OurTupelo

Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill

Mississippi Today met with Robyn Tannehill, Oxford’s mayor, at a women’s leadership summit at Ole Miss earlier this year. Little did we know at the time she’d be thrust into the national spotlight and our own coverage for leading Oxford through COVID-19 preparations. We reached her by phone this week for our Infrom[H]er newsletter, which looks at social issues through a gender lens.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What moment did you realize that you’d have to lead Oxford through this pandemic?

A: We made our infectious disease response plan in February. There are so many different twists and turns that we couldn’t see coming that early, but at least we had a plan for each of our departments before we started seeing cases here.

So that was my first, “Now wait a minute, we’re going to have a pandemic, what?” We are giving it all we’ve got and just praying that’s enough – we are trying to use common sense and compassion in every decision that we make, and trying to arm ourselves with as much info as we can. Obviously we’re listening to folks on the national level and our state leaders and state health department, but each community is different – this is not a one-size-fits all problem that has a one-size-fits all solution.

The way our community is combined with a large number of students and young people, and we’re also a retiree community – it presents some different challenges here that some communities across the state are certainly not dealing with the same kinds of issues.

Q: So that was well before your first case, what changed as time progressed?

A: March 18 was our first case – that’s when it really struck us – but also the day that we realized that businesses would be closed. We have these small businesses who are the backbone of our community who desperately need customers and we’re balancing that with this very diverse makeup of community and age groups, and just a community that desperately needs to distance itself from others. Both of those things you weigh equally and it is just impossible to find the perfect balance there, in protecting your economy and the public health and safety of your community – just finding a balance there, I have found, is impossible.

The data changes and there is no guidebook for this. So, we give it all we got and hope that that’s enough. We have had to be very willing to change at a moment’s notice because all of our plans are so fluid.

We had to furlough 135 employees, which was for sure the most difficult decision that we’ve had to make. We’re a small town with big city problems. College towns are a different bag. We have the most dedicated employees and they’re family – that was for sure the hardest day. We know that we’ll be down close to $3 million before the end of this fiscal year and those were dollars that we’d already budgeted.

Q:  At the women’s summit you were on a panel about leadership with Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill, who said, “You can get a lot done when you don’t care about who gets credit.” How has this challenged, refined or reiterated your own leadership style?

A:  Lynn is one of my dear friends and she says that often. I have that written down on my notebook – “The less credit you need, the more you get done.” That is dead-on. This has been a learning experience. It has certainly made me even more thoughtful about listening. It has made me realize how little I know about things like pandemics. I’m not a virologist or an epidemiologist. It has made me keenly aware of how much we need to seek input.

We are making decisions everyday that literally affect peoples lives and their livelihood. That is just such a heavy weight – but also, you’ve got to make decisions and move forward. Sometimes I think as women we are so analytical, and we think through all the different sides. You can get paralyzed by there not being a clear path. This has certainly been one of those circumstances where you have to use compassion, common sense and the best information you have – and you’ve got to make hard decisions and move through them. That’s difficult when everything is so gray. I don’t shy away from tough decisions, whether they’re popular or not. But this has been so difficult because there aren’t any clear cut paths. Every decision you’re making is what you think is best, but you can’t reflect on the last time this happened … we’ve had to learn to be very adaptable and you can’t be too rigid on what you think your plan is. You’ve got to be able to react and reconfigure daily

Q: How do you balance economic and health well-being best for Oxford, when at times there is conflicting information coming from state orders?

A: I try to remind myself that our state leaders haven’t done this before either – it is not just those at the local level that are learning as they go. So I really hope that people give me the benefit of the doubt as I move through this and I try to do the same for state leaders – it is just tough. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. The governor and state leaders have to give a basic bottom line, but each community needs to have the ability to do what’s best for their citizen makeup, for their business community, for the health care issues that that particular community is dealing with.

Where do you go to talk about that? I went straight to the governor and just said, “Hey, I need you to know where the rubber meets the road whats going on here, and here are the unique challenges that we have. I’m not expecting the state to give me an answer to these local problems that are specific to my community, but I need to have the authority to make those decisions.” And he agreed – immediately the next day, he issued (clarity) that municipalities could be more strict but not more lenient … that’s all we could ask for is to have the authority to make the right decisions for our community.

Our rules have to look different here and we have to be very deliberate and diligent in both setting parameters and then enforcing them. People don’t like being told what do. People don’t want to be told to wear a mask, people don’t want to be told that they can’t dine in a restaurant even if they feel safe doing so. But we have speed limits and we have laws about seat belts. There have always been necessary laws in place to protect people, and this is not different than that.

The post Q&A with Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill on leading in the era of COVID-19 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Photo by Sasha Israel

Randy Redd, a Brookhaven native, formed JOOKMS nearly two years ago as a nonprofit company to bring Mississippi artists together.

Co-creators of the Spotlight Summer Performance Series in Jackson want to spur Mississippi-made theater into action with a platform for new plays and LGBTQ+ voices.

The call for script submissions, with a June 1 deadline, is open to native and resident Mississippi playwrights and performers. Produced by Randy Redd’s JOOKMS professional theater project, the series is set for July 20-26, with staged readings starting July 22 and continuing through that weekend.

The venue is TBA, with hopes the series can be presented at The Warehouse Theatre, New Stage Theatre’s under-100-seat alternative theater in Jackson’s Belhaven Heights neighborhood. While the series is not a New Stage Theatre production, it has the professional theater’s thumbs-up and partnership potential. Theater scheduling is fluid now, because of uncertainty in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Boys in the Band on Broadway via YouTube

Vicksburg-born playwright Mart Crowley poses with the cast, director and producer of the 2018 Broadway production of “Boys in the Band.”

Mart Crowley’s March 7 death was part of what prompted Drew Stark, education associate at New Stage Theatre, to pursue an event focusing on LGBTQ+ works to honor the Vicksburg-born playwright. Crowley’s 1968 “The Boys in the Band” was a trailblazer in its depiction of gay life, and its all-star 50th anniversary Broadway production won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Stark, originally from Starkville, moved back to Mississippi from New York City a few years ago. “My dream was to have a theater company and to focus on providing a voice for LGBT in Mississippi and in the South,” he says, where the community is underserved and discrimination lingers.

“Theater should serve everyone, and represent everyone,” as well as stretch its audience, Stark says. “That’s the collaborative art of theater.”

The Spotlight Summer Performance Series is a distillation of that goal. With its LGBT aim, “That can be a character, an experience, a story, a theme — as long as it hits the mark in that way,” Redd says. “But, we don’t want to limit writers. … JOOK is taking submissions of all things all the time.”

JOOKMS has received about a dozen plays already, Redd says, and twice that many emails and questions since the call went out, including on broadwayworld.com. He’s fielded writers’ questions from “Do I have to be gay?” (“No.”) to “Do I have to live in Mississippi?” (“Absolutely not, as long as there’s a Mississippi connection there.”)

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Brookhaven native Randy Redd watches rehearsals for “Million Dollar Quartet” at New Stage Theatre.

Redd, now based in Memphis, formed JOOKMS nearly two years ago as a nonprofit company to bring Mississippi artists together and create theater true to and reflective of its community roots. The Brookhaven native, with Broadway, film and TV credits, always wanted to get back home and make theater in Mississippi, he says, and he jumps at the chance to teach or direct in his home state (as with New Stage’s “Million Dollar Quartet” and “Sweet Potato Queens” musical). Inspired by The Bitter Southerner, and also chef/author/TV host Vivian Howard, Redd wants to celebrate the best parts of life and work in the South, gather the local artistic “ingredients” and showcase the state’s culture, heritage and history.

“Devised theater not only provides an opportunity for artists to explore and learn and create without boundaries, but it also serves as a big mixing bowl for that artist’s ideas and talents.”

With JOOKMS, he intends to take projects to different venues around Mississippi, keeping the company vital, lively and on the move. Other ideas in the works with JOOKMS include a production of “Les Miserables” set during Freedom Summer in Mississippi, a big hill country blues project, a site-specific Tennessee Williams play, a Beth Henley festival and more.

For the Spotlight series, six selected plays will get two presentations each, with time for playwrights to get response, tweak and rewrite scripts in-between. Plans include an ensemble cast in staged readings of works in progress in afternoon sessions, with evenings rotating between two finished plays, “The Boys in the Band” by Crowley and “Entertaining Lesbians” by Kosciusko native Topher Payne (who has also consulted on the series). Weekend nights may also feature a concert or cabaret. Ticket options will include the entire festival, or a la carte options.

“Submissions are coming in and we hope to continue to collect new works for this and future reading series,” Redd says.

Though LGBTQ+ is a thematic thread for this inaugural Spotlight series, the target audience is broad, “for all Mississippians, all Jacksonians to come and watch great theater and yet still have these voices be heard,” Stark says. The broad outreach holds true in the submissions push, too, and the hope for a diversity of writers.

“I really believe that these voices need to be heard and recognized and humanized. Where discrimination and where bias and closed-minded thinking is, that’s where we need to have these discussions.

“Theater is a catalyst. You can go to the theater to be entertained, to learn and to have that sense of community — being in the same room and having that collective energy” of actors and audience, Stark says. “And, I do think that theater is unique in that art form. It starts the conversation.”

As COVID-19 pandemic-related adjustments continue, Redd and Stark are committed and hopeful as they plan and schedule. “We’re sticking to those dates as long as we can,” Redd says.

“I’m very passionate about this project,” Stark says. “This has been a dream of mine to create in Mississippi.”

Photo by Sherry Lucas

Drew Stark, education associate at New Stage Theatre, said of the series: “I really believe that these voices need to be heard and recognized and humanized. Where discrimination and where bias and closed-minded thinking is, that’s where we need to have these discussions.”

They hope writers use the extra time spent at home as a time to explore, create, and use this opportunity as a goal to work toward. “I want more of us, as artists, writers and creative types, to come up with progressive ideas that give us something to look forward to,” Redd says. He’d even caught himself bogging down in the here-and-now handling of lockdown and limitations, rather than working toward what’s beyond. “I told myself, ‘No.’ I’m going to work like I go to work any other day and keep moving forward like I’m in pre-production for something at another date and time.

“So, get busy, sit down and start working on a new play,” he says to fellow theater folk. “I know a lot of people are trying lots of new things now.”

Submit new work directly to JOOKMS and find guidelines and more details about the series here.

New work can also be emailed to spotlightsummerseries@gmail.com.

There is no submission fee. Authors whose manuscripts are selected will receive an honorarium, written critique from a professional dramaturge, video recording of the reading and post-show audience feedback.

The post Spotlight: performance series to shine light on diverse voices through Mississippi-made theater appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Gov. Tate Reeves answers questions during a press conference concerning the coronavirus pandemic.

As Mississippi saw yet another daily record in confirmed new COVID-19 cases, Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Friday that gyms and salons can reopen, meaning no business in the state is subject to mandatory statewide closures.

Reeves on Friday announced he was extending the statewide “Safer at Home” order until May 25.  He also announced a new executive order which will allow hair salons, barbershops and gyms to open on May 11 at 8 a.m. under strict guidelines. Earlier this week Reeves announced restaurants could begin serving in-house meals under strict guidelines.

“I know that these reactions to reopen certain industries will draw harsh criticism. I’m not worried about that,” Reeves said. “I cannot ask Mississippians to burn down their life’s work and put their family at risk of starvation because I’m afraid of some national media or because I’m afraid of my reputation.”

The move to reopen the businesses comes as Mississippi health officials announced 404 new confirmed cases, the highest number of new daily cases to date, and 13 new deaths.

Reeves on Friday cited a decrease in hospital demands and an increase in testing. Tuesday marked the first day that all COVID-19 hospitalization statistics — confirmed and suspected hospitalized, intensive care unit use and ventilator use — all started to decline when analyzed by a rolling seven-day average.

When asked if other businesses like nail salons are included in this order, Reeves said: “I think if you are a salon you meet the guidance.” The executive order says “salons, barber shops and other personal care and personal grooming facilities” will be allowed to operate.

As of Thursday, more than 400 Mississippians have died from COVID-19. Over the last week alone, more than 70 people have died — accounting for 20 percent of all deaths since the outbreak began almost two months ago. Of the last week’s deaths, however, long-term care facility residents accounted for a disproportionate share at nearly 60 percent of the deaths.

A Tupelo barber who uses the moniker E-Baby Clipper Hands

These businesses that Reeves announced could reopen will be subject to guidelines under Reeves’ executive order: They must sanitize and disinfect their stores before they reopen, and hand sanitizer must be placed at the entrances. Employees are required to be screened daily for symptoms and must wear face coverings and disposable gloves. Salon employees must replace the gloves and masks in between customers, and gym employees must replace the equipment hourly.

In salons and barbershops, only one customer per employee is allowed in the business at a time, according to the order. Customers must wait in their car before their appointment.

Gyms must have at least one employee at the business wiping down equipment “after each use” and cannot operate at more than 30 percent capacity. They can offer classes and group exercises so long as social distancing is possible. Gyms must close to the public by 10 p.m. daily, according to the release.

“I am convinced the industries we are reopening are going to do a better job of monitoring themselves than any government agency ever will,” Reeves said on Friday.

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The Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression and World War 2. For many of them, 75-years ago was a day when they knew they had a chance to live the rest of their lives. By defeating Nazi Germany and fascism, they gave us a precious gift — freedom from evil and hate.

The post Marshall Ramsey: V.E. Day appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Construction on University of Southern Mississippi’s new $7 million volleyball facility was primarily funded by welfare dollars.

Many of the recipients of federal funds in a sprawling embezzlement scheme in Mississippi say they didn’t know the money a private nonprofit awarded them was intended to serve the poor.

But officials representing one of the largest welfare beneficiaries — the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation and, by extension, the University of Southern Mississippi — were aware that funding for construction of a new volleyball stadium on campus came from a Mississippi Department of Human Services block grant, according to board meeting minutes.

In a 104-page letter outlining massive misspending at Human Services, State Auditor Shad White questioned welfare purchases at several schools, including $5 million that Mississippi Community Education Center (MCEC), the nonprofit at the heart of the alleged scheme, paid to build a volleyball facility, Mississippi Today first reported.

The University of Southern Mississippi’s lease with the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, approved by the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, outlined that the foundation would sublease the university’s athletic facilities to the nonprofit, which would prepay the rent in order for the foundation to fund modifications to the new volleyball stadium, called the Wellness Center. The university signed the lease, which charged the foundation $1, in November of 2017, about nine months before contractors broke ground on the facility.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

University of Southern Mississippi’s new volleyball facility, opened in December of 2019.

“IHL cannot claim ignorance of this fact. That assertion flies in the face of your own minutes,” White wrote in a letter to Commissioner of Higher Education Alfred Rankins Thursday after the commissioner challenged the auditor’s characterization of the deal. “If IHL objected to the arrangement with MCEC, then the time to voice that objection was when the matter came up for a vote, not after the State Auditor pointed it out.”

The sublease, attached to the lease in university records, according to a Mississippi Today public records request, showed Mississippi Community Education Center agreed to pay $5 million dollars — which was used to pay for most of the $7 million construction.

In October of 2017, the IHL board approved the university-foundation lease, meeting minutes reveal, with the understanding that the foundation would sublease the property to Mississippi Community Education Center for $5 million and construct the new volleyball stadium called the Wellness Center.

“MCEC’s funding for this project is via a Block Grant from the Mississippi Department of Human Services,” the minutes state. “The funding from MCEC shall be prepaid rent to the Foundation in the amount of Five Million Dollars ($5,000,000) for the leasing of certain USM athletic facilities including but not limited to the to be constructed Wellness Center, Reed Green Coliseum and additional athletic space as agreed upon by USM and the Foundation.”

Human Services is most well known for administering federal grants, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Community Services Block Grant and Social Services Block Grant, to help low-income folks.

Commissioner Rankins argued in a Wednesday letter to the auditor that IHL trustees “did not approve” the $5 million lease — only the lease between the university and the foundation — and asked White to correct what he called inaccuracies in the report.

“This lease agreement was reviewed by a Special Assistant to the Attorney General and recommended by the Attorney General’s Office for approval by the Board of Trustees,” Rankins wrote.

Specifically, the audit said the foundation’s lease with the nonprofit was “transferred” to the university and IHL approved the “transfer of the lease;” White denied Rankins’ request to amend the report.

The foundation’s lease said the nonprofit would use the university’s athletic facilities to conduct programming to “benefit the area’s underserved population.” Since they penned the five-year lease in 2017, the nonprofit has utilized the property it rented exactly one time: for a Healthy Teens Rally in 2018.

“Instead of quibbling, perhaps your time could be better spent providing the public with a plan for the Wellness Center to be used by the at-risk community in Hattiesburg and providing that to me in a letter,” White wrote. “This way, the TANF money that was paid for the Center might be used to benefit the community it was intended to benefit.”

IHL spokesperson Caron Blanton refused to explain to Mississippi Today why the board approved the university’s lease with the foundation, knowing the foundation planned to sublease the university’s property to a federally-funded nonprofit for $5 million, or if $5 million is the going rate for such a lease.

Blanton did not dispute that IHL and the university knew the money came from Human Services. When asked for an interview, university spokesperson James Coll said officials would not make further comment.

Athletic Foundation President Leigh Breal, who signed the lease with Mississippi Community Education Center, did not returned several Facebook messages and calls to her family trucking business. The auditor said the foundation’s reports to the IRS don’t appear to list the funds as rent revenue and that while the entities did enter a lease, the exchange was really a donation in substance.

The nonprofit founder Nancy New, who also signed the lease and is awaiting trial for her role in the embezzlement scheme, to which she pleaded not guilty, has not returned repeated calls.

Mississippi Community Education Center also contracted with University of Southern Mississippi to fund nearly $600,000 worth of “externships” that allowed psychology students “to study in a real-world work environment,” the audit said.

The externships were positions at New Summit School, the private school owned by New, “therefore, MCEC used TANF funds to pay for temporary workers at (New Summit School),” the audit said.

The nonprofit transferred more than $6.5 million in TANF funds to New’s private school operation called New Learning Resources Inc.

University of Southern Mississippi is not the only Mississippi school to benefit from welfare dollars doled out by Mississippi Community Education Center, which had received roughly $65 million from Human Services since former Director John Davis took control of the agency. A Hinds County grand jury also indicted Davis and he pleaded not guilty.

Mississippi State University received $816,282 between 2018 and 2019 on three programs the auditor said did not meet allowable cost guidelines: recruitment of students into the college of education, augmentative communication therapy and dyslexia therapy at T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability.

“First and foremost we stand behind the validity and value of the services in those programs,” said Mississippi State University spokesperson Sid Salter.

T.K. Martin Center does not specifically target its programs to low-income children, yet it publicized that it received a grant from Families First for Mississippi, the statewide program funded by TANF, in 2017 to start its dyslexia program.

The nonprofit also paid to advertise and sponsor — and in some cases purchased tickets for — football, basketball and baseball games at Mississippi State University. Payments to the university’s advertising contractor totaled nearly $317,000. “That’s arms length from the university proper,” Salter said.

The audit questioned the “unreasonableness of providing advertising for programs designed for the needy at college sporting events, lack of adherence to stipulations in
the grant agreement, and the lack of any correlation to how the advertising
benefited the programmatic nature of the TANF program.”

Mississippi Community Education Center also paid $236,000 in TANF to Belhaven University for “leadership development” and $563,600 to Delta State University — costs the auditor questioned. Delta State University President William LaForge said it used the grant to pay the salaries of academic counselors for primarily student-athletes and did so “without any knowledge whatsoever that it might have been improperly channeled welfare funds.”

The auditor similarly questioned grant payments from Mississippi Community Education Center and another nonprofit Family Resource Center of North Mississippi to three public K-12 school districts totaling $645,394.

TANF may be used for four broad purposes: provide cash assistance to poor families, promote employment, prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encourage two-parent families.

TANF may not be used for public K-12 costs (doing so “would be passing on to the TANF program the costs of the State’s public education system,” the federal agency Office of Family Assistance wrote in 2005), to construct buildings or purchase real estate, the auditor noted.

Some of the organizations Mississippi TANF funded — possibly some programs questioned in the report — offered legitimate public services. But if the entities didn’t retain documentation showing who they served or that their clients were income eligible, the auditor could not determine the funds were spent legally.

The TANF scandal is under ongoing investigation by the FBI. The auditor’s office presented its report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will use the information to determine which, if any, payments must be refunded. One recipient, Brett Favre, who got $1.1 million for speaking engagements he never attended, according to the audit, voluntarily began repaying the state. White said others have contacted him indicating their intent to also return the funds.

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The Legislature and Governor Tate Reeves make peace. Kind of.

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