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
Mickens Indicted for Kickbacks PLUS Columbus Through A Tokyo Lens
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A corruption headline hits differently when it’s your own town, your own tax base, and the same City Hall you drive past every week. We break down the newly filed grand jury indictment involving a former Columbus city councilman, focusing on what the charges allege, how bid rigging and kickbacks can hide inside routine purchasing, and why the words “claims docket” and “accounts payable” suddenly matter to everyone who pays attention to local government. We also talk candidly about the community reaction, the mistrust that follows, and the hard question sitting underneath it all: who was supposed to catch this sooner?
From there, we pivot to forward motion with the Parkview expansion in Burns Bottom. We dig into what’s being proposed, how additional parcels and site work could open up more buildable lots, and why smaller, more affordable housing is not a side story but a core piece of economic development in Columbus, Mississippi.
Then we bring in special guest Will Pieschel, a Columbus native who has spent years living and working in Tokyo. His perspective on Japanese culture, rules, safety, and social norms turns into a useful lens on leadership, community mindset, and what it takes for a place to stay hopeful without ignoring reality.
Also, check out our new Facebook Group and let us know what you think!
Corruption Case Breaks Public
SPEAKER_01I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about. I'm not asking you to hide anything. You know. No, put it out there. Let the people see it.
SPEAKER_02I've never not worked in a hospital working department.
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_05Corruption in the friendly city has earned former vice mayor and four-term city councilman Joe Mickens an orange jumpsuit according to a grand jury indictment. We are here to talk all about it. Also, the Parkview project is up for expansion, making Burns Bottom bigger and better. More tax increase for Lowndes County, so the requests are coming in and people have thoughts about that. And special guest, Will Paschell. 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 Bank FirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender, Bank NMLS 454063. In the heart of the friendly city, welcome to Catfish Alley Studio here in historic downtown Columbus. Your host today is Mr. Zach Player, who is the managing editor of the dispatch. My name is Dave Chisholm. This is a late breaking news edition. And as I'm sure you've heard and seen, Joe Mickens behind bars. As of podcast time, we are told that there is a paper arraignment taking place at this time. And we may do a little update if we get an amount set on that. That information will be posted. But we've got corruption, we've got um money laundering, and we've got charges, and they have been filed. The um all suspects are innocent until proven guilty. But Mr. Zach, start us off. What are the facts?
How The Bid Rigging Worked
SPEAKER_02Well, for one, the hammer has fallen on this uh State Auditor's Office investigation into city finances and uh what they found and what uh the grand jury indicted uh Mickins and this uh other cat, Marcus Dawson. So you have a situation here where um Mickins rigged bids with this Dawson guy uh with HVAC and Mechanical or HVAC in roofing, whatever he was calling his company on what on any given day, to do the floors at Townsend and then uh community center and then uh to later do uh the flooring work at the city garage. And so the way this worked is they knew uh Mickens being on the council and having set the budget for this work uh coordinates a bid for exactly the max of the budget, ends up being the low bid.
SPEAKER_05Uh so basically you have uh, if I read it correctly, a $23,000 bid and then an eighteen thousand eight hundred dollar bidding something around that.
SPEAKER_02And then this guy comes in later with a quote of eighteen thousand even. And so they take that they take that quote, Mickens votes in favor of it, and then ends up enriching himself off of it. Ostensibly his company you know did the work on the you know under the table, and he ends up getting uh paid for a good chunk of that work, close to $10,000. And then later on, with the flooring work with the city garage, same kind of deal. And then Mickens comes in, uh walks into City Hall, goes up to an accounts payable clerk and says, Hey, here's an invoice from Marcus for $1,575, pay it. So they pay it. Um Marcus takes that money to the bank and then gives that $1575 to Mickens. So Mickens is not only um not only is he conspiring to rig these bids, uh, but then he turns around and benefits directly from city work that he's not supposed to be doing that he voted to approve.
SPEAKER_05I read it as just a good old-fashioned kickback. I mean, that that's what I see when I read this.
SPEAKER_02And I guess what this Dawson guy was going to get in return was just a promise of I'll get you some more contracts uh down the line if you'll do this for me. And and they did it, allegedly. And um well, now Mickens faces uh 30 years in prison and more than a half a million dollars in fines if he's convicted.
SPEAKER_05So I look at this, one of the uh one of the things was that that was this I guess you might call it a split transaction, if you will, it got paid five thousand up front. And then the second kickback was another five thousand after I don't know the the lows, flooring, and all that stuff got paid for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so he got five thousand dollars after the contract was awarded, and then got another five thousand dollars from Mr. Dawson after the invoice was paid and the work was complete.
SPEAKER_05Well, four thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars. The guy apparently stopped and got a six-pack of natty light before he came and and handed the money to Mickins.
SPEAKER_02As bad as inflation is, I still don't think that uh natty light is ten dollars a six-pack.
SPEAKER_05Be that the case, here we have this, and uh where do we start with with breaking out um the implications, the the finger pointing? I
Forensic Audit Debate Returns
SPEAKER_05mean, let me start with this. Is this a good day or is this a bad day for the city of the Columbus?
SPEAKER_02It's a good day, and it's a telling day. Um and it should be a rattling day for three other people. Uh because I'm gonna get into that. Uh and and certainly uh I want to make it clear that I'm not implicating these other three people for anything other than what we know. But um and and I hate to be this guy, and I hate to sound like Keith Gaskin, but uh maybe should have done a forensic audit, guys.
SPEAKER_05Here we are, T plus 226 days after the completion of the amphitheater. And Zach Plair has said on the record that we needed a forensic audit.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I look this this really brings that home, that that was a valid concern. And then you've got you've got four people on the council, one of them is Joseph Mickens, but let's just put that off to the side right now. Um and then you've got these three other people who haven't been implicated in anything that that that needs to be noted, who voted against this forensic audit, but they did it honestly without giving it a good faith hearing. They did it because Keith wanted, or they they voted against it because Keith wanted it. They voted against it for, you know, uh anytime I talked to Stephen Jones about it when he was a councilman, he he gave a very, you know, Mark McGuire answer. Like, we're not here to talk about the past. Well, I believe that things like this, uh, I believe in a rule of three when things like this occur. If you get away with something once, you feel relieved, get away with it twice, you feel emboldened, and three or more times you feel entitled. When you've got the vice mayor walking upstairs to see the accounts payable clerk with an in somebody else's invoice and saying, Pay this, I think we've reached the entitled portion of the program by then. So what I am saying about that is 2017, this same man got his wife to wit to provide the witness signature on 30 absentee ballots in a race that he was in in his war. We know that. We know that there was a lot of travel that he took when he was a councilman, and that he tried to go on another trip after he was a lame duck. We know that and and part of this is because Jeff Tarnage um told him that he could. Uh City Attorney Jeff Tarnage said, I think it's perfectly appropriate, uh well, maybe, but uh legal and appropriate are two different things sometimes. Uh cast the tie-breaking vote to give himself $200 a day to be the to be the sitting mayor when Keith Gaskin was not sick or out of commission. He was just out of town. So we know these things. And so what I'm saying is all of this happened, all of this that's in this indictment, or that's alleged in the indictment, happened after that vote for uh a forensic audit failed over and over again. This happened in the years later after that. But sometimes the past is the uh or is the greatest indicator of future behavior, and when you don't deal with the past, it ends up becoming your future. And I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I'm saying that it would have been uh well worthwhile to find out just how much of this kind of thing, because this didn't just crop up out of the ground.
SPEAKER_05If in fact, just hypothetically speaking, of course, if in fact this is either the tip of the iceberg or if this is the one instance where he got cocky enough to get caught, and going back in history, that forensic audit presumably may have caught some of that other business that was happening.
SPEAKER_02Uh I do want to say this. I mean, I've made my own statements that were lukewarm to that forensic audit. Uh uh the dispatch editorially uh at the time that uh we knew the cost of it, plus we uh knew kind of where the council was going with it. You know, I think our editorial page even said maybe don't. Uh maybe maybe was lukewarm to the idea of a forensic audit, and maybe thought that the cost uh benefit wasn't gonna uh the cost of it wasn't gonna benefit the city as as much as uh letting it go. I can tell you that today it is is enough to uh give me, Zach Player, the hindsight of no, maybe I was wrong about that. Yeah. Um I think that that that Stephen too might could benefit from a little more perspective there. But my issue at the time with the majority of the council wasn't so much that they voted against the forensic audit. It's like you were talking about the reasons that they did it. It was how adamant they were about it, it was the fact that they didn't give it a fair hearing, and that just doesn't age well today.
SPEAKER_05Will somebody please do a wellness check on Keith Gaskin and scoop him up off of the floor at this time? Joe Mickens was absolutely roasted to oblivion. It just got shared all over the place. And the biggest thing, I'm not gonna go through these comments, but the biggest thing was is this the tip of the iceberg? What else is going on out there? People have an extreme sense of mistrust because here we were looking at all this stuff, and and Keith Gaskins smelled a rat, and he campaigned on we'll have a forensic audit, we'll get things cleaned up and we'll move forward. Well, he gets into office and it didn't go so well for him, and those who pushed for the forensic audit came up with these reasons, these uh I'm gonna call them excuses. Well, they were excuses. Let's let bygones be bygones. Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_02We don't want to talk about the past.
SPEAKER_05We don't want to talk about the past, and uh the worst of it, in my opinion, was um you're just saying this because you don't like black people. This is a racist thing. I was hearing some of that, and I just gotta tell you, when it comes to corruption, when it comes to embezzlement, when it comes to any of this type of thing, okay, corruption knows no color. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, Asian, Mexican, Arab, or um Somalian, you've got to look into it and look into the dollar. That's all this was ever about. I mean it was ever about.
SPEAKER_02Well, for some people that isn't what it was uh what is it what it was about. And you could look at the comments on the Mickins story, and I can point to one one or two in particular that are definitely have some racial bias attached to them. But the the to your point, to to the center of your point, which I agree with, is power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and and it is colorblind. When when when you are not being checked, and you can do what you want, and you know that you're not being checked, and you can do what you want, eventually, even the best of us are going to do exactly that, and that is human nature.
SPEAKER_05I'm sitting here listening to you, and I recall that Mickens on his way out the door voted to get Mayor Jones his big raise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I'll let that just fall where it lands.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I want to be very clear that I think that the majority of the board uh was wrong for voting against that forensic audit. Um I don't think that that necessarily where uh Vicemair Stewart, uh now Mayor Jones, and uh former Councilman Pierre Beard are concerned, there's there's no paper trail implicating them in anything. And so I want to make certain that I am simply saying that that was an irresponsible decision, not that they were trying to hide their own misdeeds. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_05Right. But should they be nervous that when they vote in favor of a claims docket that they uh are are liable to the line is liable.
SPEAKER_02Well, that that's another good point that you bring up was who who was supposed to catch this? Who was responsible for this? There's gonna be, I mean, uh hell, uh Rusty and Jackie voted for the claims docket. But I mean, uh sorry. Rusty and Jackie voted for uh the forensic audit, but they also voted very often for the claims docket. Um whose responsibility is it to know that Joseph Mickens came in there and and had an invoice paid uh or directly delivered an invoice to an accounts payable clerk and had it paid to one of his buddies. Whose responsibility is it to know that? Well, I would I would say that at least on some level it was the responsibility of the other five people on that council. And I don't think that they can entirely wash their hands of that. And so if I'm Stephen Jones right now, I'm getting very serious about making sure I know where all the bodies are buried to where the next one isn't his, so to speak. Please cut that part.
SPEAKER_05Well, Zach, you've said that it's a good day. I don't feel that it's a good day. It feels like a bad day for the city. It's a necessary day. It's um perhaps a day of reckoning, if you want to call it that. And the reason I'm saying it's a bad day is because I look at Columbus Place and I look at what could be there, and I just think about businesses wanting to come to town and they they read the paper and they look and they see what's going on. They're like, well, I don't know about Columbus. There's a history of corruption there. There's things going on that are unsavory. These things hurt our town in such a way that that sometimes is felt, sometimes is not felt. That's why it's not just the um the option of the dispatch, but verily the duty of the dispatch to contest a $310 fee for the acquisition of documents. It may sound petty on the surface, but we've got to open up these doors. We've got to look in the filing cabinets, we have to see what's going on. That way, when something like this happens, we catch it early. We catch it early, and the voters know about it. We get them the heck out of there and we clean up our act, and that's the path forward. Yep. Anything else on it, Zach?
SPEAKER_02No, I think we just about covered that one. But we do have some good news on the second topic.
SPEAKER_05Yes,
Parkview Expansion And New Housing
SPEAKER_05yes. Speaking of the path forward, uh, we will transition into our next topic, which is the park view expansion. We've got, what is it, nine lots?
SPEAKER_02Uh uh Yes. So there's there's two parcels that uh the Friendly City Development had options on after they had the uh initial purchase of the 17 acres of Burns Bottom, the old Chevron light and the old Fant Light facing Fifth Street North. Uh uh they had options to purchase those lights for those parcels for an additional $350,000.
SPEAKER_05And geographically those lots uh help me if I'm right here. They're gonna lay. They're behind that church that's kind of in in an angle and kind of behind the little dewy caddy corner-ish from the old magnolia bowl. Yes, yes, cross the street. They're not touching Highway 45, but they're just off from it. Right. To the west.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh so what's being done now, they they've they came back and they said, okay, we would like to uh develop the back of that old Chevron lot, the back half of that old Chevron lot to have nine subdivided into nine residential lots for houses that'll be in the 1,500 square foot uh uh one to two bedroom type stuff.
SPEAKER_05Sure. And uh Rusty Green better step it up and get done.
SPEAKER_02Uh so because of that, they said, okay, well, uh what do you need for that? Well, we need the same, we need the CRA to do the same site work, the same utilities, the same kind of uh curb cuts and different things like that to help prepare that site to make those lots sellable that they did with the other property, the the rest of the Burns Bottom property. CRA says, fine, uh we're willing to do that, but you have to exercise your options on both of these parcels now. Go ahead and buy them, and uh and then we can just clear the table then, and then uh this is all yours. And um so they agreed to do that functionally. Uh the way that it technically goes is they're not actually exercising the options, they're amending the original purchase agreement to include both of those parcels. But the upshot here is if the council approves this Tuesday, um there's gonna be nine more residential lots available in the in in Parkview, and they're gonna be a little more affordable and they're gonna be a little smaller than the uh other lots that are available. And it'll make 49 total. Uh Nick said that they've sold 12 of those 49 already, expecting another half dozen or so to be off the market soon. And uh there's even talk of uh an additional restaurant uh anchoring the commercial side of the Development on the side to the south.
SPEAKER_05It's just a win-win. I was actually driving through there uh on the way in the studio today to get a feel for it, and all of those ugly trees that we talked about, they're all gone. It's just dirt work at this point. And um it's just striking how dramatic this is going to be. This literally changes the look of our town as you come in off of 82 from Startville or wherever, and you head south into downtown. When you look off to the right, there's gonna be this beautiful thing that that looks like something we haven't seen before. It's a development the likes of which our city hasn't seen since Emerald Estates and all that stuff in East Columbus came up um when when Bosch came to town many, many years ago. So it's super exciting. And yeah, after the residential comes the commercial, and that's what everybody talks about. We want the com we want the retail stuff.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean you say that, but uh r residential is a great need in Columbus right now, and I think that this is uh uh a really good development specifically for that. Yeah. And I want to again, uh developers can sometimes be kind of hard to talk to. Uh well, especially when they're doing big projects, big investments. Uh a lot of that can be hush hush, a lot of that can be, you know, well you'll you'll see it when we build it. A lot of that can be, you know, the this is our money, this is our project, this is, you know, this is That's right. Mind your business. And I have been uh incredibly impressed with and continue to be incredibly impressed with the openness of friendly friendly city development. Uh with the with the information that's being shared, with the transparency that's been, with the passion that they've put into this project. And there's just a lot of there's just a lot of community connection to it, especially where w where Nick is concerned, he's kind of been the Columbus face for this. Uh he believes in it, he wants other people to believe in it, and he'll talk about it anywhere and he'll and and and he'll give you the details. And I've been really impressed with that, and I think it speaks well of him, I think it speaks well of the development group, and I think it's going to feed into the success of the project overall.
SPEAKER_05All right. Well, that's a fun topic, and it's been
New Facebook Group For Listeners
SPEAKER_05a fun show. Let's bring in our guest, but before we get him in here, I want to make a plug, drum roll, please, for our new Facebook group.
SPEAKER_04Yeah?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. We want to make this show more interactive. We've had a good time on here, and we've in various and sundry ways tried to get uh our listeners to, you know, pipe in. We've talked about tips at cdispatch.com. But I think this Facebook group that we've set up is gonna give uh you, our listeners, a place to really join in the discussion. What we'll do is we'll take a question or a topic that we know that's upcoming and we'll throw it out there and we'll read from the comments on occasion. Uh what say you, Zach?
SPEAKER_02I like it. I like it. More interaction with the listeners is always better. So uh we appreciate we appreciate follows.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so go on there, look that up, be sure to follow it, join it, like it, share our stuff. We always appreciate that. That is one way we can make our hometown a better place.
Will Paschell On Life In Japan
SPEAKER_05All right, at this time we are pleased to welcome here into Catfish Alley Studio an old friend of Columbus, Mr. Will Paschell, who is son of the uh professor Bridget Paschell down at the W. And I gotta tell you, the apple does not fall far from the tree by looking at you, sir.
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, thank you, and great to be here and very nice to meet you.
SPEAKER_05Appreciate you coming in today. Will is a Columbus native and he comes to us today from the land of the rising sun, where he has been a businessman for many, many years, and I love Japan, never been, but can't wait to hear about this stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I'd say just to clarify one point, I uh I've I've worked there in professional services for a long time. And so I I I grew up here, as you mentioned, but I've I um uh I worked in the tax practice of of an accounting firm for a long time, and and and I I still work in kind of an accounting professional services type um manner there.
SPEAKER_02So I mean, what took you to Japan?
SPEAKER_03Sure. So I grew up here uh kind of drifting, looking for interesting things. Uh uh I was in Seattle for a little while, I did graduate school. I went to undergraduate Ole Miss, and so I was, you know, in Mississippi. Um when I was in Seattle, I did part of that degree uh in Brussels as well. And I was looking to kind of, you know, see what there is to see here, there, and everywhere. And I moved to Japan 20 or so years ago. Um, and I I I moved there somewhat on a whim um just uh to keep going and keep seeing. And then uh I I I um I got hired in something pretty pretty standard. I worked at an accounting firm. I was a partner um in the tax practice and an accounting firm called PwC or Pricewaterhouse Coopers, uh, for a number of years until the group that I work at now got spun out.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03And just just very high level what what I do in practice um of listen of as best as possible, trying to catch up on your podcast and the paperwall media. We thank you.
SPEAKER_05Now, do we speak as good of an English on the podcast as they do in Japan?
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell All your English is is perfect and clear. I don't know about that, Gary.
SPEAKER_02Well, I was gonna ask you something in that in that realm. I don't know if you ever had a southern accent, but if you did, how long did it take you to get rid of it?
SPEAKER_03Right. People are often disappointed in my lack of accents when I tell them from Mississippi. So maybe I can I can work on that and practice that and and and um you know satisfy some more people want to get back.
SPEAKER_02I guess but from a cultural standpoint, uh how big of a shock was Japan? How much did you know going in? Had you been when did you first go?
SPEAKER_03Okay, right. Um sure. Um if if you'll let me kind of jog back a couple of decades and think about it now. Um you know, at that time, I I did have some language at at um this. I you know, I had I had a few years of Japanese there. I mean, you know, kind of jokingly say it's because I I was not able to get into the Spanish classes because they were all full and I didn't really have any plans to use it at the time, but it it came in handy. And so I I was I was okay and familiar with the language um before I went to Japan and before I also went, I'd lived outside of the US in kind of like study abroad type situations. And so I was in Edinburgh for about a year. And then I was in for Brussels for about six or seven months. And so I had kind of a uh you know, somewhat of an understanding of how to kind of navigate different different different cultures and different uh languages to some extent before I went there.
SPEAKER_04Furniture over there. I hear they don't. Furniture? They have acquired furniture technology.
SPEAKER_05Or is that just a rumor?
SPEAKER_03So that that that that is accurate. And so I do I do so so to clarify there is furniture in in in Japan. But I would say you you are accurate in that, you know, it's it's kind of mentally feeling uh unclean if you're wearing your shoes inside. And so to give you an example, even when I'm back here, you know, at my parents' house down the street, I feel weird like walking like on rugs and inside with shoes on. So I typically, you know, I typically take my shoes off and and especially if I'm out in the grass or if I go to the gym. So I I think I think I've I've kind of inherited or or acquired that that mental concept as well.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, Mangle, just sort of piggybacking off of that, uh uh the things that were the most jarring adjustments for you once you got over to Japan?
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, I I would say to some extent I was looking for something different to begin with, you know. And and and I live in Tokyo and I like I like an urban environment. I I like not having to to deal with a car, for example. Um, you know, there they're certainly different aspects on, you know, how much space there is, how many people are around, those sorts of things. And so part of it's cultural, part of it is is is um, you know, kind of population density related, um, part of it's language, et cetera. The the big thing I'm curious about, yeah.
SPEAKER_05You you've come home and you've left and you've come home again. Yeah. I think over time you've gotten to see Columbus blossom and then the petals fall off the flower and then maybe blossom again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05From someone who who is uh an insider slash outsider, what have you noticed about us?
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, I I I I notice a lot more, I would say, similarities at this point than than than differences. And so, you know, when I'm when I'm when I'm you know listening to what you know is being discussed on kind of efforts to bring businesses to to the link and those sorts of things, and and you see a lot of large Japanese uh or French or international business looking for relocation uh and particular types of uh resources mix, you know, you're gonna have in Japan as well, there's similar types of um, you know, efforts, similar types of you know, concerns, what's what's you know gonna be the next business in the next few years, you know, what's the right type of education mix, what's the right type of labor mix and those sorts of things. You know, it it it's I would say the language might be different, but you often have pretty similar conversations, pretty similar concerns, pretty similar. So our problems here are not necessarily new under the sun, is what I'm hearing. Aaron Powell We're similar. Uh yeah. I and I don't even know if I would say it's it's I I wouldn't even necessarily use the term problems because you know everybody is adjusting to the changes, whether they're you know technological changes or or demographic changes, those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_02Uh and so breaking in socially in Japan, what is that like for an American?
SPEAKER_03Um every every culture will have kind of prior assumptions about you know others and strangers and us versus the Trevor Burrus. I mean we certainly do it here. So I mean we're so you know, no different, no different there.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus Well, I mean it give us an example if you're if you're willing of what you got over there and it just maybe something that happened that you were like, oh, that would have been completely normal here, but after you after it happened over there, you were like, I may not socially recover from this.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, I uh how to put it, um you know a lot of of what I do, and maybe I'll try to explain it in the concept of of not being too specific or getting into the weeds of my work, but a lot of what I do is, for example, where you have like a French helicopter company or a Japanese tire manufacturer or or a car manufacturer, they'll be sending executives back and forth. And a lot of what I do on my day-to-day basis, we help out with tax filings and immigration filings and social insurance filing. We're kind of doing uh smoothing frictions of people going from here to there. And so often, you know, when when when we talk in a day-to-day basis about, you know, kind of the people I'm interacting with, they're already, I'm trying to think for you a good anecdotes, a good anecdote that would be uh, you know, a good example. So, for example, like if you go out for drinks, or if you go to have some beers or something like that, you know, a lot of places would have like, you know, if you'd like peanuts or chips or something salty. And in Japan, you often have what's called edamame, which is which is soybean. It's soy uh the beans, and you kind of boil them and salt them, and you'd have them and you kind of pop them open and eat them right and you'd have kind of the bowl of the edamame. Uh you'd open it up and you'd have the holes out, you'd just eat the insides out of it and kind of suck the salt off the rind there. And then you have another bowl where you'd put what's already been sucked, et cetera. And so, you know, it's you know, if you're not familiar with it or you're first, you know, coming there, you know, first thing you know you can maybe make a mistake in doing is pick up and start trying to eat, for example, beef. It sounds a lot like picklebakes in the house. Well, no, and that's not no, it it tastes fine, but if you pick up like from the bowl that people have already been eating from, you know, you're right.
SPEAKER_05It's like everybody in the room gets quiet all of a sudden and music stops and everybody's staring at you, and you're like, what?
SPEAKER_03For for example, there there's you know kind of small things like that, but you know, uh that's that's numerous uh if if you're coming into a completely different environment. And and you know, it's it's it's always you know good to have sympathy for for people like that that are maybe coming here to work to establish businesses or establish operations, those sorts
Rules Culture And Coming Home
SPEAKER_03of things.
SPEAKER_02So all right. So asking it from the other point of view here, yeah. Uh you're immersed in in Japan and Japanese culture and in Japanese society. You come home, you're staying a week or two or a month or what however long you stay when you come. Right. Uh what are some of the things that you have a hard time maybe readjusting to socially here when you get back?
SPEAKER_03Right. And maybe I can put it in the from the perspective of not necessarily hard time, but what what you know, I bring my kids back and you know, they go to the elementary school there, and you know, it's it's um, you know, there everything is how to put it, you know, you have more of a cultural context where everybody follows the rules for better or for worse. Right. And so, you know, you would have without issue, you have low crime, you kind of have, you know, low, very, very low, you know, vandalism and those sorts of things. But everybody follows the rules.
SPEAKER_05So, Zach, it sounds like you might fit in well over there.
SPEAKER_03So if you like the rules and you know you like, you know, you know, that that that's but but on the other hand, like you know, you have to like sign up and register, just for example, you know, if you play soccer or futsal, you can only, you know, do it at that one time where you have registered beforehand, those sorts of things. And you know, you're a little bit more flexible in the rules and in in Japan. If you have a group of people probably nobody's gonna bother or here in Mississippi, you can probably go do so. Or for example, you know, like in in in uh you know, I was just with my son down at the gym this morning, and and there's there's you know, there's a basketball gym, and you know, they just have basketballs and you can kind of you know go in and use it and it's fine and you just find your own space. But in Japan, if you had not reserved that in advance, even if it were open, you know, it's not sign off for a basketball on a paper.
SPEAKER_04For example, yeah, for example.
SPEAKER_03And so, you know, that that difference in in in kind of uh for better or for worse uh perspectives and bureaucracy and rules and well we make it up as we go here, you know, especially with college athletics and all this stuff.
Columbus In 2030 And Civic Mindset
SPEAKER_03I've listened to to you guys talk a lot, I've listened to the interview and you know, I've listened to interviews with with you know with the police now and with you know the bankers um you know bank for CEO and you know various real estate developers and and and um uh the the you know from from uh your perspective, I was curious, you know, kind of what um you know uh if I come back here, let's say four years from now, you know, in in let's let's say 2030, what what what uh what are the the interesting things that have really you know really gone well that have really you know you're you're looking forward to see here?
SPEAKER_05I don't know if we picked the right day to ask that question. You know, well I just take a you know more general years from now there's gonna be some houses up at Parkview. We're gonna have more pedestrians. I think there will be no more orange bollards remaining on Main Street for people to run over. Yeah. I think that the um aesthetics of thing will look good. Maybe Grandpa Ho will have us some tenants by then. You know, I I think we're on a good trajectory if we can just keep from shooting ourselves in the freaking foot with um things like you've read about in the headlines today.
SPEAKER_03Well, how how much of that do you think is just granular from today versus like you know long-term? If you zoom out from like I I think about it in kind of years perspective, because I'm just here for you know a few weeks or a month every year. But if you look at it from one year, two years, three year, four years, five years, you know, what what you know, everything has gone right. You know, everything has just been resounding successes.
SPEAKER_02Well, to answer your question, I think that uh I think that the 45 corridor uh and the development there, uh I think that's gonna loom large on what the what the tax rolls are gonna look like here uh over that time. And I think uh the the school districts obviously are on a go on are on a good trajectory. Right, yeah. Um Columbus Municipal School District has you know suffered uh for you know more than a decade. It was a derated school. There's been a lot of turnover in the uh superintendent's chair. Right. Uh I think that there's a a very real possibility of seeing what a stable CMSD uh turns into by 2030. Uh and I think that that's gonna be a huge boon to the community for a lot of reasons. Um we'll we'll see. We'll see how long this police chief stays and what happens with that. So I mean th just those basic I will say that just in the in the basic tenets of leadership in the community right now, you've got a real possibility of long-term stability that I think that uh uh a critical mass of the leadership is committed to driving forward. And that's something that uh maybe I shouldn't say this, but in my 10 years working here, uh this is the first time that I've seen that much of that gathered up and willing to just promote stability and growth. Right, right, right. Well, I think that one of the strengths about Columbus generally, one thing that I've noticed working here and being around in this community that is so different from other communities where I've been is that Columbus is, for better or worse, pretty honest about itself. It's pretty pretty open about well this is this is who we are and and this is what happened and this is what happened. And you know, you don't have a community that's going, no, you don't don't see this. This is we don't want you to see this. It's it's a very honest community in that regard.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_02I think that probably, even though that's its biggest strength possibly, I think that the biggest weakness likewise is becoming jaded by that information. And uh I I think that that would fight against that stability if the community is just jaded by the by the bad part of the honesty.
SPEAKER_03Right. So maybe, you know, to some like every place, there are there are things that can, you know, some better opportunities for improvement to use kind of a corporate euphemism, but you know, to some extent it is yeah, it is mindset.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so we appreciate you coming on the program today. Uh thank you for spreading words of positivity on our town. We certainly need it at this time. Our special guests.
SPEAKER_03I enjoy my time here. I do, I do enjoy the city, I enjoy the town, so I do.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Very excellent.
SPEAKER_03Very excellent. Mr. Will Paschell. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Zach.
SPEAKER_05Fun stuff, fun stuff.
Three Local Updates And An Apology
SPEAKER_05Hey, Zach, three things we need to know.
SPEAKER_02Three things. Number one, if you were waiting on Eiley's, you don't have to wait much longer. The bargain store is slated to open next to Rural King in Columbus on Wednesday. Number two, Terrence Ware is now an assistant chief with Columbus Police Department. He and fellow assistant chief Doran Johnson are the direct reports of newly hired police chief Garland Ward. Ware brings 26 years of law enforcement experience, including the last two or so, as captain of investigations at CPD. And number three, this one's going to be a little longer because it's going to have something of a clarification and apology on the end of it. And I included this because we talked about it last week, but Project Jacket was revealed to be a $256 million expansion of Southwire and Startville. The wire and cable manufacturer's 380,000 square foot addition to its Startville factory is expected to create 128 more jobs. And on that note, and when we talked about it last week, I was a little careless uh with uh representing the position of uh Lynn Spruel as it related to this development and the like. She did call me and she uh and we had a very good conversation and she was very fair about it, and so I'm gonna be fair in return, because that's what she ought to uh expect from me. Uh so her position on this was not that uh if the link doesn't give you us an SDI or an ADI, we're out. Uh she has carved out the position that uh the link should charge its member uh entities, its member counties, very similar to the airport, which it's um prorated. So Lowndes in Columbus pay the most, uh uh Startville pays a little less than that, Clay and West Point pay a little less than that, and so that's that's her position that she's carving out right now. And so she told me um and fairly that if you're gonna blast me, get it right, and I think that that's a fair expectation.
SPEAKER_05So does that mean potentially that Octibihaw County may not consummate the divorce?
SPEAKER_02I don't know, and and I don't agree necessarily with her position on this. I think that the link may be a little bit different entity than the airport and and should expect a different funding model, but uh it does at least open the door to uh a negotiation point where she's not just saying to hell with it, we're out, we don't care what you do. I think that she's actually bringing to the table a a counterpoint that can be discussed. So uh that that does be uh closing your ears and not listening, and uh so uh that's a
How To Reach Us
SPEAKER_02good thing.
SPEAKER_05Reach out to us, tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or ex at the Chisholm 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_05You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.
SPEAKER_04That is.
