Annexation is talked about by the city leaders and former city attorney, Walter Brown, as just another quick fix to attempt to shore up a broken city’s finances.

By Mississippi state law, annexation is illegal if it is primarily for tax purposes and former city attorney, Walter Brown, knows this. But apparently he and the mayor are so smug they think the local judges and our other elected officials will just let another slick move pass without comment.

As evidence of slick moves, I offer the current sewer system being constructed to service the prison 15 miles out of town that required a special legislative act to allow the city to do such a project.

I was only made aware of the bill after it was introduced and well on its way to passage. Readers of the newspaper should ask themselves two questions. One of the questions I will answer and the other is for you to answer. First, how many of you were contacted by Rep. Robert Johnson or Sen. Bob Dearing about this legislation before they introduced the bill as your representatives in their respective legislative bodies? Secondly, how many other CCA prison facilities that are currently operating in Mississippi have a city sewer system?

The answer to the second question is that there are three other CCA prisons in Mississippi and none of them are on any form of city sewer.

I was misled to believe the prison could not be built and jobs would be lost if we did not spend a dollar to make a dime. I now know that this was not true, and I think our elected officials knew it also before the legislation.

I honestly believe annexation is unwise because it is going to end up like our visitors’ center and convention center.

That is, a not-for-profit tax drain.

If the city needs to sell the visitors’ center because is not making money after all we paid to buy dirt, fill the hole and build it and the convention center needs to be managed by an outside professional management consulting firm, who are they going to sell the annexation to five years from now when the tax revenue does not pay the cost of maintaining the extra land mass area?

That answer is easy, no one because once annexed, we are stuck with poor city services because the city will still be broke and we have no one, elected or non-elected, who wants to fix it now. Even our newly elected city aldermen have already been duped into believing annexation is the only way out.

W. Byron Garrity Jr.

Natchez resident