Jackson Free Press

During an at-times testy Hinds County Board of Supervisors meeting, supervisors elected a new president and changed the board's policy for choosing presidents and vice-presidents in the future.

District 2 Supervisor Darrel McQuirter, who won a special election in the fall to fill the term of another supervisor who died in early 2013, was elected as the new president.

McQuirter will replace District 1 Supervisor Robert Graham, who has held the president post since January 2012. District 3 Supervisor Peggy Hobson-Calhoun will become the vice president.

It was not a welcome move to Kenneth Stokes, who represents District 5 and is currently the board's vice president.

Stokes said representatives of the Mississippi Association of Supervisors, which conducts training sessions for new board members around the state, told him that the president and vice president are required to serve four-year terms.

"If we don't follow state law, we might as well let everybody in jail out because they didn't follow state law," Stokes said at the meeting.

Board Attorney Pieter Teeuwissen said state statutes preclude the board from holding new elections, but noted that some state attorney general opinions he read imply four-year terms for board president and vice president. AG opinions are not legally binding, however.

Under the new policy adopted this morning, supervisors would rotate serving as president with terms lasting about nine months. Graham, the current president, called the move fair and pointed out that some counties—including Rankin County—use a similar rotating system.

Stokes was the lone dissenting vote against making the leadership change.

McQuirter takes over as the board grapples with an aging emergency communications system. The fund that pays for the E911 system, long a source of acrimony on the board, is headed for bankruptcy and, by August 2014, will be more than $153,000 in debt, Hobson-Calhoun said.

Hobson-Calhoun proposed developing a request-for-proposals to solicit bids for a new emergency system to replace one that she said was aging and had outlived its usefulness. McQuirter, a former fire chief for the city of Clinton, urged fellow supervisors to support replacing the existing system.

Stokes objected, saying the county should not take on new debt in buying a new system until the existing system is paid off in August 2017.