NATCHEZ — The chairman of the Natchez-Adams County Recreation Commission said the commission is open to the idea of building a pool in the first round of creating a consolidated recreation complex.

“We are kind of using this to spur the consolidation of recreation,” NACRC chairman Tate Hobdy said. “We have been discussing it and really the recreation commission’s perspective is there needs to be an entity to operate the pool and it doesn’t need to fall on the schools or county or city independently, so the recreation commission would be that group, assuming that recreation is consolidated.”

The newest rounds of discussions about a community pool first started last month when Adams County Board of Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said members of the Magnolia Bluffs Community Development Committee had approached him about the possibility.

Magnolia Bluffs Casino has committed to paying $225,000 annually into a community development fund, which is overseen by the committee. The committee had initially asked the county to contribute $500,000 in matching funds toward the construction.

At the time the idea of the pool was first floated, Magnolia Bluffs Casino President Kevin Preston said he hoped the pool would spur the development of other recreation in the area.

“I have met with some of the casino folks, and really this is their push to get a pool,” Hobdy said. “There was a pool in the plans originally, but it was kind of pushed to the end of the phases because it was going to take the largest amount of money, but if the (casino development board) members allot those funds to the pool, then we are in favor of using those funds to move forward with the pool, especially as it fits into the (overall) plan.”

The new proposal also includes the construction of multipurpose fields that can be used for soccer in the same phase of construction as the pool, Hobdy said.

Hobdy said he will make a trip to Vicksburg — which has an Olympic-style pool — soon to get a better grasp on what operating such a pool might entail.

“I want to get a good grasp on their real operating expenses versus my estimated expenses,” he said.

Some details of the proposed operation are still in flux, Hobdy said, and the commission will have to work those out with the governing boards that appoint its members.

“We still need to address whatever details we need to get recreation consolidated between the city and the county and pass that,” he said. “We aren’t really there yet. We are still trying to do our due diligence and make sure we can do everything and not create a big stir if something gets out of whack.”

Hobdy said he hopes the commission will be able to get permission from the government boards before the end of the year.

“We’ll ask them to give us the authority to move forward with what we are doing so we know we are not wasting our time in December or January,” he said. “If they are moving forward, we will see if we can get some construction plans drawn up, and once that is done we will go start getting bids and things like that. At the same time, we will start contemplating getting a director and how we will structure the recreation council.”

One of the key steps will still be the hiring of a director and the consolidation of some redundancies within local recreation programs, he said.

The NACRC’s nine members are appointed by the Adams County Board of Supervisors, the Natchez Board of Aldermen and the Natchez-Adams School District’s Board of Trustees, and all of its actions are contingent on those boards buying in to its plans.