Jackson to decide city related issues,” Blount said. “There is a municipal election this year and the last few years has been dominated by Jackson-related legislation, much of it bad, and I think for the Legislature to take a year off from that has been a good thing and to let the people of Jackson decide without outside interference about who they want their elected leaders to be.”
Back in south Jackson, Barbour is looking forward to the day kids in his neighborhood become acclimated to Leavell Woods Park and he has enough players to start a league again. Some of his former players are eager to help him spearhead the effort.
“It’s important to me to have them back out there and give the kids something to do, to let them know that people care about them and to teach them good things through sports and build character in them,” Barbour said. “… The impact of a coach helps the kids through their life.”
Meanwhile, other cities and small towns across the state are enjoying the millions they received just last year to improve their recreation spaces, such as:
- $2 million for a new amphitheater at a park in Gautier, population 19,000
- $500,000 for upgrades to a 17-field baseball park in Southaven, a suburb of Memphis
- $500,000 for the construction of a recreation center in Wilkinson County, population 9,000
- $150,000 for improvement and operation of the Tammy Wynette Legacy Center at a park in Tremont, population 300
- $600,000 for improvements to a sports park in Senatobia, population 8,000 and Rep. Lamar’s hometown
The city of Jackson’s 2025 legislative request of nearly $60 million includes:
- $25 million for residential and commercial blight elimination
- $14.3 million for the Jackson Fire Department for new trucks, funding to rebuild Fire Station No. 5 and other equipment
- $8 million for Human & Cultural Services, including upgrades and renovations to Thalia Mara Hall
- $7.2 million for Parks & Recreation
- $2 million to renovate the parking lot across the street from the Convention Center
- $1.2 million for Jackson Police Department vehicles and license plate readers
- $1.5 million for road widening at Northwest Industrial Park
- $380,000 for cybersecurity
Among the asks for parks and recreation include:
- Park security, tree removal and playground equipment
- $1.8 million for Pickleball courts
- $1.9 million for Buddy Butts Park bridge replacement and restoration of the Pearl River Basin Model
- $2 million for the Pete Brown Golf Course
- $650,000 for community centers and Mynelle Gardens
Most of the requests were based on memos that individual city departments – Jackson Police Department, Jackson Fire Department, Parks & Recreation, Human & Cultural Services and Information Technology – sent to the mayor detailing their legislative wishes.
Politics Editor Geoff Pender contributed to this report.
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