Pressed for a firmer position on a pending application for federal funds for a pedestrian park on the roadbed of the county-owned U.S. 80 bridge, Warren County supervisors came out in favor of the effort, but voiced lingering reservations.

At Thursday’s informal meeting, supervisors heard from Jimmy G. Gouras of Jimmy G. Gouras Urban Planning Consultants, a lead grant-writing firm for cities and counties in Mississippi.

Accompanied by Vicksburg Bridge Commission chairman Robert Moss and commission attorney Bobby Bailess, Gouras told the board a formal resolution was needed to move forward.

Supervisors cited emergency vehicle access and after-construction costs as their worries.

&#8220This will come down to money, as with most things. But if it stands for itself, I think it’s a good endeavor,” District 5 Supervisor Richard George said.

Though supervisors – four of five were at Thursday’s meeting because District 2’s William Banks was out of town – verbally approved the idea, they signed no resolution and did not set a date to do so.

Six months ago, the commission voted to begin application for the grant and designated Gouras’ firm to write the application and a feasibility study to be done by ABMB Engineers.

Supervisors had lifted a previous instruction to their appointed members of the commission that had blocked any discussion of a park, but have offered no endorsement.

Kansas City Southern Railway, the main customer of bridge services and at odds with the commission over lease terms, has long said it opposes a park for safety reasons and would seek a court injunction if planning moves ahead.

The idea is to allow people to walk out on the roadway of the 1930 bridge for a better view of the Mississippi River. A $50 million grant will be sought through the Mississippi Department of Transportation and, if approved, will originate from a $244.1 billion highway enhancement bill passed by Congress and signed by the president in August.

It will call for a 20 percent match by local government to supply funding, with the other 80 percent coming from the federal government. In this case, Moss said about $400,000 exists in the commission’s utility fund to cover that cost.

&#8220We won’t come to the board of supervisors for the money,” Moss added.

That figure was derived from a similar application in 1999 for federal funding for a pedestrian park, one that expired without support.

In that application, Gouras said, the local match was to be $417,000 and $1.6 million in federal money.

&#8220It’s a knock ’em dead opportunity for this community,” Gouras said during the meeting.

Later, Gouras said the grant funds would have to be paid back if the bridge was ever sold. KCS made an offer of $5.5 million nearly 10 years ago, and supervisors agreed to the sale, but reneged under public pressure. The value of the bridge is estimated at $150 million.

Before Thursday’s discussion, the board had not indicated a unified position on the future of the 76-year-old bridge except that the roadbed cannot be reopened to vehicles. It has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1998.

Defraying the cost of a new jail and courthouse annex has been at the heart of lingering thoughts about selling, although KCS has no offer pending.

In other business, the board agreed that any request from the sheriff’s department to purchase radios for the Mississippi Highway Patrol should be included in the department’s budget request for next fiscal year.

The board heard from Undersheriff Jeff Riggs and State Trooper Scott Henley on the topic, one that continued a discussion during a supervisors’ meeting Monday.

Currently, the seven patrolmen assigned to Warren County do not have the same 800 mhz radios that many local law enforcement agencies have, including Warren. If they did, the pair said, the two agencies could communicate directly during an accident response.

The state has committed funding for radios to link MHP and local law enforcement, thought to be at least three years from being fully in place.

The board also quashed a request from District 4 Supervisor and board president Carl Flanders to notify residents who build homes on roads outside city limits that any private roads leading to their property will not be maintained by county road department crews.

Opposing supervisors indicated that the effort was redundant and that attorneys closing the paperwork on such subdivisions should be the ones to notify them.