To Quordiniah Lockley, the atmosphere surrounding this year’s McComb elections is just a symptom of city government generally.
“It speaks to the divisiveness in City Hall,” Lockley, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said.
Division does seem to abound in local politics.
Lockley and the municipal Democratic executive committee faced a challenge Wednesday to the May 15 primary runoff results from former mayor Zach Patterson, who sought to return to the office.
Patterson and his attorney, Walter Zinn Jr. of Pontotoc, also sought to challenge the first primary’s results, but the city ruled the request was not timely made.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, mayor nominee Tommy McKenzie’s promotional signs have been damaged and even set on fire.
Lockley is trying to at least help unite Democrats in the leadup to the election, urging voters to support him and the rest of the Democratic candidates on the ballot.
That effort might be aided further by the endorsements Lockley picked up recently from former state Democratic chairman Ricky Cole and Mike Espy, former congressman and now a candidate for U.S. Senator Thad Cochran’s former seat.
He had already drawn an endorsement from primary opponent Albert Eubanks, the sitting Ward 3 selectman.
Lockley said part of his plans for the city if he is elected mayor is to “change the environment in City Hall.
“The first thing I’m going to try to do is get the board to agree to disagree. They can all have their own opinions … We all need to be civil with one another.”
He also said he believes transparency will help to reduce division in the board room and the city, and reestablishing board work sessions will be part of his plan to bring that about.
“If we can discuss our issues around the table before the meeting, and give the citizens opportunity for input, we should try to make sure we do so,” Lockley said.
He said attention would have to turn quickly to the city’s budget for the next fiscal year, which will begin Oct. 1. The public hearing on the budget should be held in August, and budget adoption should be completed before Sept. 15.
“I will be ready to work with the department heads, and I’m very familiar with the process, since I was the city administrator,” Lockley said. “It will be important to look at the budget based on priorities important to the city.”
One of those priorities will be paving, based on citizen complaints about street conditions, he said, though he would also direct attention to the infrastructure under the streets, such as water and sewer lines and drainage systems.
He said he would want to examine spending on the city’s parks.
“For the past 10 years, most of the hotel and motel tax has been spent on the sports park,” Lockley said. “It’s time to spread money around to more of the parks in the city.”
With lighting being added to sports park fields to bring the lighted total to four, he said the time has come to give more attention to Algiers, Baertown, Central and Lakeshore, as well as the city’s other parks.
Still, with those kinds of projects in mind, “we need to evaluate everything and not make a hasty decision,” Lockley said. “We shouldn’t make major changes until we know our footing. We need to study and evaluate everything.”
