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I was incredulous when I read that Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson was near completing a deal with MDOT to relight the bridge over the Mississippi.

The initial multimillion-dollar lighting was a total waste of taxpayer dollars.

The lights block about 20% of the southeastern night sky from my home 12 miles away. From Vidalia or Natchez it is likely much worse.

The moon and stars are much better.

The cost is ridiculous and much better spent on the upkeep of our crumbling bridges and potholed streets.

How about youth recreation or better pay for police and firefighters in our local towns? How about weekly cleanup of the garbage that piles up on the bridges?

Is the idea that if we look up at the lights, we won’t see the garbage?

What about the broken down street lights littering the Natchez streets? The $3 million spent in 2009 to install the lights plus the untold thousands spent on electricity and maintenance over the next approximately eight years until they failed and were dismantled in the massive maintenance project in 2017 could have been better spent.

Please reconsider and don’t waste more taxpayer dollars again.

Kenneth Stubbs,

Concordia Parish resident