Jackson Free Press

Kourtney Paige has spent his career working in radio. Now, he wants to lend his voice to the people of Jackson as city councilman for Ward 4.

A native of the small Delta town of Louise (population 199) in Humphries County, Paige moved to Jackson with his family when he was 7. Since then, he's been moving around the southeast working in radio and television.

His career has taken him to other metropolises, including Birmingham and Atlanta, but he says his roots are in Jackson.

"I have been spent around 30 years living in Jackson," the 43-year-old Paige said. "Even when I moved away for a job opportunity, I never really left here. My family is here."

Paige was a victim of the economic recession and has been job-hunting recently, but until 2010 he worked for television station Fox 40 in Jackson, before it merged with WLBT. He does help out with Jackson State University's closed-circuit television channel "Tiger TV" and works as the "unofficially official" student news director for the JSU-22 radio news program.

Paige said he's ready to lead Ward 4 into the future.

What would you like to see change in Ward 4, specifically?

Everything--absolutely everything. I have some issues with the fact that, and I know it's a business thing, but we paid money to have the Belk building (at Metrocenter Mall) remodeled. But we're paying like $484,000 for this.

To me, it seems like for that kind of money we could have built our own building. The city owns the Dillard's building (at Metrocenter Mall), but they don't want to move in there because they are going to want to lease that out if someone wants to bring a department store and move in there.

In my particular ward, we don't have anything. At first, we had Metrocenter Mall with 146 specialty stores, four major department stores, had a convenience center on the outside and a movie theater. Now, we don't have any of that. In regards to Metrocenter, I really don't personally think there's help for it. The only way people will come back to Metrocenter, and I mean black and white, is if we bulldoze it to the ground and rebuild it like the Renaissance (in Ridgeland). It will really have to feel new and give the appearance that it is safe. That's the only way you're going to get the clientele. It used to be the only mall we knew to go to.

Then, I have an issue with the Wendy's on the corner of Ellis Avenue and Highway 80, they moved there because they were in a funky situation on the other side of the street. It was hard to cross over from the other side of the street, so they moved to the corner. Now, the old building is sitting there abandoned."

If elected, what can you do from the city council to stop emigration out of Jackson?

I can propose my ideas and try to get them initiated. ... I don't fault anybody for living where they live, because I live where I live. But it's something when you earn a paycheck here and you got an education here and now you live in Madison. They have all those rules and regulations in Madison, but here in Jackson I can open up a restaurant and have a sign as tall as a street light, and as long as I pay the signage fee, Jackson's all good with it. If I go out to Madison, they aren't going to go for that. So I would try to get programs like that. Sometimes it's a money thing, and you might have to offer people some kind of incentive to live inside the city limits. I'd be flexible about it, because I want to see young people staying here so we would have more people living inside the capital city.

Read the JFP's full interview with Paige here.

Read the full interview and other candidate interviews at jfp.ms/citycouncilrace2013. Email Tyler at [email protected].