NATCHEZ, Miss. — Terrence Bailey will serve as interim Adams County tax collector to replace Rose Patterson, who died last week after serving just one year in office.
The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday appointed Bailey and set a Nov. 2 special election for Adams County voters to select who should serve the rest of the term that runs through 2023.
Patterson, 69, died Jan. 11 from COVID. Adams County voters elected her November 2019 as the county’s first black tax collector. Bailey, who also worked for previous tax collector Peter Burns and later the city of Natchez, rejoined the tax collector’s office when Patterson took over in January 2020.
Bailey’s appointment was an easy and obvious choice for supervisors, who noted he was the office’s second-in-command and involved in Patterson’s efforts the past year to improve tax- collecting operations.
However, in a contentious decision Tuesday, supervisors voted to reappoint former Natchez mayor Phillip West to the school board for another term. West has been on the Natchez-Adams School District Board of Trustees since 2016.
The county supervisors’ 3-2 vote had Angela Hutchins, Ricky Gray and Warren Gaines for West and Wes Middleton and Kevin Wilson against.
West has been the five-seat school board’s most outspoken member the past five years that’ve been inflamed by a dispute pitting the board versus Wilson and others against NASD building a new high school partly financed with a property tax increase.
Wilson on Tuesday tried to get supervisors to consider someone else – Cane Callon – to fill West’s seat, but Hutchins, Gray and Gaines stuck with West.
Middleton was also unsuccessful in an attempt to convince colleagues to put West’s reappointment on the November ballot for Adams County voters to decide in a nonbinding referendum.
The Adams County Board of Supervisors appoints two school trustees while the Natchez Board of Aldermen has three appointees. However, both boards in recent years have been trying to relinquish their appointment powers and let voters decide who the five school board members are. This change requires the Mississippi Legislature’s approval, but lawmakers have declined to do so.
West, 74, was Natchez mayor from 2004 to 2008, but was defeated for re-election in 2008 and lost again in 2012 and 2020 when he tried comebacks. He previously served in the state Legislature and on the Adams County Board of Supervisors.
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