Three members of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors are being challenged for their seats in Tuesday’s general election. Supervisors earn $45,000 a year.
Sam Abraham, 72, of Greenwood, the incumbent District 1 supervisor, bases his service to Leflore County on the skills and insights he has gained through decades on the job as a current supervisor and previous county administrator.
Running against Abraham is newcomer Allen Thomas Mitchell, 46, also of Greenwood, who believes it is time for some fresh ideas and efforts. Mitchell, an independent, said he decided to run mainly for one simple reason: “I want to see the county advance, change and grow. My opponent has done a great job in what he has given the county, but I want to take it a little bit further than he has.”
Mitchell, a father and grandfather, grew up in Greenwood and graduated from Amanda Elzy High School in 1996. He attended Mississippi Valley State University for two years and moved out of state after that. He returned in 2012.
For a dozen years, he has worked in facilities maintenance and as a handyman. Mitchell does carpentry, roof repair, indoor plumbing and minor electrical work. He is certified for the latter but is not a licensed electrician. In Greenwood, he has been employed in maintenance by the public school district, First Baptist Church and Riverview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Right now, he is a “full-time entrepreneur” and a political science student at MVSU. He likes problem solving, and he has mentored youth ages 15 to 18. As a volunteer, he reads to students at Leflore Legacy Academy.
Mitchell talked about the problems he would like to help resolve. He sees them as related. First, “I want to help reduce crime.” Second, he’d like to “bridge the gap on industry” not only because more jobs are needed but also, as he sees the situation, more employment reduces crime. Third, education should receive more funding from outside sources in order to improve the quality of education available in the county.
His thoughts about trying to save financially troubled Greenwood Leflore Hospital are similar.
If the hospital were to be sold or leased, he would prefer that it be to a nonprofit. “I think it probably works better as a nonprofit with a different type of funding that is not totally dependent on the community that you live in. We are dealing with what we call the working poor.”
What about higher taxes? he was asked. The problem with that, he said, is that “we are going up on the taxes of people who are carrying the load.”
Whatever happens, he said, “we need to come together as one.”
Mitchell’s comment was presented to Sam Abraham. “I tend to agree with that,” Abraham said. “He is exactly right.”
“The biggest problem we have in our community is that it doesn’t work together. It’s our fault. We have got to stop and sit down and work together.”
Abraham, who also is a father and grandfather, grew up in Greenwood and graduated from Greenwood High School in 1969. He studied accounting at Mississippi Delta Community College and Mississippi State University and, after graduating from MSU in 1973, became an auditor in the county division of the Office of the State Auditor.
He later worked with counties as a consultant for the North Central Planning and Development District. His job included assisting county administrators in various counties, including Leflore, in developing and implementing county budgets.
In 1995, he was elected Leflore County chancery clerk and shortly afterward became the county’s administrator. Eight years ago, he retired from those positions and was elected to serve as District 1’s supervisor.
Abraham has advocated for the sale or lease of Greenwood Leflore Hospital for a dozen years. In that time, efforts to sell or lease the hospital have not succeeded, although at least two recent bids for its purchase have been received.
At Abraham’s urging, the Board of Supervisors established a $10 million line of credit with a group of financial institutions in order to provide it with funds to continue to operate while waiting to learn whether it will receive a critical-access designation from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The hospital so far has received $7.2 million from the credit line.
Projected payments on the line of credit were included in a 6.2% tax increase, but Abraham insists that the county could have cut operating expenses instead, thereby lowering the tax increase.
He identified several other areas that need more focus. “We need to make our road systems better, and we need to work on tourism,” Abraham said. “I think we have places like tourism that need developing.”
Still, he said, “My main goal is to keep the hospital open.”
He continued, “We need a plan: Where do we expect to be in 10 years? We need a comprehensive plan for what Leflore County needs to benefit its citizens as a whole.”
Abraham said the supervisors need to agree on how the county should move forward.
“If we had this plan, and everybody was working toward it, I think we would see a lot of difference in Greenwood and Leflore County.”
Eric Mitchell, who is seeking a second four-year term as District 4’s county supervisor, says the appropriate role for a county supervisor is “first to be a voice for your constituents” and in doing that, “make the best decisions for the county.”
He continued, “Then, a supervisor should work to make sure the county is viable” both fiscally and in terms of infrastructure.
Mitchell, 46, and his wife, Teresa, have three children, and they operate Capricorn Internet Cafe in Itta Bena. He also is employed by the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District as a fixed asset coordinator and in the technology department. He has worked for the school system for 23 years, and he is a graduate of Leflore County High School and Jackson State University.
“My goals for District 4 and the entire Leflore County are to maximize our growth and make our county competitive with other growing counties,” Mitchell said.
“Leflore County is a great place to live. District 4 is an awesome place to live. We just have to make the best of the potentials we have in our county,” he said, naming “better health care, better jobs, competitive schooling, improved infrastructure.”
If reelected, he wants to focus on infrastructure improvements, including a lighting project for the city of Itta Bena, locating grant assistance to help citizens with home improvements and ensuring the existence of a sustainable hospital in the community.
Moreover, Mitchell wants to find funding to construct a volunteer fire department for the Rising Sun and Long Acres communities. He said the fire department would “reduce their insurance rates drastically.”
He said he has learned as supervisor that people “only want to know that somebody cares about their well-being.” Mitchell also said, “Another thing: Your word is your bond.”
Mitchell explained that he is running again because he wants to continue what he started. “We’ve come a long way in this community and county, but we still have so far to go. There are things I am currently working on and some grants I have already secured. I would love to be around as the county supervisor to ensure that they are done and to watch them come into fruition. I think the citizens deserve that.”
Mitchell’s opponent, independent Jason Doyle, is an Itta Bena native. As Leflore County’s assistant fire coordinator, he has a working familiarity with Leflore County’s operations and its roads.
Doyle, 40, is a husband and the father of two children, and a graduate of Leflore County High School who holds an associate’s degree in homeland security and investigations. This training, he said, qualifies him to work in coordination with FEMA and in emergency management. He’s certified with the state as a volunteer firefighter, and he also has the role of an emergency responder.
He works with the county’s fire coordinator, Bobby Norwood, and has held that job for seven years. Because of the potential for conflicts of interest, he would resign from that job if he were to be elected as a supervisor.
But he is running anyway. He said he doesn’t want to “put anybody under the bus” but has ideas for changes that would “improve the county.”
His first priority is the condition of roads. “There are a lot of unsafe roads and unsafe conditions in the county that need to be addressed — and a lot of unsafe residential areas,” he said.
“We need to get together and take our communities back,” Doyle said, identifying not only roadways but also housing. “You have got some that could be brought up to a better standard,” he asserted. Doyle talked about houses and buildings that appear to have been empty for a long period. As a firefighter, these catch his eye. “You don’t know what is in that house. It is just sitting there,” he said.
And then there are dwellings that need some rehabilitation. “It may be a house that is run down,” he explained, saying its owners might need assistance in accomplishing this job. Once this is accomplished, “other people start cleaning up, and it is like a chain effect,” he said.
He also said the county’s volunteer fire departments need greater support. There are seven volunteer departments and eight stations, he said, talking about better buildings and equipment.
“My motto,” Doyle said, “is ‘Working for change, working for you.’”
Sixteen years ago, Democrat Robert Collins used the image of a train in his first campaign for District 5 supervisor, in part because the CN locomotives travel right in front of his business, Collins Truck and Tractor, on Baldwin Road but also because of the 1965 hit Curtis Mayfield song “People Get Ready.”
The lyrics begin with, “People get ready / There’s a train a-coming / You don't need no baggage / You just get on board.”
Now, he has two challengers, Troy Brown Sr. and K.K. Henderson Kent, who each say they would provide better direction. Both are registered as independents.
Collins, 74, is running for a fifth term. “They haven’t worn me out yet. It feels good to represent District 5.”
“It’s a big job being a supervisor,” said Collins, who is the Board of Supervisors’ current vice president and a former president. “This board has worked together on many projects that I did and the board agreed to approve. I can’t do it by myself.”
Examples he cited included more than $10 million in street work, the establishment of parks and funding for flood control. “We redid some pumping stations, and the main pumping station — we put it in.”
Collins is particularly concerned about the county’s financial condition going forward because American Rescue Plan Act funds were used to supplement operating expenses for 2023 and that money will not be available in the following years.
“With the rising prices and the interest rate, we just don’t know where we are going to be next September,” he said.
The county raised taxes by 6.2% this fiscal year, which started in October, in part to pay for a $10 million line of credit to be used for keeping Greenwood Leflore Hospital open through the end of the year. He wanted to retain a large portion of the total to be used if it turns out that current plans for the hospital’s survival don’t work out.
He compared his concern about the county’s finances to his assessment of Greenwood Leflore Hospital, which Collins claims has not sufficiently managed its expenditures.
According to hospital officials, its chief problem is that it serves a population that depends on Medicaid and Medicare, and reimbursements from those entities don’t cover costs.
“I think we can still do it with the right people and the right setup,” Collins said. He also observed that many people do have private insurance but are seeking medical care elsewhere.
“The community needs to know that we need to use our hospital, and the hospital needs to know to go out and find some patients,” he said.
Kent, 62, ran against Collins in 2015 and now is trying again.
She is a mother and grandmother who owns commercial and residential property and has been in the restaurant business at KK’s Catering and Deli for decades.
She objects to propping up the hospital with revenue from taxes. “The amount they have been throwing at the hospital has not been profitable,” she said.
“A very important key to the hospital was to keep doctors and the medical facilities here that the people were using. We have this facility here that can offer so much to the medical community, but we want to get it going with the right administration.”
She said, “I think the solution to keeping the hospital here is to lease it or sell it.”
Kent said other situations also need to be addressed, including a number in District 5. One is road upkeep, she said. “I have driven on them for 23 years, and I know how horrible they are. I am sure everyone in the district experiences it.”
“District 5 has horrible infrastructure, roads, bridges, neighborhood streets,” she said. “All of the streets have potholes.”
Kent said the district’s residents have been complaining about piles of debris and garbage being left along streets for long periods and the lack of law enforcement as well as lighting. “For their safety, they want well-lit streets,” she explained.
“District 5 citizens are taxpayers, too, and they deserve a cleaner, brighter environment to live in,” she said. “In neighborhoods of District 5, just riding through District 5, I can see that many improvements need to be done.”
She said that District 5 is “probably the filthiest district in the county, and it needs to be cleaned up.”
Brown, 60, is a husband and father, a FEMA contractor and a former Leflore County emergency management director.
He was the dean of students at East Central Community College from 1992-1996 and dean of students at Mississippi Valley State University from 1996-2000.
“I have traveled all over the world, but by far the best people that I’ve ever had the opportunity to be with are those in the Delta, and particularly those in Leflore County,” he said. “This community has invested a great deal in my family, and I am proud to be in a position to give back to the community.”
“County supervisors provide regional leadership over critical policy areas,” he said.
For his key issues, Brown named safety, roads and bridges, protection of public health, economic development and planning and a managing land use “for sustainable development.” As a supervisor, he said, he would increase pay for county workers, solve flooding problems, establish a fund for assisting residents with removing dead trees on their property because of the risk to public safety,
Brown has run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, for the state House of Representatives and lieutenant governor.
“The driving force behind those campaigns has never changed,” he said. “I want to serve the people from a platform that will create the change necessary to make life better for those around me. To put it simply, the people in the Delta and Leflore County are worth it.”
- Contact Susan Montgomery at 1-662-581-7241 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com.
