McComb selectmen voted down a contract with a grantwriter but sought to continue negotiations with her amid disagreements over the need to hire a grantwriter at all.
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley broke a 3-3 tie with his vote against accepting a contract with LaKeylah White of Grants Unlimited. The contract would have paid White $600 per month plus any administrative fees included in Community Development Block Grants, for example.
Lockley had expressed his opposition in last week’s work session, essentially saying he was against paying a grantwriter twice for the same grant.
The mayor’s vote supported the no votes of Selectmen Michael Cameron, Ted Tullos and Shawn Williams. Selectmen Ronnie Brock, Donovan Hill and Devante Johnson voted for the contract. Hill participated in the meeting by phone.
Tullos read off a list of grants awarded to McComb over the past eight years, from state agencies including the Departments of Environmental Quality, Trasnportation and Archives and History, as well as corporations such as Entergy and Lowe’s, and noted that the city had not had a grantwriter for most of that time.
“I dont think we need to pay someone monthly to write grants,” Tullos said.
Hill said some of the items Tullos named were not actually grants, but were state allocations or settlements.
Tullos disputed Hill’s assertion Wednesday morning, saying he had the sources of the grants and employees or elected officials who wrote the grants for the city.
During the meeting, Tullos said some of the grants had been written by former mayor Whitney Rawlings, Fire Chief Gary McKenzie, animal shelter executive director Michelle Lombas, as well as Lockley when he was city administrator.
Cameron added that he thought zoning director Regina Melson had been hired as a grantwriter.
Brock asked City Administrator Kelvin Butler if Melson is paid to write grants. Butler said no.
Later in the meeting, while adding two agenda items related to the city’s No. 5 water well, Johnson also moved to add authorization for the city to negotiate a contract with White that would allow her to search for programs and write any grants that are not Community Development Block Grants.
With the same 3-3 split among board members, Lockley voted in favor of adding the item to the agenda, and then again voted in favor of continuing negotiations with White.
“My position is, she can do all the grants, but not CDBG,” Lockley said.
Asked by Brock whether the city could legally limit the kinds of grants White could write under contract, board attorney Angela Cockerham said it could.
