Greenwood’s mayor, Carolyn McAdams, is running for a fourth term in office in Tuesday’s municipal general elections, and two opponents, Kenderick Cox and Nathan Wright, are seeking to unseat her.
McAdams, 74, an independent, was first elected in 2009. Prior to that, she served as the financial manager at the former Delta Correctional Facility.
Wright, 34, also an independent, boasts a wide range of job-related experiences, from being a sports writer to coaching basketball and archery at North New Summit School for four years until he, along with a group of other teachers at the school, were laid off last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wright, a graduate of Carroll Academy who has also lived in various states, such as Pennsylvania and Tennessee, said he worked most recently for Advance Micro Targeting (AMT), a political firm that assists with political campaigns.
Spending time on the road last summer and fall, Wright served as the middleman between voters and politicians, working to gather information and compile statistics through his job at AMT. He declined to name the campaigns for which he worked.
Cox, 37, a Democrat, who was born and raised in Greenwood and is a graduate of Greenwood High School, has spent 13 years working as a local teacher. He currently teaches STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to ninth-grade students at Greenwood High School. In past years, he has taught health, child development and information, communication, technology, among other subjects.
In addition, Cox is the founder of a nonprofit organization, Here We Stand, which manages two mentoring groups for youth, one designed for males and another for females.
He ran for mayor in 2017 and secured about 35% of the vote to McAdams’ 61%.
McAdams, who said that she was encouraged by her constituents to run for a fourth term in office, cited various accomplishments from her 12 years in office.
These include the construction of a new wastewater treatment plant; recreational outlets, such as the Rail Spike Park Trail and the Yazoo River Trail; the renovation of the city pool on Barrentine Street and the city’s Police Department; and the establishment of a rainy day fund, worth approximately $2.5 million, which has allowed the city to address emergency situations, such as sewer line cave-ins.
She cites her ability to manage personnel and budgets as a key attribute: “You’ve got to be able to read a budget and know what to do with your money.”
Though she was not able to give municipal employees raises every year, McAdams said she has been able to give a 6% salary increase every three years, a change from previously having them every five years.
McAdams said she also has focused on developing good infrastructure and a historic downtown and would continue to do so if reelected.
“If the city does not have great bones and great infrastructure, nobody is going to want to come here — nobody,” she said. “That’s why the downtown is so vital to the city — because if you don’t have a great downtown, then businesses don’t want to come here, people don’t want to come here and young people certainly don’t want to come here.”
The city is repaving various streets throughout its seven wards. McAdams would like to use the more than $3 million it will get from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan to address the water and sewage system since many of the pipes are old and decaying.
McAdams also addressed crime and dilapidated properties, two areas in which the city adminstration has been criticized.
Following a surge of six homicides in the city late last month within a six-day period, McAdams said the city will work to install more surveillance cameras — the city currently has 26 — to monitor crime and will continue to partner with outside agencies for assistance, such as the U.S. Marshals Service, the Mississippi Highway Patrol and the Leflore County Sheriff’s Department. In addition, the city will continue to support nonprofit groups dedicated to curbing violent crime.
Regarding dilapidated structures, McAdams said these buildings are torn down because they are no longer structurally sound, and it would be more expensive to fix them. She also said that the city only owns a few parcels of land of previously demolished properties since the city likes to sell these lots to add them back on the tax rolls.
Cox said he is running to return Greenwood to its glory days.
“Greenwood once was the blueprint for most cities in the state of Mississippi,” he said. “Tupelo, Greenville, used to look at us as the blueprint.”
Now, he said, these cities are thriving, while Greenwood is “just a shell of what we once were.”
Cox’s platform is dubbed SAFE, which stands for “safety, aesthetics, functionality and economy.”
In the area of safety, he said he’d like to solidify the police, fire and public works departments and work to provide each one ample resources and staffing.
Alarmed by the continued surge in gun violence and other violent crimes that claim the lives of Greenwood residents, Cox said he’d like to implement checkpoints throughout the city to hold people accountable. He would also like the police and the city leadership to establish a better rapport with the community.
Aesthetics means beautifying the whole city so “it looks good, smells good and feels good,” he said. He would like to address trash removal, another ongoing issue, by localizing public works with a point person for each of the seven wards.
Functionality entails making the city suitable for everyone by providing recreational opportunities for residents of all ages, Cox explained.
Economy entails creating business opportunities for residents. One method of this, Cox said, would be to establish a workforce development program for Greenwood youth, allowing them to job shadow with the city’s various departments.
Cox would like to address the issue of dilapidated properties that the city controls. He said he’d like to see the city put these dilapidated properties that it owns in a community land trust and seek out grants and loans to allow these parcels of land to be redeveloped, which would then provide opportunities for homeowners or business owners to use that property.
Through this community land trust, Cox said he’d like to increase the city’s homeownership ratio since outside businesses often consider a city’s homeownership rate as one of several factors before deciding to invest in a city.
Cox said he believes in working to find solutions rather than complaining about problems. In addition, he’d work to create leaders and seek to empower others to do their jobs to the best of their ability.
“I love Greenwood within every inch of me, and I want to get it back to where it once was,” he said. “We’re in the process of losing too many of our kids due to nonsense, and the majority of the reason why it’s happening is due to poor performance of leadership. Many of our problems in the community are due to that.”
Wright said that after returning home from the road last year, his wife told him there had been three recent shootings in the city. He said he had also been told by one of his former basketball players that someone Wright and the former basketball player had once played with was fatally shot.
These issues prompted Wright to run for mayor, he said.
“I don’t feel like we do enough here to move Greenwood, to be more successful. You look at who is in charge here, and you look at everybody on City Council, people have been here for decades, holding the same position,” he said.
He added that he sees things from a different perspective and is not disconnected from the community.
Wright said he’d like to address the city’s deep-rooted issues by targeting them at their core.
For example, he said he wants city leadership to reach out to youth “so that they won’t resort to street life.” One way in which this could be done is by establishing a kids council, in which the young people can have an opportunity to meet with the mayor, allowing the mayor to understand the concerns of the city’s youth.
At the same time, the youth, in meeting with city leadership, may get inspired to serve their community later, Wright added.
He also said he would like to find a way within the city’s budget to pay police officers more in order to recruit and retain more of them. “We’ve got to find a way to reduce the crime while investing in our youth,” he said.
Wright said he’d like to work to renovate the city parks and try to bring more recreational venues, such as a bowling alley or movie theater.
And, as a musician, Wright said that the Delta serves as sacred ground for the music world. Another tourist draw is the region’s significance in the civil rights movement.
“I want to help promote all of Greenwood’s history and culture and be a place that attracts people from all over and this can be a destination place,” he said.
Wright said he would work to promote people such as Sylvester Hoover, who runs a blues-themed tour throughout the Delta, as well as Greenwood’s Museum of the Mississippi Delta, in order to attract visitors.
nContact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
