NATCHEZ, Miss. – The Board of Aldermen does not need to enact a panhandling ordinance cracking down further on people asking for money on Natchez streets, said city attorney Bryan Callaway.
Aldermen earlier this month asked him to draft such an ordinance after Police Chief Walter Armstrong expressed concerns about beggars posing traffic hazards at busy intersections as they solicit money from motorists at stoplights. However, Callaway said Tuesday that current law already forbids people from interfering with traffic. He also noted courts have deemed limited forms of panhandling as free speech protected by the constitution.
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The board revised the city’s noise ordinance Tuesday to ban large trucks from “jake-braking,” which uses engines’ exhaust valves to help slow down and produce loud machine gun-like sounds. Alderman Sarah Carter Smith said this is especially a nuisance for her Glenwood neighbors near John R. Junkin Drive, a busy thoroughfare for tractor-trailer trucks coming through Natchez and stopping at the intersection to Seargent Prentiss Drive by Merit Health hospital.
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Natchez aldermen agreed Tuesday to use $500,000 from a tax-anticipation loan to help pay city bills and employees in the next few months while revenues are at a low ebb.
As routinely done in recent years, city officials will use the short-term bank loan to carry Natchez over until property taxes due early next year flow into city coffers. The tax-anticipation loan is expected to be paid back in March. The city can use up to $1 million from the loan.
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City workers and prison inmates have begun picking up Natchez residents’ yard debris left by recent storms, said Mayor Dan Gibson.
While the city normally limits how much its crews and contracted garbage collector haul away, those restrictions are being temporarily canceled. Residents with fallen limbs and other vegetated rubbish should place the storm remnants on their street curbs “in manageable amounts” to be picked up, Gibson said..
Residents wanting yard debris collected can phone the city Public Works Department for more information: 601 445-6652.
Gibson said about 10 inmates from a McComb detention facility are being transported to Natchez on a daily basis to help the city’s short-staffed Public Works Department gather the debris. Hurricane Delta’s strong winds roared through Natchez Oct. 9.
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The state’s new state flag had its first staffing at a Natchez Board of Aldermen meeting Tuesday. “It’s a new day,” Gibson said. Mississippi voters Nov. 3 adopted the banner that replaces the controversial state flag with the Confederate emblem that the state Legislature outlawed in June.
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