I’d like to take a moment to respond to a a point found in the letter to the editor written by Kim Todd, which is published below on this page.
First of all, I don’t have any problem with anyone disagreeing with my opinions and writing to express that. In fact, I welcome it. It’s an important part of the dialog needed to help a community grow. As English author Evelyn Beatrice Hall famously put it (in a statement often incorrectly attributed to French philosopher Voltaire), “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Nobody believes that or practices it more than me.
I also don’t take any issue with the arguments made against annexation. That’s a matter of opinion, and the public needs to hear all sides so as to be able to form a consensus about what needs to be done. This is how good public policy is formed.
But what I do take issue with is that because someone was not born and raised in Marion County that their opinion doesn’t matter. As the letter concludes, “Once you have established yourself in this community, taken the time to get to know ALL the people, and stayed here long enough to personally feel the impact of our taxes, then perhaps your opinion on our community will have more merit.”
This disdain toward new people is something that any transplant to Marion County can tell you they’ve had to fight. Just ask anyone you know who lives here but wasn’t raised here, and I guarantee you they can provide you example after example. Sure, I’ve lived here a little less than three years, but my family and I chose to move here. That should count for something.
And I have been active in as many ways as I can since coming here while working full-time and raising a family. I help out at my church with anything we have going on; I serve as president of the Columbia Rotary Club; I am willing to help promote any worthy cause in these pages; I love the study of this community’s history, which I’ve learned a lot about since I started the idea of doing the “Looking Back” section. I compile that for each Saturday edition, not because I have to but because I enjoy learning stories from this county’s past.
And, yes, I sign the checks every year to pay property taxes on behalf of this newspaper, which come directly off our bottom line while my job performance is measured by how much profit we make. Don’t earn enough money, and I’m out the door. So I think that qualifies me as someone who personally feels the impact of taxation in Columbia and Marion County.
I’m not sure how long it would take me to live here to know all the people. I doubt that anyone, no matter how long they’ve been here, knows all 25,000 or so people residing in Marion County. Anyone who has campaigned door to door has learned that to be the case; even if you think you know everyone, you really don’t. And if knowing everyone here or being a native is the standard required for my opinion to matter, then I’ll never live up to it.
But it shouldn’t be that way.
Mississippi has suffered for a long time from a national stereotype of being a closed society that is suspicious at best and hostile at worst to outsiders. That continues to hamper our potential to attract new people, even as the state has made great strides in that arena.
All Mississipians should make it a personal mission to be welcoming to outsiders who are coming in. We need their new ideas and energy to thrive as a state. Marion County is suffering from serious population loss, which makes it difficult for any business to grow; we should be welcoming help from anywhere we can get it, even if it means we don’t know who the person’s mama and daddy are.
We must come to the understanding that the future prosperity of the place where we live and work matters to us all, native born and transplant alike, and that all of us deserve a say in important civic matters.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him via email at csmith@columbianprogress.com or call (601) 736-2611.
