NATCHEZ, Miss. – City aldermen voted to hire a former Grambling State University basketball player to be Natchez recreation director.
After interviewing Sanora Cole and another candidate in sessions closed to the public Tuesday, aldermen voted 4-2 in an open meeting to offer Cole the job. Mayor Dan Gibson said they await confirmation Cole will accept the job, which will pay about $55,000 a year.
The mayor said Cole has several years experience in recreation that includes playing basketball and volleyball on scholarship at Grambling State in Louisiana. She’s also worked in recent years as a recreation manager for the East Baton Rouge Parish Recreation and Park Commission.
Faye Minor was the other candidate to be Natchez recreation director. She has the past couple of years been supervising the Natchez-Adams County pool and administering other programs for the city-county Recreation Commission.
After emerging from their closed-door sessions with Cole and Minor, the aldermen did not discuss in their public meeting their reasoning why Cole was best qualified to be the city’s recreation director. They quickly voted to hire her and then adjourned.
Voting for Cole were aldermen Valencia Hall, Sarah Carter Smith, Ben Davis and Dan Dillard. Voting against her were aldermen Billie Joe Frazier and Felicia Irving.
Cole was selected after the aldermen’s first choice last month – Claiborne County recreation director Michelle Burrell – declined to take the Natchez job for reasons of a “personal nature,” Gibson said.
Natchez has not had a full-time recreation director since 2010, when the late Ralph Tedder retired after serving 17 years overseeing municipal parks and recreation. Gibson has pushed for hiring a recreation director since becoming mayor a year ago and as the city begins spending about $2 million to upgrade city parks.
In other action Monday, Natchez aldermen approved a new recreation agreement to present to county supervisors that would formally end their unsuccessful attempt to consolidate Natchez-Adams County’s parks and sports programs but continue to jointly operate the community pool.
“The city is going to handle our parks and they’re going to handle their parks,” Gibson said of how recreation would be managed under the new agreement with the Adams County Board of Supervisors.
The city and county boards in 2015 agreed to combine funds to jointly operate a community recreation program run by the Jackson-based YMCA. However, the YMCA pulled out in 2019, leaving the city-county recreation program in disarray and not living up to expectations for enhancing recreational offerings.
While the city-county’s consolidated effort did result in building a swimming pool that opened in 2018, there remains “a lot that didn’t get done to the parks,” Smith said.
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