Between the Headlines: Columbus
Between the Headlines dives deep into the stories shaping Columbus and Lowndes County, Mississippi. Hosted by The Commercial Dispatch managing editor Zack Plair and local businessman and commentator David Chism, this show goes beyond the front page to bring you the real conversations behind local politics, policies and people. Zack’s journalistic expertise and David’s insight deliver in-depth analysis, spirited debate, and behind-the-scenes context you won’t get anywhere else. It's honest discussion on what matters.
Between the Headlines: Columbus
Live Nation Enters The Amphitheater Conversation
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Got a question or a tip? Send us a text
This week on Between the Headlines, Zack and David dig into what’s next for the Columbus Amphitheater, including Live Nation’s advisory role, the professionals being brought in to book and market the venue and whether the long-delayed project is finally ready to deliver.
They also discuss Craig Chapman’s three-year contract extension with Columbus Municipal School District and take a closer look at a $310 public-records bill that raises bigger questions about access, accountability and transparency at City Hall.
Cold Open And Headlines Setup
SPEAKER_00I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about.
SPEAKER_01I'm not asking you to hide anything. You know, no, put it out there. Let the people see it.
SPEAKER_00I've never not worked in a hospital working environment.
SPEAKER_01You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face. Zach, that's a hard question. I have no answer for it. From the opinion page of the Commercial Dispatch. This is Between the Headlines.
SPEAKER_03This week on Between the Headlines, we have updates related to the Columbus Amphitheater. Also, Columbus Municipal School District extends a three-year contract extension to Mr. Chapman. Grade span learning is in full effect and uh other things happening there. And is the city overcharging the dispatch and other folks for little fees to get the documents that we are entitled to? But first.
Sponsor Messages And Welcome
SPEAKER_03The Lounge Community Foundation invites you to its second annual casino night on Friday, July 31st at the Trotter. Play blackjack craps and roulette with professional dealers, enjoy upscale food and drinks, and enter win incredible prizes. Every dollar stays local, growing our permanent endowment to support Lounge County nonprofits for years to come. Retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you. For over 40 years, Financial Concepts has helped people create retirement strategies that fit their lives. Our team in Columbus takes the time to understand your goals and build a plan that works for you. Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help. We plan retirement. Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor. This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi. That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you. They're made here locally by bankers who know your name and care about the community. At Bank First, we're more than bankers. We're your neighbors. Whether we're cheering in the stands, catching up at a local pancake breakfast, or celebrating milestones across our community, we're part of the moments that matter most. Stop by your local Bank First branch or visit BankFirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender, Bank NMLS 454063.
Amphitheater Construction Progress Check
SPEAKER_03We welcome you to Catfish Alley Studio here in historic downtown Columbus, where it is T plus 204 days since the unofficial completion of the Columbus Amphitheater. Per Steven Jones campaign promise. But we do have some updates, and those updates are maybe not so much in the way of building stuff, but in the way of marketing and getting the word out that, hey, we've got it going. Yeah. We're going to be doing stuff.
SPEAKER_02No, first of all, they are building stuff out there. Yeah. It's it's it's happening. You know, talking to Kevin Stafford, uh uh the city engineer yesterday, um you know, the limestone's down for the hard seating. Uh he said it won't be long before you start seeing uh vertical buildings going up out there. So he put it you know, the concession stands, the restrooms, things like that. And they're still on track to get that thing finished and opened by spring. That's exciting. Um, but more exciting still is they have handed the promotion and marketing of that amphitheater and getting the acts in and getting the acts together to the professionals.
Hiring Pros To Book Shows
SPEAKER_02And uh that that's exciting to see. Um they hired this uh Gadston, Alabama outfit uh Lookout IT. Um smaller, obviously, than uh Live Nation, but uh idea is uh Live Nation actually recommended these guys to the city to run it, said that they're gonna be, you know, more nimble, uh better uh better suited for a venue that size. They already run, I think something of the order of eight or nine others uh of the same or to similar size uh venues.
SPEAKER_03And so by all accounts it's a good fit. And so for those that that are just now kind of latching on to the story, Live Nation is a big outfit. Yes. Like that's uh that's about as big as it gets to be.
SPEAKER_02Right, and they've been involved with uh advising the city and the and the uh uh committee that's kind of putting together these plans. The uh Live Nation has been involved with this amphitheater from the beginning. Yes. Uh the idea I think that some had was that they were gonna run it, them or maybe one of their subsidiaries. And uh what's ended up happening is a smaller outfit is gonna actually do the promotion and marketing and managing essentially of the amphitheater. And Live Nation is gonna do maybe three or five, three to five shows a year here.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell Now who will handle the ticketing or what have we gotten that far?
SPEAKER_02Uh we haven't gotten that far yet, but what what this what this outfit is gonna do, uh look out IT, and and they're gonna do they're gonna do this at a cost of five thousand dollars a month uh to the city or the CVB or whomever. We'll talk about that in a second. But um what they're gonna do really off the bat is try to gen up interest, get the buzz going on, hey, this thing's being built, it's got it's gonna have 3,500 seats, it's gonna be open next spring. Yeah. These are the kinds of acts we're looking for. Y'all be if y'all think that y'all can put this on the schedule, y'all uh y'all be thinking about us. And then so that's more of the immediate thing.
SPEAKER_03And so, real quick, the buzz that they're doing, though, has more to do with agents and promoters of the performers out there.
SPEAKER_02Right. It's not so much the it's not so much the buzz for uh Colombians and spectators just yet. It's the let's let's build out the infrastructure of industry relations, let's get the branding done, let's let's start being a strategic partner with the city on how to launch this thing properly. Let's get the creative uh let's get the graphics going, let's get the swag out, let's start talking about, and this is to your question, let's start talking about who do we want to get to do the ticketing? Uh how do we want to handle that? Um, what formats, what websites are we are are we looking at to funnel all of that through? You know, concessions and and and all of the other uh sort of subcontracte type things that would come with putting a show together. These guys would be the tip of the spear of coordinate gathering those people and coordinating them and making sure they're where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there. And uh and so that's more of the practical side, and the more strategic side is them being advisors to the city along, saying, This is how this works, this is how we need to do this, this is the uh these are the people who we need to talk to. And the city in its turn saying, Well, you we're paying you guys $5,000 to know this stuff, so go on ahead and do it.
SPEAKER_03$5,000 is not a huge number. It is an arbitrary number, it's exactly halfway between zero and ten thousand. So anytime I hear those kind of numbers, I'm like, well, did we really bid this out? But you know, in this case, I think I'm okay with it because these type of promoters I know are it it's a niche industry. It is. You know, Gadston is an up-and-coming town. They they've gotten pretty big over there, but it's not Nashville, right?
SPEAKER_02Well, and neither is Columbus, and I'm I'm certainly I'm a big fan of the amphitheater and looking forward to going to shows there. But let's be realistic. This isn't Tuscaloosa, this isn't Birmingham or Nashville. Uh this is gonna be a smaller venue that's going to uh that's gonna get what it gets, and but I still think that it's gonna be pretty neat.
SPEAKER_03Well, good artists have these things called band writers and they work with their agents and they have very specific needs, and and it I I know just enough about this process to tell you that it is quite complicated and to tell you that the Columbus City Council really needs to kind of stay out of it. I mean, maybe everybody except for Roderick Smith, right? I bet you he could put on a hell of a show at the end of the theater. But except for him, I think that it needs to be, to a large extent, hands off because the music business industry is not something a whole lot of people know about.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I think that that's something that the city understands. Um they're gonna have their hands in this to the extent that they must, but I I I applaud their willingness not to try to run this amphitheater themselves. Yeah. Um because no no offense to any of them. I think uh I think that uh there are plenty of intelligent people running the city. I think that they're very well-meaning people running the city. Uh even when they make mistakes, I still think that uh 90% of the time they're well-meaning they're they're mistakes that were actually well-intended. Uh but you know what you know and you do what you do. And for them to have the the honest the foresight to say, okay, look, we don't need to be doing this. We need to let professionals do this, people who know what they're doing do this. Um they're setting their their amphitheater up for far greater success than it would have achieved um under the city's thumb.
SPEAKER_03And I would say to you that as we look into the future of this, and we're gonna get to a point where we're gonna say, man, this is this is a great thing. We're gonna say, you know what, it doesn't actually flood here every year and and the thing has been improved and built that that you know, those complaints of yesteryear.
Local Buzz And Flood Myth Fixes
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well let's let's talk about that a second because they've got a they've they have a mitigator for that too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um part of this, now they hired Lookout IT uh to do the heavy lifting for getting that amphitheater up and going, the strategic branding, et cetera, et cetera. All the you know that big stuff that needs to happen. But they also um approved using a local outfit, Neon Frog, uh Karen Stanley's uh outfit, uh as needed to tell this local story, to to help dispel myths, to generate buzz on social media as this construction is happening. Hey, they're building the bathrooms, hey, they're building the concession stands. Look at this, it's coming. Reminder of the opening date, and uh then use their expertise, whether it be through press releases, whether it be through multimedia, social media, whatever, um to tell the history of this, to talk about the fact, yes, there's parking. Amphitheaters are built in flood zones all the time for a reason. Um here is that reason. Um if it flo if if it floods like that there on the day of the show, the show will be canceled. You will not have to stand out there, you will not have to swim to watch Sister Hazel. You know, the type of stuff that folks honestly should already know.
SPEAKER_03But other than spraying mud off the wall, you're not gonna have to rebuild everything. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02Now, there's a lot of people we've raised the electric to where it won't be affected by the flooding. We've done this, we've done that, we have parking. There's eight hundred and forty parking spots within a half a mile of the place or whatever. Um, all of those things, of course, a lot of that stuff's already been in the paper, but you know how people are. Yeah. This is a they are going to employ Neon Frog to more strategically and more in a more targeted way, as needed, get those specific things out and keep that community buzz. Coming out, I think that's a nice little one-two punch for this.
SPEAKER_03I agree. Uh my only concern is that is, to some extent, an uphill battle, because as you know, there's so many people who are just hell bent on saying the amphitheater is a complete debacle, it was a waste of money, and it's it's stupid, it's dumb. Right. Okay. Do you think they'll be able to overcome a lot of that?
SPEAKER_02Uh no. I mean, I can tell you from experience in media that you can't overcome all of it. And even Kevin Stafford, when he was uh presenting on this, acknowledged that, you know, uh some of that is what it is. When it comes down to it, it it's it's some word the words of an old song that that I've heard many times. Haters gonna hate.
SPEAKER_03Well, indeed David. You know that song? And I do. I I tell you, don't ask me to sing it though. Um look, I'm not a hater, I'm a lover. I tell you this. Um, you know, if um if this thing opens up and it and it just turns out to be I I read that it was gonna be eleven to twelve shows potentially per year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, ten to twelve shows a year that these that these guys are gonna be uh bringing. Now that's possibly another three to five that live nation could be bringing. Or that may or that may fold into the ten to twelve. I'm not entirely sure how that works. So like every month. Yeah. And then and then we're talking about infill with local stuff. So you you're still gonna have opportunities to um you're still gonna have opportunities to have local events and shows out there.
SPEAKER_03And this thing won't have time to get cobwebs on it.
SPEAKER_02Shouldn't. And uh especially if they use it right in the first few years, this thing could get off and running and and really become something.
SPEAKER_03Well, if if we have that level of entertainment here and if it's regular and it's popular and it's, you know, not crime written and all the things that people worry about. Hey, I'll look back and I'll say, you know what, Mayor Jones, it took you longer than it should have, but I'm proud of it and I'm glad that you
Who Pays The Marketing Contract
SPEAKER_03had a hand in it.
SPEAKER_02Well, listen, all right, let's let's the there's something I want to revisit from the contract talk from yesterday, but I want to I want to I want to stop you there. You give Jones and this council, well you specifically give Jones, a lot of heck for uh not having the thing built by New Year's Eve. And yes, he said that, and yes, it was a campaign promise, and et cetera, et cetera. But but let's just really talk about 2016 to 2025, the history of that amphitheater and what happened at that amphitheater from 2016 to 2025. They got state money, they slowly built a couple of phases of it out, and it sat there and sat there, and sat there, unfinished and unused. And we can talk about whether it should have sat there unused, uh, but it definitely sat there unfinished.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Say what you will about Jones and his promise for New Year's Eve, but that this mayor and this council has done more at that amphitheater from July 1st, 2025 to now than was done out there between 2016 and July 1st, 2025. So they're they've moved the ball forward in the way they said they would, just not in the timeline that David Chisholm would have preferred. And uh that's David Chisholm's problem.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm an impatient person. Well, speaking of things sitting there, we have a couple of buildings that have been up for sale for a while. And Okay, you don't want to close that topic just yet.
SPEAKER_02I don't. Okay, that's fine. No, there there was one interesting thing. There was one interesting thing in the uh council discussion that kind of uh got a little uh froggy in interviews after. Um Froggy. So Kevin Stafford, uh who's on the who he's the city engineer, Neil Schaer's designing the design the amphitheater, and uh uh he's uh he's on the advisory committee for it. So he's presenting these contracts yesterday, and what they decided to do was uh the city paid the first two months of the contract, so August, September, so $10,000 they decided to do. All right. Well, this contract with Lookout IT, I suppose, is gonna go further than uh September 30th, but that's gonna get us through the fiscal year. Uh Kevin posited that the CVB was absolutely interested uh in getting the uh or taking over the contract, paying that $60,000 at $5,000 per month starting in October, that she was gonna she planned to get that in the budget for CVB and that they thought that that would be their responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. So he said uh some of that to the council last night, said some of that to me. Well, I called Frances Glenn, tourism director, who's also on the advisory committee for the uh amphitheater, and uh she was like, Well, I I don't I don't know if that's gonna work. They're gonna have to make a request. Uh I don't know. I th I I thought that was just kind of funny, but um I don't know who's gonna end up taking that contract. Could very well be the C V B that takes that over, because they are gonna be a major beneficiary of the tourism tax that comes out of that, because that's part of how they're funded. But I don't think that this contract's in jeopardy. If the C V B can't or won't take it on after October 1st, I imagine that the city would just extend it and pay it and and pay the freight itself. That's a drop in the bucket for what they're gonna get in return. But there is a possibility that the C V B would uh take over responsibility of paying that contract uh come October 1st, according to Kevin, and I guess we'll see how that works out.
SPEAKER_03Well, and and what you speak of is is the money involvement, not the actual planning and marketing. That's the big distinction, right?
SPEAKER_02Right. I mean, look at IT's gonna be doing the planning and marketing for the amphitheater, but we're talking about who's gonna be paying the bill for I mean it's gonna be the taxpayers either way, right? You're you're paying taxes that fund the C V B, you're paying taxes that fund the city, but which bucket is that gonna come from? Could be C V B, could be city, we'll have to see. But uh just because it was only approved for two months last night doesn't mean that that's not gonna be extended in some way in October. I think the implication and the understanding is that it will be, it's just to be determined who's gonna pay it.
SPEAKER_03And one of the big questions that will be asked is will the ticket sales and the proceeds and the net profit, shall we call it, from what is collected uh for these performances be enough to make it self-sustaining and to what extent?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I think that it will be.
SPEAKER_03Okay. That'll be an interesting discussion when that arises. And it it shoot, this thing may be so great we'll be like, oh my goodness. Well, speaking of buildings that um So speaking of contracts, Mr. Craig Chapman
Chapman Gets Three-Year Extension
SPEAKER_03is granted a three-year extension on his contract as superintendent of Columbus Municipal Schools. And um that's what we would say uh is a vote of confidence in the affirmative, right?
SPEAKER_02I d I mean very obviously so. Um and I think I think well deserved. Uh this guy's got a lot of time in with the district. We've talked uh we've talked about this before. Heck, I think we've talked to him before on the show.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh you know, in December he gets an 18-month contract. Industry standards three to four. Um at that time, there were questions from that board, and let's be honest, there were questions from the head of that board, uh, Robert Smith, about and where those questions came from. I don't know whether it was just I've been burned too many times. I don't know whether there were things that were specific with Chapman. I don't know whether there were things specific with the circumstances in the district at the time. But um They gave him an 18-month contract, and there seemed to be some reason at the time that the majority of the board, particularly Robert, um did not want to go the full three years then.
SPEAKER_03Well, I my understanding was is that it was an inside hire, and and it was not like a statewide or anything-wide search, it was just kind of a let's hire what we know and see how it works out kind of deal.
SPEAKER_02Right. And and okay, but Chapman could have gone a whole lot of different directions with that. He could have said to heck with this and looked for another job. He could have um he could have sandbagged and then looked for another job. He could have been bitter about that, he could have done a lot of things. Um instead, what has seemed to have happened um is he brought the stu he seems to have brought the stability that he promised uh to the district. There were a number of I think seven uh administrative positions. We're talking about positions at central office that were needed positions that were vacant. They're all filled now. Um there's a plan in place to attack vacancies on the elementary teacher level that uh I think are is paying some dividends. Um you're not hearing from Columbus Municipal School District or Brandon Central Services, you're not hearing the uh uh controversial stuff. You're not hearing you're not hearing the uh incompetent stuff, you're not hearing the uh cult of personality situations that have have kind of um pockmarked that district for across several administrations.
SPEAKER_03And that says something because usually we don't talk about what we don't hear, usually we talk about what we hear, and then it ends up always sounding negative.
SPEAKER_02And and what we hear from Chapman is he promised ability, that's what he's doing. He promised the the the blue-collar work ethic of his administration, that's what he seems to be delivering. He seems to be getting along great with his faculty, seems to be getting along great with the administration. You're not hearing a lot of uh uh of the rumblings of he's doing this and he's doing that from parents. He seems to be well received, and he seems to be uh the patrons seem to be giving him a chance, and he seems to be taking uh uh taking advantage of that in good faith and and doing the work um quietly but effectively. And let's be honest, we were talking about Robert Smith. I I like Robert. I like talking to Robert anytime I get a chance to sit down and have a conversation or have lunch with Robert, uh, that's a good day. I like Robert. He and I have had our differences, some of them have been well documented. I like Robert. Respect the hell out of him. I think that even he would tell you that he's a stubborn person. Once he's got his mind set on something, or once he's got a skepticism built about something, in my experience with Robert, it is hard to move the needle there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Grandpa calls that muley headed.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm not gonna say that. Uh but but but but definitely stubborn and hard to move uh in a situation where he is dug in or has made up his mind or has questions. And evidently he got his questions answered. Um evidently the rest of the board that might have shared his trepidation got their questions answered. And I think that that speaks incredibly well of the job that Craig Chapman did before all of that and has done since. And he could have done a lot of things with that opportunity over the over the last six months, and he seems to have done the right things with them. I'm very encouraged and very confident that giving that body of work that that's gonna continue for the uh for the next three years, and I hope it does, and uh I hope that we continue to see steady handed leadership over there that that that uh brings that district forward. And um it certainly wasn't the time to switch horses.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was a rough time of transition there. And um I tell you, two years into this, when we get year two of the state test results, I think that's gonna be a good bellwether as to how learn how long term this is gonna work out. I mean, I agree with you 100% on the grassroots part of this, you know, relationships, uh stability, hires, uh parents being generally generally happy. Yeah, that says a lot. It does. Let's talk about the tests when they come out. But in addition, and to your point, all of this comes on the heels of a big transition
Grade Span Shift And Campus Plans
SPEAKER_03where, as our parents know, uh the city school system has uh moved from basically a magnet school model to a grade span learning model, and that's no easy feat to attack uh to take care of in your first year there.
SPEAKER_02No, and you've got, I mean, he was interim and then made superintendent as as Franklin and Fairview were closing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh they consolidated from five elementary schools to three elementary school campuses, went to grade span, got rid of the community school magnet school model. Um they're in still in the midst of $36 million worth of um uh renovations to uh campuses, and now they're trying to move uh Franklin and Fairview, they're in the middle of trying to get appraisals for those campuses to see about selling or leasing and what those options are and what they want to keep and what they wanna and what they want to move and privatize out of that. And changing horses in the middle of that would have been um uh would have been tough for anybody else coming in. And uh I mean it's gonna be a tough job regardless, and especially where you've got Franklin who's got which has all of that um historic historic aspects to it. It's gonna be a lot of investment for anybody to come in to try to um uh build something, run something on 16th section land. Yeah. Uh and we talked to Chris Chain about that not too long ago. So this is something that I mean, all this is happening right now, and having stable leadership and not changing horses and coming up with uh multiple plans that change all the time. I mean, you see those football teams that like, okay, we want to get the uh right coach with the right offense. So let's try eight of them in the span of ten years and see if that works out. Well, what are those teams' records? Yeah, or or maybe for the whole ten, because they never did give the the leader the chance to implement their system. And so with this board having confidence in uh Chapman and being a fairly stable board, let's be honest, because there have been more unstable ones at CMSD. Sure. Um and now you've got they have confidence in a superintendent who has now proven to be stable, level-headed, and um uh fairly blue-collar when it comes to uh r keeping the trains running. That combination is good for CMSD. It may not be flashy, it may not, it may not make big splashes and big headlines, but you know what? Maybe that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I do think so. Now, now as far as these appraisals, you know, we're getting a couple of different sets of them, one with the um uh the auditorium cafeteria, you know, the big parts of the buildings, one without that's a Franklin, yeah.
Franklin And Fairview Future Decisions
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it and it's gonna be a big decision because well, number one, you've got the historical aspect, you know, you've got the nice bricks up front, and you've got the memories there. Yeah. And so there's gonna be pushback on just taking a bulldozer to that, even if you just bulldoze the back part of it. There's always that. But then Fairview, all I see down there on airline road is a big fat liability. I see having to run air conditions to keep the air conditioners to keep the building up. There's gonna have to be some hard decisions made on the floor.
SPEAKER_02Obvious suitor for Fairview. Obvious suitor. You've got the church sitting right beside it that wants to be involved in that building. So I think you have serious conversations with Fairview Church about what they can do with it, and um you go from there. Now that doesn't add it to the tax base, unfortunately, and that's gonna be a gripe and a grumble for that. But I mean b better better when you've got a suitor and they've got an idea and they can use it and they can keep that thing going, uh, you give that a heck of a look. You don't you don't you don't turn your back on it. So I think that they need to be having serious conversations with your job.
SPEAKER_03I don't want to talk much about it because I would hate to jinx a deal like that. So I just want to see the buildings used and not falling apart. Not falling apart and not having to dump money into it just because it's there and maybe it has bricks and it's got historical preservation. I know that's the case for for Franklin. Is that the case for um I don't think so, no? Okay, for the other. Good, good. Anything else on that topic?
SPEAKER_02No, I think I think we're good there. Good luck to Craig Chapman and all of the uh and all of the responsibilities he has in that, and we look forward to seeing what the next three years look like of his administration.
SPEAKER_03Indeed.
A $310 Public Records Invoice
SPEAKER_03Well, before we sign out today, I I can't help but bring up this other story here. Are you gonna make us talk about that? I will. Uh, because I got tickled reading it. Um the commercial dispatch was charged a bill, stop me where I'm wrong, $310 for the acquisition of some documents. And um Mr. Peter Imes was taken a little aback by that bill. Not because not because it's a hell of a lot of money, but it it it is kind of an appropriately tall order. Um and and and the language uh that he was given, that the dispatch was given was not particularly satisfying. Well, what would you say about the uh the the bill as it were when it came in for these these documents, which by the way, uh they were related to Okay, so I'll I'll I'll give the background here.
SPEAKER_02We uh uh look at we were we requested records uh related to um Arts Council. Partnerships between the parks and rec and the arts council. There have been a lot of partnerships there. There have been a lot of grants that they've kind of gone in together on. And we kind of wanted to get an idea of uh the scope of that and then the scope of the city's participation with the Arts Council, not uh and and first things first, there's just because we ask a question, there's not an implication that we think there's gonna be a bad answer. The implication is hey, here's our question, what is the answer? So there was certainly no um certainly no implication that we were gonna find some terrible something. We just wanted to know the information. So we requested the information, these documents, and what we got back was Greg Lewis, the parks director, um, has compiled these records. They're ready for you. It took him six hours to compile the records at a cost of fifty-one dollars an hour. You can have them. So bring a check for three hundred and ten dollars, and um we've got this stack of records for you.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And I'm looking at that, it looks like maybe 125 pages or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a it's a fairly considerable amount of paper.
SPEAKER_03So was six hours slow or was that par for the course?
SPEAKER_02Well, we'll talk about that in a sec. Um I've got a few things to say about that. But uh what was at issue was I I know that so I mean anybody can do 51 times 2080 um to see what that comes out to. Uh the law allows uh you to a public body to charge the it says the pay rate for the lowest level person competent to to do the job. So in this case, uh the city said that the lowest level person uh competent to do the job was the department head, um, and that it took him six hours to do it, and as such, um they could legally charge fifty-one dollars an hour for that six hours. All right, so fifty-one times twenty eighty, which is how you work that out, uh over forty hours that's how you annualize that. Uh-huh. It comes out to $106,000 in change, which is what Stephen Jones makes. So I said, that's not what Greg makes. Greg makes closer to $80. So Where's this extra $50,000? Hey, where's where's this twenty six? Yeah, where um what what what is up with the rest of this? And the answer that we got was that we were charged the benefits for that time as well.
SPEAKER_03The minute. Like the the free plane tickets or whatnot. Sorry. All right.
SPEAKER_02Health insurance and the different things like that, the the fringe benefits. So Okay.
SPEAKER_03Now if you call those fringe, that's a part of a pay package.
SPEAKER_02Well, well, what I mean, okay, so when you get when you are paid a wage, like your salary might be um your salary might be, I don't know, fifty thousand dollars. Um but what the company what the city and what a lot of companies are actually going to be paying you or or paying for over that time is that fifty thousand dollars plus uh thirty-five-ish percent, depending on what the benefits package is. And that's how they figured it. They were like, okay, there's there's the what what his hourly wage would have been according to his salary, plus what you're doing. Plus what we have to what we have to pay in benefits uh for that same time. And so it was $38.33 plus 35%, which is how they came up to $51. Now, we're not saying that the city is wrong. So the the way that this works is um
Ethics Complaint And Pay Rate Clarity
SPEAKER_02you if you feel like there is a question, if you feel like something has been wrong, or you feel like the public body has done something wrong, denied you a record unduly, charged you too much, um, had a uh had a meeting in a way that they weren't supposed to have it, you file a complaint with the ethics commission. In this particular case, we weren't saying so much that the city couldn't do that, but there are no cases that say that they can or they can't. And usually the way it works with most public bodies is they charge you the salary. The law doesn't say salary, the law doesn't say salary and benefits, the law says pay rate. They can charge you the pay rate of the lowest level person competent to fill the request. Okay. So what does pay rate mean? We are asking the ethics commission, it's in the form of a complaint because that's the only vehicle that they have for this sort of thing, but we're asking the ethics commission to make clear what they mean by pay rate. Can you charge benefits? Because if you if you can't, then we were overcharged $80 and we want our $80 back. If you can, if the Ethics Commission looks at that and says, um, actually, yeah, the taxpayers are out that same money. The taxpayers pay the benefits just like the taxpayers pay the salary. So that makes sense to us that they're charging the benefits, then any public body that isn't charging for that now knows that they can. And so either way, there's going to be clarity of the law, hopefully, that comes for that, which is the reason that we filed the complaint to ask the question. It was not and and an accusation. Yeah, it wasn't an accusation. It was just, hey, this is new, this is this is strange, this isn't how everybody does this. Can they do this? Yes or no? And I think everybody will benefit from the answer across the state of Mississippi. And it needs to be noted that before I even wrote this complaint up to send in, uh, I did call the city attorney, Jeff Turner, just said, hey, we're gonna do this, this is the reason that we're gonna do this, wanted you to know the context for it. So they didn't read in the paper that we filed this complaint, and that's how they knew. So uh th this is all being handled above board as as best as we can do it.
SPEAKER_03So the part of this story that tickled me is Peter's response. He said, We're not being petty here. Right. Right. We this isn't about 80 bucks. We need clarification. Right. But I'm super glad that this question got asked. Right. I know it's only $310, but that that's the problem uh with an attitude in a municipality where um the powers that be say, well, it's only $310. We're not gonna worry, we're not gonna give the time of day the accountability. You know, I this may or may not be a good comparison, but if you look at Minnesota and other places where there are big questions, you know, whether whether you think that all that stuff is super, super real or some of it's made up or whatever, I never ever want to see our city or any city in Mississippi get to a point where they're just whey-nilly with money and there's fraud and nobody knows what's going on. This $310 is a microcosm of really good stewardship and holding folks accountable, even if it's not like a fight per se.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Right. And I mean, and that's that's what it's for. We're we're gonna continue to uh uh ask for open records and different things. And and you could make a you can make a case like why are why are public bodies even allowed to charge to give citizens the access to things that they've already paid for? And you can make that argument. Aaron Ross Powell And I have made that argument. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And I mean there has to be some mitigating factor to keep, you know, uh an overzealous newspaper or a group like, I don't know, ABC, from uh peppering these guys with like five and six public records requests a week, and uh because that is obstructive to the duties that they're supposed to be serving. Um and so I the laws that allow them to charge fees, uh it it's a mitigator to people abusing the system, uh to obstructing the normal course of government work. And and we're respectful of that, and we understand that and appreciate the law in that respect. It just needs to be clear. My problem here, and and I will go there to a certain extent, a huge chunk of this, uh uh a huge chunk of this, these documents that we received are grant applications that have already been submitted and reports on same. Some of the pages, many of the pages, in fact, on the front end of this big thick document dump, it it's noted that it was that that these pages were printed on the third of March of 2025. Oh, the printer says that on it. Yeah, printed on third of March.
SPEAKER_03So they were sitting in a file cabinet.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I have a hard time believing two things. And and and maybe some maybe I'm wrong about this, but that's gonna get to my bigger problem here.
Why Fees And Process Feel Opaque
SPEAKER_02I have a hard time believing that the lowest level person competent to go to file cabinet was the department head. And generally speaking, when we do get fees from the City of Columbus specifically, and really not only them, uh the uh a lot of public bodies are doing this. They're charging the department head uh wage and saying the department head is doing it when it's something as simple as, hey, would you go to that file cabinet and put this in a manila envelope and send it over to Jim? And did it take him six hours to do it? There's no and maybe it did, and maybe it's true, and maybe all of that is fair and above board. My problem is there's no way for us to vet that. We have requested in the past when we've been given bills the of uh of a sizable amount and being told that the department head was the only competent person to fill the request. We've asked for the opportunity to go audit the gathering of that information. I just want to sit in there and watch him do it then. And every time they said no, and the law doesn't really provide us the opportunity to do that.
SPEAKER_03That's problematic.
SPEAKER_02And so there's no way for us to know. There's no way for us to vet. We can look at these records all day and get the answers to the questions that we're looking for in the records. We can get the answers from the ethics commission on whether it is appropriate for them to charge benefits on top of uh as part of their fees, and that's fine. But what we can't do and what leaves a lot of room for bilking potentially, and I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but Greg Lewis, a department head who makes eighty thousand dollars a year plus benefits, took six hours of his time instead of doing something else that he was supposed to do at the parks, it took him specifically six hours to put all this together when some of it was in a file cabinet printed on March the third, twenty twenty five. I don't believe you. And um I and even if it's true, there is no way for us to really know that. And that I think is a hole in the process because if you're gonna charge people fees, those fees need to be honest and fair. They don't need to be punished. And they don't need to be situations where you're like, well, if the fee is high enough, maybe they won't come get it. And we've been in those situations before. There you go. And I think that there needs to be a hell of a lot more transparency in who's actually doing it and how long it's actually taken, because it's not always the department head and it doesn't always take as long as they say it does.
SPEAKER_03Zach, let me ask you, are any of those documents redacted? No. Okay, there's no redaction. Right. Then I will ask, why were they in a filing cabinet to start with? Why couldn't they just be in a in an open file that you could go to the the city's website and look at? That's transparency. Having some fella who is the sentinel or the guardian to go in there and pick and choose out of that cabinet what he wants to show you, uh-huh, that right there is a barrier to transparency.
SPEAKER_02I can see I can I can see that point.
SPEAKER_03Opinions are those of the speaker, but I'm just saying I don't feel a lot of transparency in what I'm looking at in fact right now.
SPEAKER_02I think that when you send an invoice with hours and a rate and a person who did the thing, I think that when the person being charged says prove it, you ought to have to.
SPEAKER_03Indeed, indeed. Well, that's what we have in the way of topics today. Uh thank you all for listening. Sponsorships are available. Uh, if you'd like to help us keep this program going to keep folks informed about things that are happening good in the friendly city, let us know. Uh Zach,
Three Things To Know And Signoff
SPEAKER_03three things to know.
SPEAKER_02Number one, abduction survivor, author, and advocate for child victims, Elizabeth Smart will headline the Wealthy Gala in October, hosted annually by Mississippi University for Women. Author of multiple books, including the New York Times bestseller My Story, Smart was abducted from her childhood home in Texas at age 14 and held prisoner for nine months before being reunited with her family in 2003. Number two, the Caledonia water and sewer superintendent was arrested last week after a verbal altercation with a family member almost turned violent. Christopher Bradley Box, 46, is charged with felony domestic violence after he allegedly left the argument to get a pistol from his vehicle, then finding the door locked upon his return, the door to his house locked upon his return, broke a window to try to forcibly enter. Boxes is out on bond and has been put on paid administrative leave in Caledonia, pending a Board of Alderman review of his employment. Number three. Start Velock Tivajall Consolidated School District Superintendent Tony McGee is staying put after being passed up for the same job in Baldwin County, Alabama, where he was a finalist. As such, he remains at the helm of the most expensive high school build in Mississippi history out at MSU.
SPEAKER_03There will be plenty of time for me to get behind this microphone and tell you what I think of the great Taj Mahal that is happening over there across the river. All right. Good stuff, good stuff. Reach out to us, tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or X at Dchishm Double Zero and leave a public comment. Keeping it real here in Catfish Alley Studio and Historic Downtown Columbus, your host has been Zach Player, and I am David Chisholm. Y'all stay friendly out there.
SPEAKER_01I'm just a simple old country boy, but um I think that makes sense. I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.
SPEAKER_03You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.
SPEAKER_04That is.
