By Cain Madden

The Natchez Democrat

VIDALIA — Concordia and LaSalle parishes are looking to share some economic development resources — namely, staff.

It’s an informal partnership where Concordia Executive Director Heather Malone will spend some time in LaSalle, and vice versa for LaSalle Executive Director Cynthia Cockerham.

“As you know, resources are few and far between in rural areas,” Malone told the police jury on Monday at its regular meeting. “We felt like this was a good partnership. She is really good at the community development aspect.”

Malone said this would enable her to focus primarily on Vidalia, while Cockerham focuses on the rural towns of the parish. In LaSalle, Malone would help with traditional elements of economic development, such as certifying industrial cities, working with clients and helping locate sites.

“A lot of people don’t understand the difference between community and economic development,” Cockerham said in explaining what she’d be doing. “I work with the people in the community and try to build a group of folks interested in what the town is doing, and what they want it to look like in 5-10 years.”

Cockerham said she’d be offering leadership training, doing public forums and trying to build community pride.

“I hope to make Heather’s job easier in economic development,” she said. “Our work is hand-in-hand. I work from the grass roots up, and she’ll work from the top down.

“I hope we’ll meet in the middle and Concordia Parish will be a better place in a few years.”

In other news:

-Caleb Smith was introduced as the new sanitarian for Concordia Parish. Duties for the office include promoting public health in the community and performing inspections.

-The registrar office was approved to raise a part time worker’s hourly wage from $8.15 to $8.87.

-The Police Jury entered an agreement with Clayton to transfer property from the town to the jury for the purposes of building a public library.

-Glen Henderson, in a 5-2 vote with one abstention, will replace Rev. Tron Lewis on the recreation committee for district 1.

-The Police Jury tabled a resolution to approve hiring special legal counsel in the matter of damages to the Deadening Road.

-Juror Willie Dunbar made a suggestion to the registrar that they put up a curtain or move the voting machines in the future. He said everyone in line could see who people were voting for.

– The police jury tabled recommending a temporary replacement for Justin Connor, who resigned as justice of the peace with five years remaining on the term. A justice of the peace serves for six years.

-Heather Tisdale spoke to the jury about the poor conditions of Newman Road, as the school bus and garbage truck will not come down the road after it rains, she said.

“Simply grading it, like they did today, is not fixing it,” Tisdale said on Monday. “You have water flooding the road when it rains.”

Juror Red Tiffee said a lot of the roads in that vicinity are like that.

“They are all bad,” he said. “We are going to fix it when it dries up.”