NATCHEZ, Miss. (Oct. 4) – Adams County supervisors said they want more discussions and details about Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson’s proposal to jointly create and fund a city-county workforce training program he envisions being at the Natchez High School campus.
Meeting Monday with the county Board of Supervisors, Gibson said a key first step is hiring a Natchez-Adams County workforce development director who would work under the auspices of Natchez Inc., the community’s industrial-recruitment agency.
Gibson pointed to the importance of a better-trained workforce to attract new businesses to Natchez. He estimated about 800 or so jobs are available locally that businesses need qualified people to fill. If employers can’t find a sufficient workforce, they go elsewhere, he said.
County supervisors said they want more meetings and assurances they have the funds to help operate the workforce-training program.
As presented by Gibson, the initiative envisions Natchez joining Adams County and the local public schools in using federal funds to refurbish the Steckler building on the Natchez High School campus. The mayor said they could use money allocated by the federal American Rescue Plan to help recover from the economic slump caused by the COVID pandemic.
He said the city could use $1 million of the $3.5 million it’s getting in ARP funds. Adams County is receiving about $6 million.
The Natchez-Adams County workforce development initiative’s first step should be to hire a director, Gibson said. He wants Tuwanna Higgins-Williams to fill this position. She has experience in workforce development at the state Department of Employment Security and Copiah-Lincoln Community College. The mayor estimated the city, county and school boards would allocate about $33,000 each to pay the director’s salary and other expenses to get the workforce training program started.
Adams County board President Angela Hutchins has said her board needs more details on how it’ll use its ARP money. “We don’t even know what we can do ourselves yet,” she said last month in questioning whether to fund the workforce development program. “It’s something we can’t make a decision on yet.”
Gibson noted the Mississippi Legislature last year created the state Office of Workforce Development, and Natchez-Adams County should follow suit with a local office.
While supervisors have been noncommittal on Gibson’s proposal, they did vote Monday to ask the state Legislature to re-enact the law allowing the county and city to continue giving money to Natchez Inc., which relies on public and private funds for its economic development efforts. The law for this expired last week at the end of the fiscal year. It authorized the city to give Natchez Inc. $100,000 a year to be combined with the county’s $165,000.
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In other matters Monday, the county board discussed plans for placing street-surveillance cameras in certain locations throughout the county to help the sheriff catch crooks and get them prosecuted.
Supervisors heard a presentation about Project NOLA, a New Orleans-based organization that provides video cameras and monitoring capabilities for communities. Hutchins said the board will review the costs involved and make a decision later. While Project NOLA loans out the cameras, the county must pay the costs of having the video monitored and stored.
Natchez last year received $150,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice for 63 video cameras perched throughout the city to record criminal acts and help police investigators and prosecutors nab those guilty. The cameras augmented more than 150 already installed throughout the city. Video captured by the cameras is cloud-stored for using when needed.
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