My Hattiesburg

City of Oak Grove?

Just posting a note that the final meeting scheduled for the incorporation of Oak Grove will be tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Oak Grove High School. Many believe that this will be the last chance of Oak Grove incorporation before Hattiesburg annexes it’s tax-income base completely. If you live in the area, just stopping by to listen to what the organizers have to say wouldn’t be a bad idea. For a lot more discussion on the subject, you can check out the forum thread, City of Oak Grove?

Hurricane Rita

If you’d like to keep up with the track of Hurricane Rita, just click the link below. The picture will automatically update as soon as the National Weather service puts out an advisory (which is who everyone uses to get updates on the hurricane) This is now the 3rd strongest hurricane on record so all we can do is pray for all those in it’s path.

Hurricane Rita path

Four More Years

Johnny Dupree is returning as mayor of Hattiesburg. Unofficial results showed the mayor with 7,160 votes and Rowell with 4,678 votes. Over 52% percent of the voters in Hattiesburg turned out to vote in yesterday’s election. For a breakdown of the election results by precinct, click here.

The election is over and I think now it’s time to move on. Hopefully, the mayor got some good ideas from all the candidates that entered the race and will take them to the office today. I applaud his gracious victory speech last night, am now encouraging everyone to look forward to the next four years.

Hattiesburg General Election June 7th

If you have been living under a rock for the past few months, then you may have missed the fact that we are coming up on a general election in Hattiesburg. If you have missed everything, I can only envy you as it has been quite exhausting with the primary, the runoff, and all the political mudslinging that has went on. Since you have decided to grace us with your presence, I’ll let you know your choices on June 7th. As always, we don’t endorse any candidate, since the opinion of any one person or media outlet should not influence your decision-making process.

Johnny Dupree - Democrat (He’s the mayor now)

Betsy Rowell - Republican (She’s on the city council)

Shawn O’Hara - Independent (Was he under there with you?)

Kim Bradley (R)

LaJuana Richardson (D)

C. Jerome Brown (D)

Andrew Ellard (R)

Red Bailey (I)

If your interested in catching up on what the mayoral candidates stand for, I strongly suggest two things. One, visit their website. Two, watch the WDAM Candidate forum on Thursday night at 7 pm. If you happen to miss it, stop by the forums on Friday morning, I’m sure there will be a few comments about it. After all of this, you can vote in our Final Election Poll, and get in on some of the colorful discussion going on about the election and the controversy surrounding it.

I promise you, you won’t feel like your uninformed for long, as a matter of fact, you might even suffer from “opinion overload”. If you do feel as though you suffer from this condition, please visit our newly created “Things to do in Hattiesburg” page and get some sun while visiting some of the places listed there. Follow this by talking about what you’ve done in the Off-Topic forum, and only periodic visits to the Hattiesburg News forum.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to leave a comment to help us improve.

Better late than never

Sorry for the delay, I was away on vacation, but the winner of the Republican runoff was Betsy Rowell. The unofficial results reported by WDAM were:

Betsy Rowell 2,424

Lee Jarrell Davis 1,482

In the June 7th election, you will have three choices for the mayor of Hattiesburg

Johnny Dupree (D)

Betsy Rowell (R)

Shawn O’Hara (I)

Hattiesburg Primary results

The unofficial results are in. It looks like there will be a runoff in the Republican race for mayor. The numbers are posted beside each candidate.

Republican Candidates

Betsy Rowell 2092

Lee Jarrell Davis 1351

David Senne 898

Walt Coker 64

Democratic Candidates

Johnny Dupree 3269

Catherine Starr 65

Total Republican Votes: 4405
Total Democratic Votes: 3334

Ward 1

Kim Bradley (R) 303

Darth “Scooter” Borgman (R) 112

Larry D. Carroll Sr. (R) 56

LaJuana Richardson (D) 187

Ward 2

Denard Delgado (D) 716

Eddie Holloway (D) 674

Ward 3

Carter Carrol (R) 1079

Jerry Shemper (R) 888

Ward 4

C. Jerome Brown (D) 381

Rick James (D) 177

Andrew Ellard (R) 460

Brian Lucas (R) 322

Rink Russell (R) 291

Ward 5

Henry Naylor (D) 1052

Oliver Johnson (D) 614

Andrew Mott (D) 20

Runoffs are needed for the Republican mayor’s race between Rowell and Davis. Also, a Ward 4 runoff between Ellard and Russell. On the Democratic side, there will be a Ward 4 runoff between Delgado and Holloway. Runoffs will occur on May 17th. Click on the link below to vote in our Republican runoff poll.

Republican Runoff Poll

Hattiesburg Primary Election Summary

For those last minute decisions, I’m posting all candidates and their names will be linked to their websites. The entire purpose of this site to begin with was to promote the local internet in Hattiesburg, so I intend to help out all those who have internet sites by promoting them here, no matter who they are. If you know of a site that I missed, please let me know.

Republican Candidates

David Senne

Walt Coker

Lee Jarrell Davis

Betsy Rowell

Democratic Candidates

Johnny Dupree

Catherine Starr

Independent Candidates

Shawn O’Hara

Ward 1

Darth “Scooter” Borgman (R)

Kim Bradley (R)

Larry D. Carroll Sr. (R)

LaJuana Richardson (D)

Ward 2

Denard Delgado (D)

Eddie Holloway (D)

Ward 3

Carter Carrol (R)

Jerry Shemper (R)

Ward 4

C. Jerome Brown (D)

Rick James (D)

Andrew Ellard (R)

Brian Lucas (R)

Rink Russell (R)

Red Bailey (I)

Ward 5

Henry Naylor (D)

Oliver Johnson (D)

Andrew Mott (D)

There they are folks, it looks like it’s going to be an interesting race. WDAM is showing a live debate on Tuesday, April 26th, at 7:00 p.m. Then talk about the next day on our forums!

Mississippi Education Crisis

The State Legislature has failed to come up with an agreeable budget for the 2005-2006 school year. The question at hand? “Where will the cuts come from?” I’d love to know why we are having to cut teacher’s jobs from schools. Obviously, the amount of taxes going in, does not equal the amount going out. I don’t know how this could happen since the casino’s that we all voted on to come to Mississippi is reportedly paying the school system $500,000 per month. This money that we didn’t have 10 years ago, when we didn’t have budget problems. We’ve also had a lot of new industry arrive, such as the Nissan plant, and we’ve got billions from tobacco companies.

The web site for Haley Barbour has other things to say about our situation though. This is taken directly from the site:

“The question during this budget debate is not whether education will be cut or not, but how big an increase it is going to get. The Legislative Budget Recommendation calls for a $29 million increase and the Governor’s budget calls for a $70 million increase. This year the State Department of Education has asked for a $266 million increase over last year – and only about a third of that increase is the teacher pay raise ($98 million).

Education spending has risen 46% over the last five years with virtually the same number of students. Interestingly, the State Department of Education has reported that, even if the MAEP formula is fully funded this year, their request for next year will be at least $200 million over this year, an increase of 30% in two years! 15% a year increases aren’t sustainable.”

After reading this, I have to ask, where is the money going? Surely the teacher raises could not be responsible for this. I’m sure there was a plan 5 years ago when the teacher pay raises were passed, just to get us to the national average. I know teachers have a much tougher time than anyone over this. Not knowing if your going to have a job next year or not. Frequently, first year teachers take any job they can get. What does this say to college students wanting to teach? I think sends a clear message, be a politician.

If you’d like to see what your school’s budget is for this year, as opposed to what the state is proposing to give them, just click the link below. You must have Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice to view this document.

2006 MAEP District Allocations

The Republican Roundup

The Comcast political forum was very informative and at some points, very entertaining. I’ll post a quick rundown of what I heard as each candidates number 1 issue (and none gave just one). Again, this is only the Republicans.

David Senne - Re-establish trust with USM, pay-as-you-go financing of city repairs, economic development, and school reform

Walt Coker - Police department reform, urban development reorganization, and street repair

Lee Jarrell Davis - Our relationship with USM (or lack thereof), economic development, city police problems, and he was the only one to mention Homeland Security

Betsy Rowell - Police department reform, and long-range planning

I thought the candidates started off kind of shaky, but most of them really impressed me with their poise and preparedness after their opening statements. I would have loved to have seen a open forum where the crowd can ask questions on the spot, but apparently, this country doesn’t do that anymore.

I’ve posted a poll over at our forums to give our members a chance to vote and to see who others are voting for.

MyHattiesburg Republican Primary Poll — I have 4 of the candidates websites posted there, and you can make comments there as well.

Also, over at our forums, a representative of WUSM let us know that they have the mayoral debates at Hattiesburg High School available for download.

Jaycees/Comcast Political Forum

I thought that this was important enough to have it’s own article. The Jaycees/Comcast political forum was held Tuesday night with six of the seven mayoral candidates debating about the issues in Hattiesburg. These debates will be aired on Comcast Channel 11 on the following dates:

April 5th 8:00 PM

April 13th 6:30 PM

April 19th 8:00 PM

April 27th 6:30 PM

Plenty of chances to watch it for yourself, and decide before voting. I’d like to personally thank the Jaycees and Comcast for putting this together. I don’t expect anyone to make up their mind just from watching a debate, but it helps to give everyone a more complete view of the candidates for Hattiesburg mayor.