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 3.
Before the city of Columbus annexed two months ago, District 3 was unique from the other four in Lowndes County in that none of it fell within the city limits.
With more than a quarter of the district’s 11,411 residents living there, New Hope is the most densely populated area John Holliman serves as supervisor.
If you drive along Stadium Road, which was gravel not long ago, you’ll see a park with a fifth-of-a-mile walking track alongside a community center. The latter two of those amenities wasn’t there four years ago. Before that, you couldn’t even get to Oswalt Road from that spot because it was a dead end.
What was once a “road to nowhere” now serves as a connection between Oswalt and New Hope Roads, which picked up a majority of school traffic that used to deadlock on Center Road.
During a recent tour of his district, Holliman said he was pleased to see those developments take shape during his six-year tenure on the board of supervisors. Through carefully budgeting county funds, making commitments to Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority and working with the road department and residents to address quality-of-life and access needs, he feels — with the help of his colleagues — that he’s made a difference in eastern Lowndes County, where he’s lived his whole life.
“I’m just proud that I came along in this period of time where we can upgrade,” Holliman said, noting that some of the revenue that has become available to do quality-of-life projects in each district is a result of county-wide collaboration on luring new industry and finding new ways to invest the county’s $30 million hospital sale. “Everybody on the board has the ability to work together to get all this done. You have a wealth of knowledge among the supervisors.”
Two other things that set District 3 apart: It is the least populated district of the county’s five, with 566 fewer residents than District 1, which has the most people. It is also the least diverse demographically. Of its, 11,411 residents, 9,319, or 81.7 percent, are white.
The westernmost points from the north are Harrison Road and Sand Road, stretching all the way down to where Nashville Ferry Road East runs down to neighborhoods with lake houses just above the Tennessee-Tombigbee River. From those points, the district runs east through rural farmland, passing through New Hope and Lake Lowndes, until hitting the Alabama state line.
While he’s pleased with the recent progress made in New Hope, there are two more projects outside of that community that have his eye now when it comes to his district: The nearly completed Rural Hill fire station (right beside the old one, which will soon be torn down) and another community center, this one for the estimated 1,500 residents who live in on and around Sand and Blaylock roads.
While the new fire station was funded by insurance rebate money and donations collected by the volunteer fire department, Holliman said they helped the department plan its new home: a $200,000 structure with four truck bays and more space for equipment. The community center site on Blaylock Road is just a field right now, but funding has been designated to CLRA to turn dirt next year.
“One thing I’ve always done, being in construction, is look to the future,” Holliman said. “(The Rural Hill station) is a lot cheaper to build now than it would be 10 years from now.”
It’s also cheaper, in part, because he used his construction experience to help the department save money by planning the building and advising the department on using subcontractors to do individual construction jobs rather than going through a contractor and engineer.
“On the inside,” Holliman says, “(volunteer firemen) did a lot of the painting themselves.”
It’s the do-it-yourself attitude that embodies the spirit of many in his district, Holliman says. A demonstration of that has been the clean-up from an EF-1 tornado in April that caused significant damage. District 3 was the hardest hit by that day’s storms, as strong winds and fallen trees led to homes east of Highway 50, including neighborhoods off Pleasant Hill Road and Tabernacle Road.
While the county went through FEMA regulations to hire clean-up crews for public right-of-way, many residents gathered after the storm and began helping each other pick up the mess on private property.
“It’s really come together,” he said. “Even coming across New Hope Road, you really couldn’t see a whole lot of damage there now because it’s all been cleaned up and the houses fixed. I’d say the cleanup is 95 percent done.”
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
