Staff within the city of Poplarville will soon begin destroying some of the city’s older records.

City Clerk Jane O’Neal said the city has been trying to purge its old records and “adhering to Mississippi law while we try to do that.”

“We always have two people doing this at the same time to make sure that we are reviewing our records according to the law,” she said.

The State of Mississippi has a records retention schedule, as found in Section 39-5-9 of the state code, that denotes the time frames certain types of documents must be retained.

The city is also required to permanently keep a record of the documents that have been destroyed.

The Board of Alderman gave O’Neal the authority to perform the housecleaning measure.

A list of the records to be destroyed is available for public review at City Hall.

The Board also denied the request of a non-profit organization, The Arc of Pearl River County, to waive the requirement for liability insurance in order to hold an event planed at City Park on March 13.

The Board previously approved the request to hold the event at the park, but the organization came back to request the exemption.

“There are going to be 200 people at this event,” said city attorney Manya Bryan. “You require liability insurance from everyone, so you really need to treat everybody the same.”

“If someone is hurt, then you can be sued,” she added. “It doesn’t matter if the facts set out a viable lawsuit or not.”

“We can’t set a precedent,” said Alderman Kevin Tillman. “Once we open that Pandora’s box, we’ll have every one coming here with the same thing.”

Since the Board already approved the event request with the liability insurance requirement, no action was taken on the new request.

The next Board meeting will be March 5, at 5 p.m. in City Hall.