NATCHEZ. Miss. – County supervisors are urging more Adams County residents to complete their U.S. Census forms to ensure their community gets a fair share of federal funds for essential services.
About 57 percent of Natchez-Adams County households have responded so far to the national population count done every 10 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent report. Mississippi’s response rate as a whole is also 57 percent. The 2020 Census is to be completed Oct. 31.
“I’m disappointed in 57 percent. That’s unacceptable. That’s going to hurt us in the long run,” said Ricky Gray, president of the Adams County Board of Supervisors.
Census data helps inform the federal government how billions of dollars in funds are to be distributed to communities’ health clinics, school-lunch programs, disaster-recovery initiatives and other critical programs and services for the next 10 years
While 57 percent of Adams County’s households so far have answered the U.S. Census questionnaires posted earlier this year, that’s not much lower than the 59 percent fulfilled in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Gray has asked Adams County Emergency Management Director Brad Bradford to issue a public notice on the county’s Code Red community-alert system telling people to fill out the census forms if they haven’t already.
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Many Adams County residents’ trash hasn’t been regularly picked up in recent weeks because new garbage-truck drivers are trying to get familiar with their routes. The county’s privately contracted trash collector is Metro Service Group of New Orleans. (Natchez has another collector: Arrow Disposal Service of Alabama.) County supervisors noted Monday they’ve been getting many complaints from constituents but received assurances Metro’s trash collection will soon return to its normal twice-a-week service on appointed days as drivers learn their way.
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The county board Monday allocated an extra $55,000 to purchase medicine for Adams County Jail inmates. The costs of prescription drugs have escalated in recent months due partly to one HIV-infected inmate, whose drug expense is about $3,000 a month, said county Administrator Joe Murray.
He noted the county in the past has normally budgeted about $27,000 a year for jail inmates’ medicine. The $55,000 approved by supervisors Monday is just for the jail drug costs the county faces through September, when the current fiscal year ends. In addition to the expenses of treating the HIV-infected inmate, Murray attributed the higher drug costs to the coronavirus and inmates who are old or have mental problems. There’s also the expense of giving inmates flu shots.
The Adams County Jail can hold about 80 or so inmates.
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Adams County supervisors closed the public out of discussions Monday about the former county-owned Natchez hospital that went bankrupt and was sold in 2014 to the corporation that runs the medical center now known as Merit Health Natchez. Adams County board attorney Scott Slover said the six-year-old bankruptcy litigation is winding down for what was once known as Natchez Regional Medical Center.
The Adams County Board of Supervisors sold the public hospital to Community Health Systems of Tennessee for $10 million plus $8 million in upfront property tax payments to cover 17 years in the future. The hospital earlier in 2014 filed for bankruptcy protection in federal court claiming it had about $21 million in debts.
State law allows government boards to hold closed-door meetings for “strategy sessions or negotiations” related to court cases if “an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the litigating position” of the board.
As the board on Monday closed its meeting to the public, no explanation was given on how an open session would impact the board’s litigating position, and no information was openly provided on how the former county-owned hospital’s bankruptcy case is being resolved.
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