My Monday morning routine involves taking out the garbage as my water is boiling to make coffee.
Last month I was wondering if my boiled water would make me sick. This Monday I was wondering if my garbage would be picked up.
As I placed my garbage container on the curb I waved at my neighbor Nick Garrard who was doing the same. “Think it will get picked up,” he asked. “Well, we can only try,” I responded.
There is something very wrong with this picture. The most basic functions of a city government are in disarray, all caused by the willful stubborn incompetence of one man, our Mayor Chokwe Lumumba.
My many friends in Madison and Rankin love to make fun of all this. “We told you so,” they say, usually with a sympathetic smile. Jacksonians are developing a bunker mentality and a bond of perseverance. We will overcome! But it’s frustrating when the many wonderful things about Jackson get overshadowed by the incompetence of this mayor.
So, you may ask, what are the wonderful things about Jackson?
For me, a journalist, it is the gift that keeps giving. I will never run out of material. It’s an infinite well bubbling up of great stories and scandals.
Okay, so I realize this benefit is narrowly defined so I will expand:
We live on a cul-de-sac with great neighbors named Rebel Drive with a four-acre abandoned cemetery adjacent to our backyard. You can’t beat that with a stick. I have a driving range in my backyard. My golf has improved immensely.
We’ve never once in 20 years been the victims of a crime. When I sit in my backyard watching a beautiful sunset, it’s like I’m in the middle of a forest, with huge beautiful trees. Yet I can walk to 20 restaurants.
My grocery store, Corner Market, is owned by my nephew-in-law’s family. It’s two minutes away. I can walk to it. And we did so during the snowstorm when the streets were shut down.
I’m a member of the Randy Watkins Golf Group. I am exactly 20 minutes from three different 18-holes courses — Lake Caroline, Patrick Farms and Whisper Lake — for which I pay a little over $200 a month, including carts, and never have trouble getting a tee time. That’s the best golf deal in the world.
My wonderful, beautiful church, Covenant Presbyterian, is less than a mile from my home. River Hills Tennis Club, one of the best clay-court tennis facilities in the nation, is a mile away.
My house has very low property taxes because it’s 60 years old. Its foundation hasn’t moved in 20 years. It’s big and comfortable and costs a fraction of what a house in Madison or Rankin would have cost — and a tenth of what it would cost in California.
I have watched with amazement as Fondren has come alive with all sorts of cool stuff. There is a certain vibrancy about living in an urban city that simply cannot be replicated in a suburban environment. It’s why young people want to live in the city.
I love the multiculturalism in Jackson. We’re regulars at Spice Avenue and Aladdin. I enjoy seeing the extended Indian and Arab families, listening to their foreign chatter and wondering about their individual stories. It’s exotic, like visiting a foreign country.
I love the prospect of overcoming history and prejudice and proving that Americans can live and work together in harmony based on the potential of the future and not the bad blood of the past.
I bore easily. The burbs can get boring with sameness. I love the excitement of a big city, warts and all. That’s why I live here.
Yes, the murder rate is horrible, but callous as this may sound, the criminals are murdering each other, not me. I can get to any section of the metro area in 15 minutes. Property crime is a cost of convenience.
So what will happen to Jackson? We will muddle through and find a way. If Jackson fails, Mississippi fails. The national perception of our state will always hinge on the national perception of its capital city. Sooner or later, the rest of the state will realize that.
And sooner or later, the voters of Jackson, even the hard-core radical Democrats, will realize that you can’t elect incompetent leaders just because they’ve got a cool slogan.
“Free the Land!” I mean, what the heck is that supposed to mean anyway? What were the voters of Jackson thinking? That’s just blatant pandering. Jackson voters will learn from this latest debacle and finally elect a competent leader.
The state will continue to get more involved. Now we have the Capital Complex Improvement District with its own police force and special judges. Hopefully, the state will create a new independent public utility district established to manage the water. Things will improve.
A big shout out to Jackson City Council president Ashby Foote for saving the day on the trash fiasco. The mayor had no plan to deal with this crisis, but Foote marshalled the necessary forces and negotiated a last-minute settlement to keep Richard’s Disposal picking up the trash until the mayor’s legal appeal is exhausted. He will surely lose.
This all started when Lumumba simply refused to involve the city council, which holds the purse strings, in the bidding process for waste disposal. Making matters worse, Lumumba kept proposing one cockamamie deal after another, none of which passed the smell test.
My joke is that you know the Richard’s Disposal deal must be squeaky clean because New Orleans is famous for its honest and open government contracts.
The state legislature must assume some of the blame here, allowing these sham front men to manipulate the state’s flawed minority contracts laws. That law needs repealing. It’s a license to steal.
Here’s how it works: The bag men set up some new business entity with no experience. They get the contract through political connections, taking 20 percent off the top and then subcontracting the actual work to a real company. Money is then kicked back to the politicians. Outrageous!
Our state bidding laws should be “lowest responsive bidder” like most states instead of “lowest and best,” which means nothing. The so-called RFP, in my book, stands for Related Friends and Pals. And we need a real state procurement review board to oversee all public entities, including cities and counties, not just state agencies. I could go on and on.
Rest assured. The garbage will be picked up. The attorneys will make a killing (more kickbacks!) and life will go on. Sooner or later, Lumumba will fade away like a bad dream. Hopefully, the voters will learn the great lesson about democracy: The only problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money!
