NATCHEZ, Miss. — Mayors from cities on the Mississippi River bisecting the country will gather in Natchez next month for their annual conference that will include an opening reception at Dunleith, a dinner on the grounds of Rosalie and sessions discussing the AI economy and other issues at the Natchez Convention Center.
The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative will “come together at a new level of coordination to address some of the most pressing challenges and unveil some of the most innovative partnerships to date for our corridor,” states a posting on MRCTI’s website.
The meeting will take place Sept. 15-17 with Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson and Vidalia Mayor Buz Craft hosting the mayors of Memphis, Tenn., Independence, Mo., Quincy, Ill., Red Wing, Minn. and other municipal leaders along the Mississippi River. Among others scheduled to attend are an Amazon vice president and the president of American Cruise Lines.
ACL’s Charlie Robinson will be here at the groundbreaking ceremony for the $5 million dock the Connecticut-based cruise company is building along the Mississippi River at Natchez Under-the-Hill, Gibson said.
The mayor and Natchez aldermen are planning to apply for a state grant to fund streetscaping improvements where ACL boats dock at the lower end of Silver Street. ACL has committed $500,000 for this and the city will apply for funds from the Mississippi Department of Transportation that could total $500,000, Gibson said. He noted the plan is to build walkways and improve the looks of that section of Silver Street that’s deteriorated in recent years.
The project will not include rebuilding that part of Silver Street as had been previously envisioned by city officials to make it flood-proof from the river when it rises above its banks. That much-planned raising of the street was called off in 2024 because of stalled land negotiations and higher-than- expected costs.
The mayor said last night that we took out a $500,000 loan for the Fry Building demolitiion that we don’t need, but he’s going to keep it anyway. That means we keep paying for this loan even though we don’t need it for what it was taken out for. How much money is the mayor hoarding out of all of this and not spending on the city? He just keeps on with these “grants” for things we never see. This is ridiculous! Where is our audit for 2025? The clerk says she doesn’t have the number of what we had left in the general fund for 2025 but there was $427k from the year before. This year we will have $27,000 left in the general fund and that is a big concern of all of the aldermen.