Editor’s note: The Dispatch is touring all five Lowndes County districts with their respective supervisor. The goal is to highlight each region’s unique aspects and challenges, and how that region’s supervisor approches the job. We are publishing each district’s story on five straight Mondays. Today, we present District 2.
For all the positive projects in Lowndes County’s District 2 — the construction of a new fire station on Jess Lyons Road and the width of the Bethel Road crossing being doubled — there is one thing its supervisor, Bill Brigham, sees as a big problem that needs to be addressed.
It’s a simple problem: blight.
Recently, as Brigham drove through his district with The Dispatch, he pointed out pockets just off Highway 373 which led to what used to be the main gate for Columbus Air Force Base, which is also in District 2. The pockets are found on small, residential roads and consist of abandoned trailers and overgrowth.
“One reason I believe the base made (an) east entrance into the base,” Brigham says as he cruises through the area, “is to get off of Highway 373 that goes in and have a more scenic, clean entrance.”
The remedy isn’t as easy as the diagnosis, however. It takes a history lesson to fully understand how the blight came about.
First, a little about District 2: It takes the largest portion of Columbus’ city limits of the five county districts. Outside those limits, there aren’t any towns. Its most known unincorporated community is Kolola Springs. Sixty-seven percent of the population — 7,963 people — is white. There are 3,337 African Americans. It has the largest amount of non-black minority residents of all the districts with 580. According to 2010 U.S. Census data, servicemen stationed at CAFB comprise 1,373 of the district’s 11,880 residents. When you’re driving up Highway 45 North, you’re in District 2 until you reach the Monroe County line, and so is everything to your west. Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, Leigh Mall and Columbus Marina lay within District 2 in Columbus.
CAFB began as an Air Training Command base when it was established in 1941 to train pilots for World War II missions and, later, Korean War missions. In the 1950s, it was transferred to a Strategic Air Command base. This brought more long-term military personnel to the base. Temporary housing — mostly trailer parks — increased.
Then, in 1969, it reverted back to an Air Training Command and remains one to this day. The demand for mobile homes dropped. They continued to be rented out until they began to fall apart. Weather and time contributed to their continuing deterioration. Many of them have asbestos — which has been found to cause lung diseases — in pipes, insulation and floor tiles. In many cases, it would cost more to remove the asbestos from one of the trailers than the trailer is worth, making it an unattractive venture for someone who might want to buy the property and fix it up.
Other avenues to fix the problem are limited. The only thing the county board of supervisors can do is declare a structure to be a nuisance, hold a public hearing and demand the owner to clean their property or have a lien placed on it and the county will clean it up. Doing this for dozens of deteriorated lots may be an arduous process, Brigham said, but for now, that’s the only option supervisors have. He thinks a program to change that should be developed on some government level.
“All of them are vacant, just about,” Brigham said. “There’s no incentive to get rid of them. There needs to be some kind of program, either federal or state that gives you money to offer people to get these things off their property. I think it would take some kind of enticement. We can’t go on private property. We can’t do it for them.”
A drive down Jess Lyons Road reveals a more positive development. The new fire station there is almost done, but Brigham is quick to note that other than his support, neither he nor the board of supervisors had involvement with the project other than issuing a mandatory three-quarter-of-a-mill levy for residents served by the station. The rest was handled by the department, under the leadership of District 2 Fire Chief Andy Perkins, over time through saving insurance rebate money, collecting donations and holding fundraisers.
Brigham, with the help of his colleagues, also negotiated with the two railroad companies that own the tracks that cross Bethel Road to widen it from 10 to 20 feet in exchange for abandoning Co-Op Road. The move, which Brigham said provided a better situation for residents who frequently use that road and made the area more safe for motorists, was met with and withstood legal challenge from two landowners near Co-Op Road.
One cause Brigham is behind that is not a District 2 matter is The Last House on the Block, which provides a transitional sober living home for people rehabilitating from alcohol and drug addiction. He has served with the organization from its inception in February 2012. It now provides two homes for that purpose.
“It’s such a need in our state and nation to have sober living homes for men so we can get them back in the community,” Brigham said. “We take them out of rehab and give them a place to live and help them find jobs.”
Brigham goes to as many CAFB functions as possible. He said it’s necessary for a county leader to show people stationed here to show them community support.
“It’s important that they feel the community is behind them,” he said.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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