Brenda Willis attended her last meeting as a Caledonia alderman Tuesday evening. After two decades on the board, she did not run for re-election this year.
While she confesses politics “is sort of a family business,” she still sees herself primarily as a teacher, 20 years after she retired and began the first of her five teams on the town’s governing board.
“I guess teaching is in our blood, too,” said Willis, who spent 28 years teaching in the Caledonia school system. “Both my daughters teach here in Caledonia, too, and when I think about the 20 years I’ve spent on the board, one of my big priorities was always the kids.”
Bill Darnell, who was elected to an astonishing 10th term on the Caledonia Board of Aldermen Tuesday, noted another aspect in which Willis’ teaching background came into play during the five terms he served with her.
“She kind of kept us in order,” Darnell said. “From time to time, things could get kind of heated, especially in some of our executive sessions. Brenda was the one who sort of kept us in line and restored order.”
When she was first elected to the board in 1997, Willis said she sort of picked up where her husband, Walt, had left off.
“Walt had served as mayor for 14 years, then county supervisor for nine more years,” said Willis, 70. “When he got out, I got in. I had just retired and I just felt the need to represent my town.”
As you might expect from a teacher, Willis has crystallized her 20 years of service on the board into bullet points – three achievements and three regrets, she called them.
She listed the achievements as major infrastructure improvements ($19,000 to renovate the library, a $4.3 million water system overhaul, major renovations/additions at Ola J. Pickett Park) and an expansion of the town’s tax base.
“When I started, we had no tax base, probably no more than $1,000 in sales tax per month,” she said. “I think our town budget was around $100,000, if that,” she said. “One of the things we did was to developed 20 acres the town owned. We were able to divide that property into a business park. We got a (Mississippi Development Authority) loan to pay of the water/sewer and lighting and turned that into 14 parcels and sold all of them. That was really the beginning. Today, we have all the things you need in a community, a drug store, a wonderful grocery store, some retail. Almost all of what you see today came after that first development plan.”
When Willis leaves office in July, the annual town budget of a little more than $430,000 will be more than four times what it was when she started.
Her regrets?
“I really wish we would have gone through with annexation in 2012,” she said. “Our population is 1,100, but there are so many people just outside the town limits that, I think, really were open to annexation. That would have meant so much to our tax base and what we could do as a town. I guess maybe the board felt a little nervous about the initial cost of annexation, but to me, it would have been a great move. I still hope that’s something Caledonia will pursue.”
Willis said the city’s failure to adopt building codes in another effort she failed to push through the board, as well as a failed bid to build a splash pad at Ola J. Pickett Park, a pet project for the teacher who always thought of the kids in the community.
“That broke my heart,” she said. “We just couldn’t get the support we needed for that.”
Despite those setbacks, Willis said she optimistic about the town’s future.
“We really do have good people running for the board,” she said. “I know they want what’s best for the town, just like I do. And they’ll have the support of the community. It’s a great town. If you have good projects, the people of Caledonia will support you.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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