Mayor George Flaggs Jr.’s decision to set a June 29 deadline for the city’s site selection committee to recommend a site for Vicksburg’s proposed sports complex is the right move. The site is expected to be named at a work session on that day.

Flaggs put his reason for the deadline in simple terms.

“I refuse to spend any more money on a site until the committee has vetted everything and given a recommendation, whether it’s one, two sites, or no site,” he said. “It’s time to close the gate.”

And with a referendum on the special 2 percent tax on hotels and food and beverages coming Jan. 12, the mayor believes voters “ have a right to know what they’re voting on Jan. 12, and they should have time to have clarity on Jan. 12. It’s time to pull the trigger on it.”

The sports complex has been one of the city’s major issues since May 2014, when Flaggs appointed a committee to look at the city’s recreation programs and facilities. A site selection committee has been in place since January, but a final decision on a site for the proposed facility remains in the air.

Diamante Global/JCI Holdings LLC, the city’s consultant for the sports complex site, in April recommended the city’s Fisher Ferry property off Fisher Ferry Road as the most feasible site for a sports complex. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen, however, delayed naming it as the site after several residents complained about traffic on Halls Ferry Road, the main route to Fisher Ferry, and Flaggs gave the site committee another 60 days to look at other potential sites.

The deadline has now been set, and the committee will have to decide among four candidates —one on U.S. 61 North south of Merit Health River Region Medical Center, on Mississippi 27, the Vicksburg Municipal Airport property and a site on Ring Road, southeast of the airport. The committee, has not been able to visit any of the four sites because of rainy weather we’ve had over the past few weeks, and will try to make another attempt to set tours late this week.

Of the four sites, only the airport property is owned by the city, which raises the question whether the other properties are for sale and how much the owners will want. There are other questions about the privately owned sites: no one is sure how large they are or if they include enough flat land to reduce the cost of site preparations.

The airport property has its own issues. There is the matter of the estimated $813,000 the Federal Aviation Administration had invested in safety equipment, and Civil Air Patrol’s headquarters are there. Flaggs said city officials are continuing their research into those issues. The big advantage the airport has, besides public ownership, is its 200 acres of relatively flat land available for development.

The mayor’s deadline is now less than two weeks away. That means the committee is going to have to make site visits and make up its mind in very short order.

And come June 29, the decision may well come down to one of the city’s two pieces of property.