Itta Bena, as we Southerners like to say, is a hot mess — and the condition seems perpetual. Although it periodically makes a few strides toward getting its financial house in order, it doesn’t take long before it’s right back in hock up to its eyeballs.
This week, the Leflore County Board of Supervisors heard from two members of Itta Bena’s Board of Aldermen, who apologized to county officials for the town’s failure to pay its bills to the county for law-enforcement and garbage-collection services.
The two aldermen, Mildred Miller and Reginald Freeman, blamed Mayor Thelma Collins and her city clerk for letting the delinquency pile up. Collins says the money’s not there because of decisions the aldermen have made — most recently hiring a chief of police — against her wishes, as well as unanticipated infrastructure repairs.
Whatever the reason for Itta Bena’s cash-flow difficulties, that’s not the problem of the Leflore County government. The county came to the assistance of Itta Bena when the town couldn’t afford to run its own police and garbage departments, and now Itta Bena is several months’ behind in paying up. In all, the county says it is owed about $130,000.
Itta Bena needs to come up quickly with a plan to get current on its bills, or it needs to start talking seriously about unincorporating and letting the county take over everything.
For several years now, it has been one financial disaster after another in the town of 2,000. Unpaid payroll taxes, unpaid utility bills, unmet loan payments to the federal government, embezzlement by a former city clerk. The town’s a good half-million dollars in the hole. For all of Collins’ seemingly eternal optimism that the town can turn the situation around, even she should be losing faith that this turnaround is likely.
Even with the stealing reportedly stopped and the help of two influential members of Congress last year to call off the dogs from the IRS, Itta Bena still apparently can’t pay its bills.
It can’t expect its creditors to let it off the hook. These other government entities have a responsibility to their own constituents or shareholders to collect the money they are owed. If Itta Bena doesn’t pay the county, everyone else in the county will be stuck with the cost.
If the town has gotten too small, too poor or too dysfunctional to be self-supporting, maybe it just needs to throw in the towel and let someone else try to run things.
