• In an effort to change the council in his favor, Fairley and crew filed a lawsuit against Hattiesburg.
• This was closely followed by the Hattiesburg American calling for the mayor to make a decision on Wynn.
• A letter by a former HPD officer was also published by the Hattiesburg American stating that race was not an issue.
• The next day, WDAM reported that a federal grand jury has re-indicted eight people in a mortgage flipping scheme, with one addition, Kenneth Fairley Jr. Also included is Kenneth Fairley’s brother, Vaston.
• The same day, Jim Cameron shared his viewpoint on this situation. He effectively voiced the opinions of many MH members.
• Kim Bradley opened a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that the Chief Administrative Officer has absolute power over city directors in the absence of the mayor, which is a lot of power given to a non-elected position.
• With all the pressure from the media and citizens of Hattiesburg, this prompted Wynn to call a press conference on Thursday morning in which Dupree informed everyone that Wynn is here to stay.
• This was closely followed-up by a rebuttal to Jim Cameron’s viewpoint in which he reminds everyone that he is the mayor of Hattiesburg.

It’s been a depressing week for the opponents of Chief Wynn. The one hope that the group has left is the lawsuit being brought against Johnny Dupree to submit his department heads. If this is successful, then Wynn will most likely not be approved.

Of course, I don’t want it to seem like everything is bad in Hattiesburg this week. The Independent announced it is ceasing operations of it’s newspaper to move on to bigger and better things with it’s new magazine called South Mississippi Scene.

With July 4th coming up, one of our members has posted all the Independence Day events in and around the Pine Belt. That’s going to wrap it up for this week, thanks for visiting and Happy July 4th!

City Council Files Law Suit Against Dupree!

Fire Chief Jim Fiero resigns

Regions Bank and AmSouth to Merge

Delgado Says Citizens of Hattiesburg Used to Controversy

Today’s HA Editorial Wants Everyone to Kiss and Makeup

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.

If you’ve read this site for the past couple of months, you know that some people say that Hattiesburg is in the gutter. They are happy to give first-hand accounts of outrageous situations containing abuse of power and corrupt leaders. Other people will tell a different story, about the city’s many accomplishments during this administration, and it’s been a turn for the better over the past four years. Me? I don’t know first-hand about any of these things. I think you should look at yourself personally. Look around at your home, your roads, your taxes, and at the city as a whole. Do you like what you see? Then vote for Dupree. Do you think things could be improved? Then vote for Rowell or O’Hara. I just want to be able to say on June 7th that Hattiesburg, as a whole, elected our mayor, whoever that may be. I’d like to say that Hattiesburg stands behind this person, because we had 100% of the registered voters turn out and someone…anyone won the majority. These candidates want the same thing I’m sure. They don’t want to be elected by a select few, they want to stand in front of Hattiesburg knowing that they were elected by the people, for the people.

“Well, what if I can’t make it on Tuesday?” According to the Hattiesburg American, hundreds of absentee ballots have already been cast, and that is an option to you to if you can’t make it on Tuesday. You don’t even have to have a good excuse, just the fact that you don’t like the traffic on election day can get you an absentee ballot and at the front of the line before election day even gets here. Then on Tuesday, you ride home and and lounge in your favorite chair until the results come in.

Lastly, If your wondering where to vote, just call the city clerk’s office at 601-545-4552 and they will let you know what Ward you are in and where you should vote at. It’s that easy. Come back Tuesday night, turn on WDAM, or get on MyHattiesburg.com and watch as the numbers roll in knowing that you participated in Hattiesburg’s 2005 election. It’ll be a decision no one can make again until the year 2009.

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.

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

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.

“We will continue our focus on public safety with the addition of an auxiliary force of volunteers to conduct routine traffic control and event security duties which will be able to free the police for more critical functions,” DuPree said Thursday night in his annual State of the City address.

From what I read, these police officers will have to raise money for their own cars, weapons, and even clothes. They also will not get paid. I don’t know why anyone would want to do this first of all, and secondly, I don’t know who would want to put their lives in the hands of a part-time police officer. Firefighting is one thing, but the house never shoots back. Am I wrong on this or does this sound like the answer to our police force shortage? Anyone here want to do this?

This is great news for all of Hattiesburg Mississippi, since the current minimums are really deficient. With only $5,000 being required, if your hit by a driver with this coverage, and you have a new car, your out of luck. I personally was in this exact situation, and had to be covered by my own insurance company. I would like to give a personal vote of support for this new law.

This is on the heels of the University announcing a $1.3 million dollar addition to the Longleaf Trace Trail. I’m all for the trail and love what it has done for the community, but the safety of the students at Southern Miss should be more important to the administration. They need many things to improve the quality and safety of life at USM. A good start though would be more parking. Another would be a bridge across 4th street so that students and traffic aren’t put in danger by early morning pedestrians and late-evening students getting out of class. What is the student council doing about this? It’s election time, let’s see some results. They are the students connection with the administration at Southern Miss. Please improve parking!