Janice Jefferson and LaPorsha Renae asked McComb officials for a shelter Tuesday night.
The two have started a nonprofit organization called Walking in the Light to run a domestic violence shelter in McComb, and need a place to get up and running.
“We don’t know what’s available. That’s why we’re here,” Jefferson said.
LaPorsha Renae talked about her experience as a domestic violence survivor and her stays in shelters like the one she and Jefferson want to establish.
She spent time at both a Natchez shelter and the Women in Need of God’s Shelter facility that operated in McComb until it closed.
“I come back when I can and attend (court) hearings with victims,” LaPorsha said. But, “we can only do so much without the proper resources.”
Jefferson told board members the organization has no budget yet, because they don’t have the facility and don’t know what they will need to run it yet.
“We need the city to partner with us,” Jefferson said.
LaPorsha said she has also created an organization called Royal Roots to help provide mental health services to domestic violence victims.
“There are people who will come into a shelter and leave within a week because they don’t get the mental therapy they need to recover,” she said.
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said the city has 65 to 70 pieces of property that Jefferson and LaPorsha can look at and ask the city for use at a future board meeting.
In other business the board:
• Offered possible priorities for the city. Members suggested employee pay raises, business development downtown, street and water system improvements, more police officers and new police cars as items to consider.
• Learned the Railroad Boulevard improvement project will require more brick and asphalt than orginally estimated and will cost more money. The larger amounts of materials are estimated to cost up to $35,000 more.
• Heard a request from Public Works Director Alice Barnes that Neel-Schaffer be allowed to submit a request for funding from the newly established state emergency Bridge repair fund to replace the bridge on Hamilton Street.
• Heard a recommendation from Barnes that the city review and adopt its stormwater drainage maintenance plan.
• Planned to sell former police Chief Scott McKEnzie his service weapon for $1.
• Announced the City Hall will be closed Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve in addition to the holidays, and discussed moving the first meeting of January to 10 a.m. on Jan. 4 because of the Mississippi Municipal League winter conference the following week.
