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Robert Amos

TRANSPORTATION-MISSISSIPPI

Robert Amos
Robert Amos

2 in Dem runoff for Miss. Transportation Commission seat

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Businessman Robert Amos and longtime state Rep. Mary Coleman and are competing Tuesday to become the Democratic nominee for one of three seats on the Mississippi Transportation Commission.

The winner will face Republican incumbent Dick Hall in the Nov. 3 general election.

They’re running in the Central District, with 22 counties. It stretches from Bolivar County down to Jefferson County along the Mississippi River, through the metro Jackson area and over to Noxubee, Kemper and Lauderdale along the Alabama line.

Amos and Coleman are both from Jackson.

Coleman has been in the Legislature since 1994. She says serving on the House Transportation Committee has prepared her to serve on the statewide commission.

Amos says he’s better prepared because he has worked with truck-driving schools to help them gain accreditation.

CHOCTAW ELECTION

Anderson, Denson on ballot for Choctaws’ chief

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) – Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians voters will return to the polls Tuesday to elect a chief, choosing between incumbent Phyliss J. Anderson and challenger Beasley Denson.

Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The Neshoba Democrat reports that a new election was set after the Tribal Council overturned a June 20 run-off where Anderson defeated Denson with 52 percent of the vote.

Anderson was sworn in for a second term on July 14. Anderson defeated Denson in 2011

The first Tribal Chief election was overturned by the Tribal Council on July 24 after members heard almost nine hours of testimony, mostly centering on absentee ballots.

The Tribal Council voted 9-8 to hold another runoff.

MUSEUM MOVE PLANNED

DeSoto Museum planning move to nearby historic mansion

HERNANDO, Miss. (AP) – The DeSoto County Museum hopes to sell its current home so it can buy a historic mansion nearby and move in.

Director Brian Hicks tells The Commercial Appeal that he’s hoping the current building brings in about $1.3 million to pay for buying and renovating the Banks Mansion.

The museum would share the building with the DeSoto Arts Council.

The museum plans to move all exhibits, including the log cabin that sits on the current museum grounds.

The museum was founded 15 years ago at its present site. Exhibits focus on the county from the time of Hernando DeSoto’s exploration in 1541 to the present.

Hicks said the museum quickly ran out of exhibit and storage space.

COLD CASE ID

7 years after traffic death, family knows what happened

SAUCIER, Miss. (AP) – Seven years after an unidentified man was hit by a car as he crossed U.S. 49 at night, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office knows who he was, and his family knows what happened to him.

The Sun Herald reports that the family called the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office after the newspaper published a forensic artist’s sketch of the man with a handlebar mustache and wavy brown hair.

He was 40-year-old Charles Scott Kirby of Saucier. He died Feb. 3, 2008.

It’s the first cold case solved by since the sheriff’s office began reviewing old cases nearly two years ago, after getting a federal grant to pay for DNA tests. Investigators also found other files that deserved a second look, such as Kirby’s.

GREENVILLE-DISASTER GRANT

Greenville competing for disaster funds

GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) – The City of Greenville is getting into a competition for a grant to help to improve areas devastated by a 2011 flood.

Since June of 2014, the Rockefeller Foundation and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have offered a program focusing on strengthening long-term resilience rather than rebuilding alone.

Mayor John Cox tells the Delta Democrat-Times that the city is working with the Mississippi Development Authority on the application.

About $1 billion in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds are available to areas that experienced a presidential-declared disaster in 2011, 2012 or 2013.

If the city receives the about $107 million it is seeking, Cox says the money will go for housing relocations and renovations, port expansion, the sewer rehab project, city drainage and recreational projects.

KATRINA-ALABAMA

A decade later, Ala seafood town rebounding from Katrina

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (AP) – Hurricane Katrina sideswiped Alabama as it devastated coastal Mississippi and New Orleans a decade ago. But the story was different in Alabama’s seafood capital, Bayou La Batre.

The storm left dozens of shrimp boats atop docks and marshes in the town of 2,500, and seafood processers were wiped out. About 75 percent of its homes were damaged or destroyed.

The city hasn’t grown as quickly as other coastal towns, and some families are still recovering from the double whammy of Katrina and the BP oil spill five years later.

While much of west Alabama received hurricane-force winds as Katrina moved ashore, damage wasn’t nearly as bad as in Mississippi and Louisiana.

More than 25,000 evacuees came to Alabama seeking shelter, and some remain 10 years later.