Natchez and Adams County need to temporarily pull the plug on the community swimming pool project.

Despite hopes and dreams that the pool would be completed in time for children to enjoy a swim during the hot summer, time is running away from the feasibility of that happening.

The city and county have not yet put the project out for bid again, and that itself is a long process.

At best — if construction timelines and weather aligned perfectly — the pool could be finished by late fall. If that’s the case, the city and county should simply postpone the project a few months so the final pieces would fall into place in the early summer of 2018.

That only makes sense and would allow proper time for the construction to be done thoroughly, not rushed.

We also challenge city and county leaders to take the temporary time-out period and nail down the next phase of the recreation complex discussed for decades and supported overwhelmingly by voters in 2009.

Our community’s residents deserve a more modern, more complete recreation facility than a few outdated baseball fields at Duncan Park and the proposed swimming pool off Liberty Road.

The question remaining is: Do our current slate of elected officials have the courage to move the project forward or will they allow more generations to be disappointed in the quality of available recreational options.