Dear Mayor Bill Godbold:

Eighteen years ago in 1985, when you were elected to one of yourseveral separate terms as mayor, one of the top items on youragenda was the moving of city hall from its location at theBrookhaven-Lincoln County Government Complex. The complex was lessthan five years old at the time, but you wanted city offices movedback to their old location — a location occupied by theBrookhaven-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce.

Now forgive my memory, for it has been 18 years, but you mightremember there was quite a public battle at the time. You tried invain to have the chamber evicted from the building, which the citydid own at the time. Due to a long-term lease, you were notsuccessful in forcing the chamber to vacate the building.

Seems, too, like the chamber had invested $100,000 in thebuilding, and you did not want to reimburse them, but that was justone of the minor issues. Anyway, the issue eventually died when youfailed to win re-election in 1993.

Four years later, when you were again elected as mayor, youimmediately went to work to move city hall from the governmentcomplex. Again, you wanted your own facility and looked at the oldcity hall building. Your efforts stalled because the title of thebuilding by that time had been transferred to the chamber in aperfectly legal transaction under the state’s surplus property law.You tried to have the transfer voided as a slight-of-hand trick bythe Doug Sullivan administration and chamber officials to hoodwinkthe good citizens of Brookhaven.

Not to be outdone, you set your sights on Whitworth Campus asthe new location for your next city hall project. Oh boy, was therean uproar! You had this wonderful plan for a $12 million complexwhere, besides a new city hall, your architect had envisioned acity park complete with water fountains, bell towers and walkingtrails. Gee, I believe there was even a plan for an outdooramphitheater to hold community concerts. It was a beautiful plan –unfortunately, you had only $5 million, which, by the way, camefrom a bond issue you and the board passed without publicinput.

Now to your credit, when the idea for the Mississippi School ofthe Arts came up you jumped right in and dropped your city hallplans. You backed the arts school 100 percent. I thank you forthat. Even though it was taxpayer money you were pledging, youshowed the necessary leadership to make things happen.

Next we come to last Tuesday night’s city board meeting. Again,another city hall is on the agenda — even though we have a fewother more pressing items such as funding a new industrial park andan annexation plan. Of course, we also have your inter-modalfacility and a community center, but they are way down on the radarscreen of pressing issues.

If I am not mistaken, despite the fact the board has never votedto proceed with a new city hall — or any of the others for thatmatter — you hired an architect. Let me digress for a moment …let’s see, the taxpayers paid an architect to plan your WhitworthCollege city hall, we are paying the same architect to plan yourinter-modal facility (or new railroad station complex), and now weare paying the same architect to design your latest city hallproject? Hmmm, how much has all this cost and what do we have toshow for it?

Anyway Mayor, during Tuesday night’s board meeting you respondedto some criticism of your grandiose plans for your third city hallproject with the comment, “they’re crazy as hell, we do know whatwe are talking about … it’s time for us to build what weneed.”

Hmmm … who’s crazy?

Write to Bill Jacobs at P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven, Miss.39602.