It's Melton Time: What's Next for Jackson? | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

It's Melton Time: What's Next for Jackson?

On July 4, Mayor-elect Frank Melton will officially move into the mayor's office of Jackson. Word on the street says he has big changes planned for the city, changes many supporters say are long in coming.

Members of Melton's transition team have been meeting with members of outgoing Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.'s administration, in an effort to figure out the current administration's numbers and hammer out some possible improvements.

Some mayoral transitions can take many months before thoroughly settling into a smooth seat at the helm, however. As late as last week, members of the team were admitting that meetings were too few and too preliminary to offer any future administrative changes without sounding premature. But some details, if a bit sketchy, are starting to emerge.

Crime Strategy: 'A Wait-and-See Thing'

Peyton Prospere, chairman of the transition team, says it is too early to make accurate predictions about the alterations on the way and left requests for details to Mayor-elect Frank Melton, who did not return several calls to the Jackson Free Press for this story.

Transition chairpersons, like Jackson State University criminology instructor Jimmy Bell, who oversees the Police Department Executive Committee, confess that they have no information on objectives this early.

"We've just had one meeting (on June 22) in terms of meeting with the chief and his executive staff, and we received some data, but we haven't even had the opportunity to analyze the data. Basically, I do know that Melton's focus on crime is linked closely to community engagement," said Bell, a staunch opponent of traditional zero-tolerance policing and a proponent of community policing. "He plans to realistically engage the community in problem-solving equations. I really don't know if he's going to open the COMSTAT meetings to the public, but I do know that everything is open for discussion. I think he's basically pushing for shared governance. That's his style."

Portions of Melton's community engagement policy, according to some of his recent statements to Clarion-Ledger reporters, may involve crime sweeps in certain parts of the city, with Melton saying he'll have a "rapid response team" backed up by the SWAT team to go "door to door, making sure everything is alright and nothing is suspicious." He also told reporters that "there will be military aircraft involved."

Matthew Steffey, a professor at the Mississippi School of Law, said Melton's use of military aircraft would be difficult in some ways, impossible in others.

"There are federal laws that limit the role of the military in law enforcement," Steffey said. "If he's talking about the Army, Navy or Marines, that's unlikely. If he's talking about the National Guard, I don't believe he has the authority to do that. Of course, he could approach them, or ask the governor to help him bring resources to bear. He can knock on anybody's door he wants to."

As for the legal legitimacy of the sweeps, Steffey said the specific nature of the searches must be considered.

"It's a legitimate concern that police could overstep their boundaries, but if we're only talking about patrol cars and cops on the street, the only people not welcoming that are criminals," Steffey said.

The city will need to watch how far such sweeps go, he added. "If we're talking about police trying to elbow their way into people's homes, that's another matter. They could be sued under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act. Any evidence they get is subject to suppression in court, and there's an important political check. If the citizens get outraged at police misconduct, it could bring around quick political action. This is a wait-and-see thing. This could be a very welcome thing, but a concerned citizenry would want to make sure that it's not going to be heavy-handed behavior that improper."

Steffey said he didn't believe the behavior would deviate toward the improper. "This is not Bull Connor with the dogs and the fire hoses," he said, referring to the violent tactics that Birmingham Police Commissioner Theophilus Eugene Connor used on civil rights demonstrators in 1963.

District Attorney Faye Peterson said she believed Melton had moved past his regulation-breaking behavior during his time at the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics when he set up unconstitutional roadblocks to search for drugs.

"I think Melton has learned from his mistakes at MBN that you have to have probable cause, or there's nothing anyone can do with the case. I think he's also probably learned that a lot of the officers and sergeants who do these investigations are not as incompetent as he used to believe—in fact, far from that."

Peterson said she thinks Melton has a clearer sense of the law now. "He can't help being highly verbal, but I think he's learned that if you're going to make cases that are going to stick there are a lot of things you have to do. ... The law is out there. We can't just make it the way we want to. There are case laws and decisions, and we have to work within those parameters," the district attorney said, adding that she believed, through many conversations with Melton following the primaries, that he is more open-minded now than he had been.

"He appears to have, from what I can tell, a lot of up-front enthusiasm. A lot of people have been worried that we're going to have a bunch of people arrested unnecessarily through witch hunts, but if I thought that was going to happen then I would sit him down and tell him that he couldn't do it, and I think he would actually listen to that," Peterson said.

NO STARTLING SURPRISES

Gary Anderson, former executive director of the state Department of Finance and Administration and former deputy director of the Mississippi Development Authority, now chairs Melton's Administration Executive Committee. Anderson said his committee has met four times with Johnson's people in an attempt to sort out the challenges facing the budget for the new fiscal year, which will start Oct. 1. Anderson says he has yet to encounter any startling surprises in the numbers he's finding.

"Local government has undergone some real challenges over the last five or six years with a declining economy, but with a still seemingly strong demand for services. As a result, you do see the erosion of the financial position of the city. That was not a surprise. There are some challenges," Anderson said, but added that "there also are some real opportunities we see in the budget," explaining that a report will soon be issued by the committee.

Entergy Vice Chair of Community Development Haley Fisackerly is on Melton's Economic Development Executive Committee. Fisackerly describes Melton as "wide open" to ideas from others.

"I feel, from the directives that we've been given, that we've got a new mayor coming in here who's really ready to lead. While he's got a lot of good ideas himself, he wants to hear from others what the obstacles are blocking Jackson's way to progress," says Fisackerly, who then tossed in a few preliminary suggestions that the new administration may follow up on.

"It's safe to say that we have good employees in the city of Jackson, but they don't have the resources needed to do their job," Fisackerly said. "Funding is a big problem. I've been perplexed to see a city with a decline in revenue base, but there have been no aggressive changes in the administration to meet what your budgets are. You see staff going five years without major salary increases. How do you get people to do a good job when you can't reward them?"

Fisackerly opposes tax increases, preferring staff cuts. "We can't afford what we have, and we've got to tighten the belt. I think there's some opportunities for streamlining. They have antiquated computers that don't network with one another. ... I think the administration can turn more to automation. You don't need as many personnel to do jobs that can be done through automation," Fisackerly said.

The Jackson City Council recently moved to ensure that no appointed city employees would be re-located to more permanent posts, but the motion did not pass.

Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees and a supporter of Melton during his campaign, said she could not condone firing city employees who work at the street level. She also warned that automation would "never replace the human touch."

"I think there should be a hiring freeze until we assess the workers-to-work ratio and then do something, but I don't know if there are too many city workers. Usually, if you find too many, they're at the top and not necessarily where the rubber meets the road," Scott said, adding that the needs of the city's shrinking tax base had to be considered. "We know that for the city of Jackson, the only way we pay for services that city residents receive is through taxes, fee, tickets and all that stuff, so we have to look at replacing workers with automation if it'll save your tax base."

Other topics mulled over by the team include the possibility of starting a revolving loan pool to help businesses with façade upgrades or help them relocate or open their doors in the downtown area.

HEAR 'EM AND HUG 'EM

Mississippi Development Authority Executive Director Leland Speed, who donated to Melton's campaign and heads his economic-development transition team, said this administration will be very business friendly. "Businesses are no different from you and me. We want two things. We want to be heard. We want to be appreciated. …Frankly, businesses haven't felt like they were being heard or appreciated. Under the new administration, you'll see a big change in this. It's amazing what you can accomplish with just pure, old-fashioned salesmanship," Speed said, describing the new business policy as a "hear 'em and hug 'em."

When asked if businesses were getting plenty of hearings and hugs in Madison and Brandon, Speed said Jackson has the advantage of a high customer population.

"We're the biggest market in the metropolitan area. The metropolitan area, as a whole, is doing well economically. We're doing better than the coast, actually, but the city of Jackson's piece of that total just hasn't been getting the average," he said, adding that the new administration might also take a new look at the Jackson Re-development Authority, which he says has had bigger successes in the past.

"Property owners who have inherited property downtown don't tend to be the most aggressive developers, so in the past, we've had the Jackson Redevelopment Authority assemble blocks of property and make them available to the public. ... It did all manner of stuff, but the JRA has been basically inert for eight years. It's got to come back to life," Speed said.

FOCUS ON DOWNTOWN?

John Lawrence, director of Downtown Jackson Partners, is also a member of the Economic Development Committee. He pointed out that the city of Jackson and the Jackson Redevelopment Authority are some of the largest holders of non-taxable property in downtown, primarily in the form of under-utilized parking lots and plots of vacant land.

"It would be nice if we could more aggressively get these into the hands of developers," he said. "Over the last four years we started to see the shift from all of our downtown projects being public projects. We have the TelCom Center and the Union Station and the type of projects that ultimately cost taxpayers money, but what we're starting to see now are new businesses, such as the Plaza Building and the Electric Building. I'd like the new administration to look at the inventory of land we have. If we have to put incentive packages together and land together and treat every mom-and-pop restaurant or a 20-unit residential building like we treat Nissan, then that's what we need to do."

When asked if the last administration had encouraged private development, such as the Electric Building and the Plaza Building, Lawrence said they did, but added that the prior administration was "on the front end of the learning curve."

"The truth is they did (foster private development), but they did it very methodically. They were learning, and now we're in a position where we've gotten beyond that a little bit, and we need to get more aggressive about it," Lawrence said.

Johnson has been accused, often by Melton, of giving too much attention to downtown projects at the expense of the rest of Jackson. Lawrence said Melton could effectively duck such accusations by pointing out the benefits of private development to the rest of Jackson—including the many successful projects spearheaded by the Johnson administration, like the Heritage Building, City Centre, the Electric Building and the Marriott renovation.

"That's about $40 million in projects. That means $450,000 going to (Jackson Public Schools) that wasn't there last year. Too often our elected officials feel that if I'm seen as promoting downtown then I'm seen as neglecting our neighborhoods. The new administration needs to say we're aggressively looking at opportunities. There's a wealth of them, and we can pick a dozen more projects in the near future," Lawrence advised.

Fisackerly and others are also taking a new look at state legislation that makes the removal of dilapidated buildings problematic for the city coffers due to expensive upkeep of the property. "But there's legislation out there that will allow the city, when that absentee landowner makes a tax payment, to take a portion of that to pay back the lien, so the city can recoup its cost in that property," Fisackerly said, adding that he didn't think this legislation has been "aggressively pursued by the city."

Other goals that will require the authority of the state Legislature include the possibility of a Payment In Lieu of Tax, or PILT system, for the upkeep of city projects. There are 66 blocks in downtown Jackson. A fair percentage of them, despite recent consolidation efforts by the state, bring in no taxes because they are occupied by offices of the state government. New administration officials are talking about asking the state government to pick up some financial responsibility for that real estate.

History has shown, however, that legislators coming out of north or south Mississippi for a few weeks out of the year to make government decisions don't always place the city of Jackson high on their priorities list. It took many years for the state to even allow the city of Jackson the option to tax itself for the construction of a Convention Center. Johnson complained on numerous occasions over the last eight years that legislators turn a deaf ear to Jackson gripes, despite the amount of noise produced by the Hinds County delegation.

Lawrence said he was hopeful that the Legislature would unite with Jackson residents if state and city objectives were shown to share benefits. "The state has done a great job of consolidating their employment downtown. They've built several new buildings, and they take wonderful care of their properties, but we need them to take a more active role in what's happening off their properties," Lawrence said. "We have to help our Legislature understand that we've got 26,000 employees coming to this area every day. A huge number of them are government employees."

CITY NEED A FACELIFT?

Fisackerly says his experience at Entergy forces him to the conclusion that one of the bigger problems facing the emergence of new business in the state is the overall appearance of its capital city—an argument that he feels should hold water with legislators.

"At Entergy, we worked a lot with site consultants in recruiting business investment to the state, and one of the most resounding things we hear from our site consultants is our image issues," Fisackerly said.

This same argument has been lobbed repeatedly at the Legislature, but has been met with even more indifference lately, as the state struggles under a shrinking economy.

"I think it's more a matter of opening the dialogue and having someone who can build better relationships across the lines," said Lawrence, who added that those lines can hopefully be reopened between the city and county supervisors as well. Neither the city government nor the county supervisors brag about close relationships between one another. Squabbles have broken out over issues as seemingly simple as establishing a police communication system that allows authorities in both governments to talk to one another.

Melton's close relations to Supervisor Doug Anderson is an example of a line of communication already opened, however, according to Melton supporters—and one that was systematically closed to the previous administration, regardless of its efforts.

Melton, though, is a "remarkable uniter," Speed said. "There was a very unique coalition that supported Frank. We've never seen anything like this in Jackson," Speed said. "When you've got (Jackson Advocate Publisher) Charles Tisdale, (Southern Christian Leadership Conference Executive Director) Stephanie Parker-Weaver and Billy Mounger and the AFL-CIO, we haven't seen anything like this. He's brought the most disparate bunch of folks that you can ever see."

Certainly, the alliance is surprising being that Tisdale has had a turbulent relationship with Speed. Parker-Weaver and Speed have also been at odds in the past. Parker-Weaver has accused Speed and the Downtown Jackson Partners of trying to stuff the primarily black voting district of downtown Jackson with white voters through high-end residential development, such as the Electric Building.

Today, though, Parker-Weaver said Melton's appeal crosses social barriers. "Frank has a very diverse background of people who support him based upon what he's said he's going to do for the good of all. I'm not surprised, because Frank is a very sincere person," she said.

Speed admits this alliance could be tenuous, but said he believes in it. "This is not cornball stuff," said Speed. "This is our moment of hope. A lot of folks I talk to still don't believe it's happening. Will there be attrition? Hell, yes. That's the law of nature, but I think I think Frank is going to retain enough to keep things moving."

Melton's Plans

To date, Frank Melton hasn't unveiled a plethora of specific plans for the city, but has floated the following ideas:

Crime: Melton has referred to the JPD as "brass weary," saying that there are too many chiefs and commanders. Melton promises a shake-up in the JPD's higher ranks. Melton's political platform called for putting "the bulk of personnel of any police department should be in the streets and neighborhoods." He promises door-to-door "sweeps" in some neighborhoods assisted by "military aircraft."

Economic Development: Melton's campaign promises on economic development have been generally non-distinct. His platform does call for the encouragement of more private enterprise in the downtown area. Melton has promised to work for low taxes, low crime rate, quality schools and a strong, capable work force. Melton has also promised his administration will hear the frustrations of existing businesses. He has also said he will better market tax incentives to businesses who wish to open in "slum/blighted areas." He also promises that the city will work with private investors to open a recording studio on Farish Street.

Water and Sewer: The brunt of the dialogue in Melton's platform plans for water and sewer upkeep involve complaining that water and sewer rates are rising. He calls the rate hikes "unconscionable." He befuddled city officials last week when he asked, on transitional letterhead, for Council to halt progress on a plan to refinance water and sewer system bonds. He also complains that city residents are often called upon to drink bottled water due to frequent contamination. According to his platform, the solution is "new leadership."

Streets: Melton has said Hinds County supervisors have "offered to help with street resurfacing but to no avail. This city has continuously refused to accept such assistance." Outgoing Mayor Harvey Johnson has documents that show that the city attempted on numerous occasions to broker a deal with the county on the allocation of federal money for street resurfacing. The county, he said, wanted to pick and choose which city streets got the repairs, despite the wide availability of more needy streets. Johnson submitted a list of the most blighted streets for county approval, with an offer to let the city carry the costs for the streets the county refused. Johnson said he never got an answer from Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Doug Anderson. Anderson was a key figure in Melton's campaign, however.

Education: Melton has called for the use of school facilities by religious and civic groups for programs that "strengthen our neighborhoods," using the facilities as after-school programs and civic centers. Melton says he would also like to rely on the "experience and leadership" of retirees and seniors in staffing community building endeavors. He said during the campaign that he would like to see spanking returned to schools and will arrest parents who show up at school complaining about their children's discipline.

Neighborhood Development: Melton has vowed to work with neighborhood associations to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods. Melton plans to tackle the problem of eroding neighborhoods by rounding up the criminal element. He also promises to work with unions to train young people to rebuild dilapidated housing.

Also read the JFP's editorial this issue: If Melton's 'Pro-Jackson,' Then We're 'Pro-Melton'.

For background on the Melton campaign, see the JFP's 2005 Elections Blog here, with extensive coverage of Melton's campaign and a profile of the new mayor. Click here to read Melton's JFP campaign page, which includes his full campaign platform (it is no longer on his Web site).

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