Supes reinstate new fire district
The battle over a new $1.4 million ladder truck and a fire protection district covering the new Amazon distribution center continues.
Madison County supervisors on Monday reinstated the Megasite Fire Protection District after initially creating it in August and then abolishing it last month with Madison’s Sheila Jones as the swing vote.
Where the new $1.4 million ladder truck will be housed, however, is still up in the air.
During Monday’s regular meeting Jones of District 1 made the motion to bring back the Megasite district following what she described as a discussion she’d had with the state insurance commissioner.
Jones said she had received a call from Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney about the Megasite after her vote last month to abolish the district.
“He suggested that I make a motion to have the Megasite Fire District reinstated,” Jones said in making the motion. “He also suggested that we put the fire truck at Amazon because he said that our rates will be lower there than they are inside the city because the county is cheaper, I guess taxwise, and that we need to donate an acre of land and apply for money for our future fire district.”
Jones' motion carried 3-2 with District 5 Supervisor Paul Griffin and District 4 Supervisor Karl Banks voting against it.
District 3 Supervisor Gerald Steen then made a motion to appoint five Madison County residents to the board who will be paid $150 per month. The board voted to appoint Matt Ratfield, Kerry Menninger, Nathan Jordan and Andrew Hughes to the Megasite Fire District Board. Paul Griffin deferred to a later date to appoint a member.
Supervisors also discussed where to house the $1.4 million ladder truck that was paid for with a $750,000 allocation from the Mississippi Legislature and the county paying the rest.
Board of Supervisors Attorney Mike Espy advised the board to take the matter up as an economic development discussion in executive session. After the executive session, the board announced they would ask the Megasite board to make a recommendation at a future meeting on where to house the fire truck.
Supervisors had created the Megasite district at their Aug. 2 meeting on a motion by Steen to cover the new Amazon distribution center and other buildings in the county’s new industrial park known as the Megasite.
The board also agreed to put the ladder truck within the district taking it out of a newly created Central Fire District in Canton. That motion passed 4-1 with Banks absent.
Last month, however, District 5 Supervisor Paul Griffin made a motion to abolish and rescind the Amazon Megasite district and place the industrial site back into the Central Madison County Fire District.
That motion carried 3-2 with District 2 Supervisor Trey Baxter and Steen voting against it and Jones voting with Banks and Griffin. The motion effectively put the new $1.4 million fire truck in the care of the Central Fire District.
Griffin then made a motion that carried to appoint a fire district board that carried 3-2 with Baxter and Steen voting against it.