What Of Gulfport?

Gulfport’s new mayor is sworn in and the promises have begun…the new mayor got elected because he was doing it for Gulfport.

Schloegel outlined the main goals in a new strategic plan they developed: Enhance revenue through economic development, with a city emphasis on retail expansion; work with the state port and state Transportation Department to plan a transportation corridor that will meet the needs of port expansion; tap a variety of programs to help residents rehabilitate substandard housing; improve infrastructure, from roads to playgrounds; build on the momentum that has led to superior fire and police service; and achieve a new standard in early childhood education.

During his first few months in office, Schloegel will lead the city’s economic development effort. He said a hiring freeze will temporarily prevent replacement of the director who recently resigned. When the position is filled, he will look for a director with experience in retail development. He said the Harrison County Development Commission and Mississippi Development Authority do a good job of focusing on industrial development.

Declining revenue will make any program he may want to start difficult…..my question is will he find new ways of increasing the city coffers or will he be giving away the city in the name of progress?

In the past, too many mayors have given away the school and killed the children (a metaphor, I think).  They have given tax breaks where tax breaks hurt the city and then the workers pay the price….companies get the gold…workers get the shaft.

Will our new mayor be good for the city or will he just be worried about the next election?

Gulfport On The Sly

Gulfport city leaders, after a closed-door meeting, announce plans to annex 2.5 square miles north of the city. The plan is expected to draw fire from neighboring Biloxi and Harrison County and from residents in previously annexed areas who believe the city hasn’t provided adequate services there even years after annexation.

Can you feel the wool being pulled over your eyes?  Take a trip through North Gulfport sometime……check out the streets and such….after 20 years they still have not done right by the poor in the city.

Gulfport should not have been allowed to annex north up Hwy 49, they have dragged their feet on the promise improvements to the poorer neighborhoods.

A lawyer and expert on Mississippi’s open-government laws said Gulfport violated the law with its closed-door session on annexation and other matters. Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr, a lame duck who will leave office in weeks, responds that neither he nor the council did anything wrong with the secret meeting.

And his primary residence was an empty house during Katrina…….NOTHING Wrong?….yeah…right!

Elections Draw Near

The Sun-Herald did a special investigatioon into the city’s government and its representatives……here is a few of the findings:

These facts came to light after the Sun Herald checked the attendance records for council members, aldermen and mayors in the 11 cities in Harrison, Jackson and Hancock counties. Over the last month the newspaper asked clerks in each city to compile a tally of how many regular or special meetings were held in 2008 and how many the elected officials missed.

Their reports show officials do a good job of making the regularly scheduled meetings, but attendance at special meetings, often called on short notice, is spotty.

Those who missed at least 20 percent of the meetings are D’Iberville Councilman Glenn Ellis, Gulfport councilmen Brian Carriere and Neil Resh, Moss Point aldermen Charles Molden and Michael Middleton, Ocean Springs aldermen Jerry Dalgo and Curtis Lloyd, Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre and Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr.

The seven council members or mayors with perfect attendance are Biloxi councilmen Charles Harrison and George Lawrence, D’Iberville Councilman Henry Toncrey, Waveland aldermen LiLi Stahler and Rick Geoffrey, Gautier Mayor Donald “Pete” Pope and Pass Christian Mayor Chipper McDermott.

Those who missed a large number of meetings said insufficient notification of special meetings, along with illness and other job obligations, were factors.

Just incase you were looking for a reason to vote for or against your voice in the city government.  More info will come to light as we get closer to the election.

More Trouble For Warr

Mayor Brent Warr and his wife, Laura, were originally indicted in November on 11 counts of Katrina fraud, but court records show those charges were sealed while the investigation continued.

The second indictment against the Warrs, unsealed last week in U.S. District Court, contained 16 charges against each of them. It supersedes the original indictment.

One conspiracy charge and four insurance fraud charges were added to the second indictment, issued Jan. 22. The second indictment remained under seal until the Warrs appeared in court Wednesday, entering not guilty pleas.

The 11 original charges involve $150,000 in homeowner assistance funds and $9,558 in FEMA funds the Warrs received for Katrina damage to their beachfront home. Those charges have been incorporated into the second indictment.

Prosecutors contend the Warrs lied to secure the federal funds, claiming the home as their primary residence when they actually lived in a house that belonged to Brent Warr’s grandmother while the beach home was being renovated.

Illinois impeached a gover5nor over allegations, what will Gulfport do?

AL: Annexation A Good Thing?

To answer that question–in my area of MS it was not all it was cracked up to be.  I wish my fellow Gulf Coastians good luck with this one.

Two out of four areas outside Mobile voted to annex into the city Tuesday.

The city claimed victories in a section of Theodore, south of the city’s boundaries, and in the Windmill Place subdivision, just west of Cody Road.

Two other areas, one along Moffett Road and another that included two subdivisions on Snow Road, voted against joining the city.

Tuesday’s balloting marked Mobile’s third major annexation effort in the past 13 months.

In September 2007, Mobile Terrace residents voted to bring themselves and retail-heavy stretches of Airport Boulevard and Schillinger Road into the city.

And in January, the Mobile Regional Airport joined the city.

In Theodore, sales taxes at stores will increase from 7.5 percent to 9 percent. There are no stores in Windmill Place.

Property taxes in both areas will rise once a five-year grace period ends.

FL: Escambia Says No To Smokers

Starting Oct. 1, the county will have a tobacco-free hiring policy. All applicants for county jobs are currently required to take a drug test, which will be expanded to include testing for tobacco use. Any applicant testing positive for tobacco will not be eligible.

It’s one of several policies county commissioners approved Thursday aimed to improve the health of employees and to get the county’s health insurance costs under control, said John Weber, a Human Resources supervisor for the county who specializes in employee benefits.

The county also is enacting a 50-foot smoking ban from the entrance or exit of any county building on Oct. 1. In two years, no county employee will be allowed to smoke anywhere on county property

It’s not only smoking the commissioners are targeting.

The county’s 1,426 active employees and 285 retirees who receive benefits will be paying more for health benefits come Oct. 1. The county will continue paying 75 percent of the costs of benefits, but the premiums are going up.

Depending on the health plan they choose, the increases will vary. Overall, employees will see an average increase of 24 percent. For example, an employee with single coverage in the top-tier plan will go from paying $60 a month to $79, Weber said.

The greatest impact will be on the 196 retirees eligible for Medicare who often are on fixed incomes. They will be asked to either stay with the plan they have and pay $50 more a month for the next four years, or move into a new plan called BlueMedicare with altered benefits and see their costs rise $16 a month.

MS: It Pays To Work In Biloxi

City employees in Biloxi are the best compensated in the state, according to a new study.

Biloxi’s wages and benefits are “probably the most competitive I’ve seen,” said Jeffrey Markham, research associate for the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. He has done comprehensive salary and benefits surveys for nearly 10 years.

Stennis has studied salaries and benefits for D’Iberville, Gautier, Hattiesburg, Tupelo, Olive Branch and several other cities in the state and Markham said, “with Mississippi cities, (Biloxi) ranks at the top.”

He was especially impressed with the city’s benefits package, which he called “very comprehensive, very competitive.” Among the greatest benefits are tuition assistance and the flex time policy that allows the city staff to attend classes. “They’re really quite generous,” he said, and better than those Mississippi State University offers. “Your employees should really be quite appreciative of that,” he told the City Council.

See it pays to let casinos control the city and its administration.  My first impression is that it should I mean it makes lots off of the casinos on its property.

Gulf South: What Is A Dollar Worth?

A dollar earned by a worker turns over seven times before it leaves town, right?

Not quite, says Dr. Ed Ranck, associate director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research in Gautier.

The long-held belief that $1 packs the economic punch of about $7 before it circulates out of the region is a mainstay in “the lore of economic development.”

It all started in 1944, Ranck says, when Carl Wilken, an economist who wrote about agricultural output, observed that the ratio of national income to farm income was 7 to 1. Ergo, Wilken figured, every dollar of farm output “generated” $7 of national income.

But Wilken wasn’t all that persuasive or perhaps precise. According to Ranck, “Most economists were skeptical of Wilken’s conclusion then and research since then has shown clearly that the skepticism was warranted.”

Still, Ranck says, multipliers do exist, they’re just not as hefty as Wilken concluded.

“There is nothing wrong with the idea that a sale of a good or a service generates the sale of other goods or services. Manufacturing and service industries create jobs in other industries that supply goods and services to them. People spend their paychecks on goods and services.”

Ranck says that before a dollar leaves, it has turned over several times, “not seven but a few.”

Estimates of state level multipliers for Mississippi have been made by the Center for Policy Research and Planning and they are typically in the range of 1.3 to as high as 2.7 for manufacturing for some specified time period, Ranck tells us. For smaller regions such as South Mississippi or the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi, multipliers’ effects are even smaller.

The 1 for 7 BS is used to sell a development plan to the people, who are basically lied to to to gain approval.  This is a good thing to keep in mind when one is being asked to support a new developement in your area.  Go to meetings and ask questions.

You can be in control, but you have top want to be there.

LA: Rebuilding Projects

Though dirt will not turn for at least another year on many of the 391 public rebuilding projects overseen by City Hall, restoration of all public buildings and other damaged assets will be complete by 2010, New Orleans Recovery Director Ed Blakely told the City Council on Thursday.

“We started very slowly with our projects, construction design and so forth,” Blakely said. “By the fourth quarter of 2009, most of the building activity will have been completed, and by 2010, it will be over.”

In a broad overview of recovery progress, Blakely stressed that the projects, from rebuilding police stations and playgrounds to planting trees along major roads, reflect priorities laid out by residents in post-hurricane planning exercises, including the Unified New Orleans Plan.

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Several council members and a slew of audience members, however, criticized Blakely’s spending breakdown, particularly how $411 million in federal grants authorized by the Louisiana Recovery Authority will be divvied up among council districts.

Does anyone believe this optimism?

AL: Mobile Population Declining

The city of Mobile’s population continued to decline, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The report lists annual estimates of populations for cities greater than 100,000. The figures pertain to the city proper, and not the greater metropolitan area.

As of July 1, 2007, Mobile had a population of 191,411. The figure represents a decrease of about 550 residents since last year, and a loss of more than 7,400 since 2000.

The city of Mobile annexed territory in west Mobile in September 2007. Those figures are not reflected in the report.

The city’s low birth-rate, and the movement of residents to areas outside the city limits, accounts for Mobile’s population decline since 2000, said Yanyi Djamba, director of the Center for Demographic Research at Auburn University-Montgomery.

New Orleans, spurred by Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, was the fastest-growing city from July 2006 to July 2007, the report said. Those figures represent a turnaround for New Orleans, which experienced the greatest population decline from 2000 to 2006.