Consensus on EDA’s future must be found

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, June 28, 2000

Enough is enough. Someone — anyone — in our city and county government must step up to the plate and do something about the lingering fate of our economic development authority.

For nearly a year and a half, the Natchez-Adams County Economic and Community Development Authority has been without an executive director. During that time, city and county leaders have bantered about, discussed and argued over how to revamp the EDA.

They’ve fussed over the amount of funding required and how, specifically, the city and county will split the costs.

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We’ve heard their cries that the board is simply too big. It probably is, so let’s fix it.

We’ve heard people say we need to find a professional, experienced executive director. We agree again; let’s do it.

We all agree that something must be done. We’ve done little in the past 18 months except disrupt the EDA’s work and focus while we argued over its makeup and its future.

That’s not to say the current EDA staff has wasted their time. They’ve been busy working away at recruitment and grant writing and all of that is necessary.

But their job must be complicated by the fact that our city and county has been unable to reach any sort of a consensus on what must be done.

What kind of a message does our lackadaisical attitude towards the matter send to prospective businesses?

We love Natchez and Adams County, and we want what’s best for the area. And we think, unequivocally, that what’s best for our area would be more economic development.

And that will come much easier if we all agreed to sit down and work together.

A revamped EDA, led by an experienced, skilled director, is the obvious means to that end.

Now we just need to make it happen.

We shouldn’t waste another month in getting something done.