I was able to attend the Tate County Republican Club meeting held Tuesday, Aug. 27, and heard from both Mississippi State Senator Neil Whaley and Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves.
The back-and-forth communication from the attendees and the speakers was mostly positive. Both politicians were frank, blunt, open and transparent. I heard both of them admit when either they didn’t know an answer to something or that a mistake had been made.
The only negative aspect of the meeting had nothing to do with the politicians. What occurred to me was that a very large number of people have no clue how our local streets are maintained or fixed.
Of course, the topic of paving Senatobia streets came up. The mayor was actually quite candid about his own frustrations with the delay of improvements to the streets.
Yet, most of this was out of his control.
See, I’m convinced people think there is a large map of Senatobia in the mayor’s office and he just randomly throws darts at the streets he wants to pave.
Y’all, he doesn’t. Neither do any of the Board of Aldermen.
The city actually paid money for an outside firm to come to the city and do an extensive study to decide which streets and roads were in the worst condition. The study then cross-refenced those roads with the amount of money it would take to fix them.
This also served as being unbiased so no one Alderman could dictate that his roads were in need of the most assistance.
Once the study was complete the firm brought the findings before the Board of Aldermen and the mayor at an open public meeting.
And mind you, this meeting was not held in secret, nor was it held in the middle of a weekday when most tax paying residents could not attend. On the contrary, it was held at the normal bi-monthly meeting beginning at 5 p.m. at city hall. I was there. I remember a lot of empty chairs.
The Board listened to the findings and decided on a plan to address the roads and streets in the worse condition. Does that mean the city can fix every pothole and dip? Nope. Not even a little bit. Because that would require a lot of money. More than the people of Senatobia can afford to pay when they are already paying roughly $13,000 more per year to buy the same groceries they bought pre-Covid.
The reality is patience is still a virtue. Does it majorly disappoint us when we are driving our vehicles across bumpy torn up roads? Of course it does. But we need to realize our local elected officials are driving the same roads we are. Their vehicles face the same repairs. No amount of gripping and annoyance from the public will change the fact that they see the issues as well.
But patience is a virtue most people don’t have these days.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t pray for patience, or God will teach you about it the hard way.”
Alright y’all…who prayed for it???
