AP and staff reports

Money for two local projects won approval from the Mississippi Senate Wednesday. The Senate passed a $125 million bond bill Wednesday which includes $3.5 million for the Duncan Park Golf Course. The Senate passed another bill that provided $8.5 million to match federal funds for work on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

The money would help pay for rights-of-way to complete the Trace to Liberty Road.

The historic Natchez-to-Nashville route originally began in Natchez, but now stops just short of the city limits.

The bills now go to the House.

A separate Senate-passed bill to make the Duncan Park Golf Course a satellite of the Natchez State Park is also pending in the House.

Local officials have said renovating the golf course will help expand its role as an economic development tool and eliminate the building of a new course at the state park.

Sens. Bob M. Dearing, D-Natchez, submitted the budget request to the Legislature.

If Duncan Park becomes a satellite course for the state park, the city will continue to maintain the golf course and collect its revenues.

Three of the Mississippi’s state parks have golf courses. Although the state isn’t obligated to build one at the Natchez State Park, the park service’s master plan calls for it eventually to build golf courses at the flagship parks. Natchez’s park is a flagship park.

&uot;If the golf course is built now, rather than in five or eight years, it would probably save the state $8 (million) or $9 million,&uot; Dearing said last week.

If the park service builds a golf course at the state park, it will likely have to build a road around the park – which Dearing said could double the actual cost of building the course.

Last week, the House approved about $110 million in work to be funded with bonds. The two sides will meet before the end of the session to reconcile the differences.

Sen. Bill Minor, D-Holly Springs, chairman of the Finance Committee, said both the House and Senate are being cost conscious about issuing bonds, which are used to borrow money to finance projects and the state repays the debt. The state is spending nearly $159 million this year to pay back borrowed money, an increase of 485 percent from 1992.

Minor said $78 million was set aside for the universities and $12 million for the junior colleges in the Senate plan.

He said much of the money for the universities involves work already underway on the eight campuses.

The state parks would get $13 million over three years, with over half of the money earmarked for road work around parks.

Like the House, the Senate bill has $2.8 million for restoring Civil War battlefields. Minor said the state will get $1.4 million in federal funds for the work.

The Senate bill also adds $13.6 million for a new 200-bed male receiving unit at the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield.