One of the two vacant seats for Hinds County on the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District Board (PRVWSD) has been filled.
The Hinds County Board of Supervisors during its July 16 meeting appointed Dallas Quinn, interim director of Downtown Jackson Partners, to the board. Quinn represents District 1.
Adam Choate, executive director at the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District, said he received a letter from the Hinds County Board of Supervisors that Quinn would replace Dr. David C. Williams on the board. Quinn attended his first meeting on July 18, he said.
Quinn has already matched the attendance of Williams, who was appointed to the board in October 2020 and, according to the district’s records, attended one meeting remotely but not another one after that.
Reached by phone on June 20, Williams said he took a job out-of-state in 2021 and his job had to come first. He chalked it up to a “personal failure” when asked why he didn’t resign from the board.
The Pearl River Valley Water Supply District is the state agency responsible for managing the 33,000-acre Barnett Reservoir, which provides a water supply for the city of Jackson, and the 17,000 acres surrounding the lake.
Hinds County has a second seat on the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District Board, and that one has been vacant since 2020. W.C Gorden, a former head coach at Jackson State University, filled it until his death in October 2020.
Robert Graham, who represents District 1 on the Hinds County Board of Supervisors and serves as the board’s president, said he plans to follow the required process and submit to the governor the names of three individuals to consider for the Hinds County appointee the governor makes to the PRVWSD board.
Why hasn’t anyone been appointed to replace Gorden on the board?
When asked if the supervisors had submitted three names to the governor for consideration as an appointee to the district board after Gorden died, Graham, who In his fifth term and the longest serving member of the board of Hinds County Board of Supervisors, said “he didn’t want to put the blame on anyone.”
Graham said it is not easy to get people to volunteer to serve on boards.
Some individuals truly want to serve, but find they have less time to give and they are not able to be as active as they would like, he said. “That happens on every board,” Graham said.
The district board consists of five counties of Hinds, Leake, Madison, Rankin and Scott and a 14-member board governs it.
The governor appoints five directors, one each from Hinds, Leake, Madison, Rankin and Scott counties, to the board. The procedure calls for each board of supervisors to send the governor a list of three individuals they recommend for appointment the board.
The board of supervisors of each of the five counties appoints one director to the board. The Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality, the Mississippi Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, the Forestry Commission and the state Board of Health each appoint one director to the board.
Board members serve at the pleasure of the appointing authority, Sigman said, but a term is generally four years. There is no limit to the number of terms a board member can serve.
Current Pearl River Valley Water Supply directors include Kenny Windham, president, a Rankin County Board of Supervisors appointee; Randy McIntosh, vice president, a governor appointee, Madison County; and Phillip Crosby, secretary, a Leake County Board of Supervisors appointee.
Additional board members are Billy Crook, a governor appointee, Leake County; John Pittman, a Madison County Board of Supervisors appointee; Don Thompson, a governor appointee, Rankin County; Jack Winstead, a Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality appointee; Lonnie Johnson, a governor appointee, Scott County; Tedrick Ratcliff, a Mississippi Forestry Commission appointee; Bruce Brackin, a Mississippi State Department of Health appointee; Jason Spellings, a Mississippi Department Wildlife Fisheries and Parks appointee; and Kenny Latham, a Scott County Board of Supervisors appointee.
The district board meets on the third Thursday of each month at 9:30 a.m. at Timberlake campground in Brandon. The meetings are streamed on Facebook Live.
Each board member receives a per diem of $40 for attending a meeting and also round-trip mileage at the federal rate, which is 67 cents per mile, to the meeting site.
The board covers complex issues that involve the district’s 50,000 acres of property, five campgrounds, 16 parks, 22 boat launches, 23 miles of trails and 66 subdivisions.
