Dear Editor,
In The Yazoo Herald edition on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, you ran an article titled “Residents push for county road repairs.” In that article, you quoted several statements made by me regarding the campaign of the residents of Witherspoon Road to have our road paved. I have taken on this project personally, with the support of the other residents on Witherspoon Road.
I have attended the last two board meetings and remained for the entirety of the meetings. This has allowed me to learn much about what is going on in Yazoo County and I plan to fit as many board meetings into my schedule as possible. I would like to encourage other residents to attend these board meetings to learn about what is going on in our county.
I appreciate the Herald’s coverage of the meetings and was glad to see that a number of concerns of the board were also covered in the edition referenced above. I appreciate the Board of Supervisors and the work they do for our county. The board, as a whole, should be working for the good of the residents of the entire county, treating everyone fairly, not just the ones in their district.
One of the things that I learned is that each of the five beats are determined by population according to the latest census. While this is fair for most of the general issues of the county’s budget, I believe it to be unfair for the funds spent on the county roads according to the following facts:
County engineer, Larry Dixon, Yazoo County, has approximately 835 miles of roads divided in the following manner:
• Beat 1 Sup. Lee Moore 320 miles
• Beat 2 Sup. David F. Berry, Jr. 185 miles
• Beat 3 Sup. Willie Wright 15 miles
• Beat 4 Sup. David Shipp 155 miles
• Beat 5 Sup. Cobie Collins 160 miles
My question to you, the residents of Yazoo County, and the Board of Supervisors is: How is it fair that the road fund money is not based on the mileage of the roads in each beat? This seems to be an unfair practice but it has been the practice until the last distribution when Beat 3’s share was reduced because it has so few miles. A number of people I have discussed this with feel the same way. I believe this distribution system is not equitable and the Board of Supervisors should reconsider the way that the road fund money is divided.
I would appreciate your help in getting this information out to the residents of Yazoo County so that this question can be properly addressed.
Please consider printing my letter so that the concerns of the county’s citizens can be made public regarding these matters.
Thanks for your kind consideration.
Sincerely,
Geraldine Gray
