Wouldn’t the world just be a nicer place if good pizza flowed through the community as easily as fresh air?

We’ve long thought that to be the case. Unfortunately, though, pizza doesn’t just grow naturally in the world. Like many of life’s special creations, pizza has a very real cost, particularly for the businesses who specialize in pizza making.

Someone must buy the ingredients and provide the labor to put the combination of dough, sauce and toppings together to create a few slices of heaven.

Given the common sense of the pizza business, no one should have been shocked by the recent “discovery” of some Natchez city officials that pizza isn’t universally obtained.

Alderwoman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis recently asked Natchez Police Chief Danny White to investigate why some neighborhoods are off-limits to most, if not all, local pizza delivery personnel. Local pizza company managers report that they’ve long had the practice of not offering delivery into areas in which crime is high or where their drivers have been victimized in the past.

You see, pizza companies have real people, working for real wages to bring home to pay bills and raise their families.

Those employees aren’t exactly fond of driving into areas in which crime occurs frequently. In addition, from a business perspective, too much liability exists for a business to knowingly put an employee into a potentially harmful situation — particularly for a pizza.

While some may see that practice as discriminatory, we view it as just common sense. To solve the issue and offer the joy and convenience of pizza delivery to everyone again, the solution is simple — make the questionable areas of the city safer and the pizza will return.