LUY-Development

Category: Local News

  • Natchez aldermen working on new animal-control regulations

    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.

  • High turnover rate produces Natchez’ fifth city clerk in three years

    NATCHEZ, Miss. – A new city clerk will begin work Nov. 1 to replace Charles Crump, who abruptly quit last month. Servia Fortenberry was hired last week and will come to Natchez from McComb, where she’s been city clerk and chief financial officer, said Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell.
    Crump resigned last month after only seven months on the job as the fourth city clerk Natchez has had since the mayor and aldermen began their current four-year term in 2016.
    Crump failed to fulfill his duties as the city’s chief financial officer, said Alderman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis. He “made no suggestions to the board on financial matters during his tenure in office,” she said in a statement read at Tuesday’s Board of Aldermen meeting.
    Arceneaux-Mathis,  Natchez’ mayor-pro tempore, said Grennell and the board hired Crump knowing he had no experience as a city clerk. However, they were assured he would get training in municipal finances and work with Wallace Collins, the certified public accountant already contracted to help clean up the city’s financial records long in disarray and backlogged. Crump failed to follow through, she said.
    “Once the Board of Aldermen attempted to correct this situation, we discovered that Mr. Crump did not want the city clerk staff to interact with (Collins),” said Arceneaux-Mathis, the board’s longest-serving alderman.
    With Crump lagging in preparing a budget, she said, the mayor and Board of Aldermen had to bring in Collins to supervise the city budgeting process for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Crump resigned his City Hall post in late September after the $37  million budget was adopted by the Board of Aldermen.
    In resigning, Crump reportedly said aldermen meddled too much in his office operations. Arceneaux-Mathis said they needed to. “Since the Board of Aldermen is ultimately responsible for all financial transactions of the city, adopts the budget and the audit, we have to be totally involved in the process,” she said.
    Fortenberry takes the job as Natchez’ fifth city clerk – not including at least two interim clerks — in the three years since aldermen converted the post to an appointed job rather than elected, as it had been the past century. The posted salary for the city clerk’s job had a range of $75,000 to $85,000 a year prior to Crump’s hiring in February.
    The mayor and Board of Aldermen on Tuesday closed the public out of discussions about personnel in the city clerk’s office.
    Among other actions taken Tuesday, aldermen increased the health insurance rate city employees pay for medical coverage. It goes from $8 a month to $32 for each employee. Employees pay more to cover their spouses and children. The city has about 190 employees. While this is four times higher than the old rate, it’s less than what the board originally considered.

  • Natchez board blocks plans for old Elks Club becoming a psychiatric facility

    NATCHEZ, Miss. – The Board of Aldermen voted Tuesday to ban a proposed mental health facility in the old Elks Club that neighbors don’t want near their homes in the Lower Woodville Road area.
     
    Natchez aldermen acknowledged the community needs such a center to treat people with mental illnesses, but they followed residents’ urging not to rezone the property to allow mentally ill patients institutionalized near them. “We simply don’t want it in our neighborhood,” Joe Stedman told the board.
     
    Aldermen turned down pleas from mental health-care professionals and advocates, who said the proposed crisis stabilization unit could provide much-needed intensive psychiatric care for eventually up to 15 people at a time. 
     
    “These people are in our neighborhoods and they need help,” one advocate told the city board Tuesday.
    Converting the now-closed Natchez Elks Club building into a psychiatric facility is being advocated by Southwest Mississippi Behavioral Health, a nonprofit, public service agency. It receives government and private funds to extend a variety of services for people with mental illnesses.
     
    Federal law actually mandates the city to allow the unit’s location, said attorney Scott Slover, speaking on behalf of the mental health agency at the Board of Aldermen meeting. “Legally, this is required,” he said, pointing to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA federal law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and requires various accommodations for them.
     
     
    It’s uncertain if the Board of Aldermen’s action against the crisis stabilization unit’s location will be challenged in court. This comes a month after a federal judge ruled that Mississippi provides inadequate community-based services for people with mental illnesses. This has resulted in many emotionally disturbed people to be warehoused in psychiatric hospitals or unnecessarily jailed due to lack of space elsewhere for them to be treated. 
     
    In voting Tuesday 6-0 to deny the psychiatric unit being located at the Lower Woodville Road site, the board affirmed a Natchez Planning Commission decision made last month. 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.
     
    Aldermen did acknowledge such a facility is needed in Natchez and agreed to discuss alternative sites for it at a meeting Thursday with the Adams County Board of Supervisors. 
     
    The formerly named Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Complex is now officially A Clear Path of Southwest Mississippi Behavioral Health, a public-private agency that relies on government grants, Medicaid and private dollars. The Adams County Board of Supervisors does annually give the agency about $77,000. 

  • Natchez board moves forward on Canal Street bridge project

    NATCHEZ, Miss. — Work will begin soon to upgrade the bridge on the much-traveled Canal Street near the Natchez Visitor Reception Center.
     
    The Natchez Board of Aldermen on Tuesday voted to contract a Madison-based company to do the $312,000 bridge-rehabilitation project. Most of the work will be paid for by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The board agreed to fulfill the shortfall with funds it’ll borrow. About $12,000 is budgeted for this.
     
    The extra amount needed for the bridgework will be included in a $450,000 loan the board agreed Tuesday to take for completing a long-running multimillion-dollar project to alleviate drainage problems in north Natchez. That extensive infrastructure project has been funded largely by federal funds but needs more for add-ons approved by the board.
     
    Among other actions at Tuesday’s meeting, the Board of Aldermen voted to allow Ronald Fry to establish another bed-and-breakfast inn next to his current one on North Union Street. This reverses a previous Natchez Planning Commission decision denying him the permit to operate another lodging business in a residential neighborhood.
     
    Aldermen apparently were swayed by arguments that Fry is enhancing the 709 North Union Street house that’s been in disrepair and fulfilling a demand for bed-and-breakfast inns in Natchez. Opponents of Fry’s plan expressed concerns about more commercialization and parking congestion in the neighborhood.