NATCHEZ, Miss. – The Board of Aldermen is working on a new animal-control ordinance imposing tougher regulations and penalties to make sure Natchez pet owners spay and neuter their pets and also ensure they don’t inhumanely treat them.
The Natchez-Adams County Humane Society on Tuesday presented the board and Mayor Darryl Grennell with various proposals that will be further reviewed for aldermen to decide what to enact for dog and cat owners. They include making them get licenses and pay kennel fees to the city if they have three dogs and five cats.
Noting the city’s current animal-control ordinance does need to be “upgraded,” Grennell said he and aldermen will meet later to comb through the Humane Society’s proposals before deciding what to adopt.
—
In other matters at Tuesday’s meeting of the mayor and aldermen, they discussed allocating city funds to help get more movies and TV shows filmed in Natchez. Aldermen voted to get their attorney to look into the legalities of getting money now dedicated to the city’s economic development agency diverted specifically to attracting more filmmakers to Natchez. A new group – Film Natchez – is working to get more movies produced here. Film Natchez leaders include movie director Tate Taylor and producer John Norris, who this summer filmed Breaking News in Yuba County in Natchez.
Film Natchez has asked the Board of Aldermen to help fund its efforts. Alderman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis urged the city board to consider transferring funds currently earmarked for Natchez Inc. — the city’s business-recruitment agency — to promoting efforts to attract more filmmakers to Natchez. State law dictates how local funds for Natchez Inc. are to be used.
—
Arceneaux-Mathis also got the board Tuesday to seek a meeting with the owner of the now-closed Kmart building on John R. Junkin Drive. She said she wants to know who actually owns the large structure by the Natchez Market and if there are plans for using the vacant property. “It could possibly bring some jobs here if we do the right thing,” she said.
—
City attorney Bob Latham said a court appeal has been filed challenging Natchez officials’ prohibition of a proposed mental health facility in the old Elks Club that neighbors don’t want near their homes in the Lower Woodville Road area.
The Board of Aldermen earlier this month voted against rezoning the property to allow mentally ill patients to be institutionalized there. The board’s denial of a psychiatric unit being located at the Lower Woodville Road site affirmed a Natchez Planning Commission decision made last month.
Latham said the city officials’ decision has been challenged in Adams County Circuit Court by mental-health advocates. Converting the now-closed Natchez Elks Club building into a psychiatric facility is being pushed by Southwest Mississippi Behavioral Health, a nonprofit, public service agency.
Aldermen cited concerns about emotionally unstable people being held in a building without security in a residential area. Concerns were also expressed about it bringing more traffic to Lower Woodville Road.
In turning down pleas from mental health-care professionals and advocates, aldermen said the proposed crisis-stabilization unit could provide much-needed intensive psychiatric care but should be elsewhere in Natchez.