The war between urban and suburban America has many battles. County subdivisions across America often try valiantly to resist annexation of nearby cities. Less than two weeks ago, a suburban community called Byram, which sits just south of Jackson in Hinds County, all but won their battle.
According to The Clarion-Ledger, the Jackson-Byram saga began almost 20 years ago when Jackson moved to annex part of the county, including four square miles of Byram. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the annexation after Byram fought it, and 10 years later, Byram filed for incorporation after Jackson made a second attempt to annex some of Byram.
Finally, on April 2, the Mississippi Supreme Court voted unanimously for Byram to be incorporated and for Jackson to annex four square miles south of the city. Jackson is expected to request a rehearing.
I grew up in Jackson and loved it, but as with many families, rising crime and overall rundown of neighborhoods was at least one factor leading to our decision to move out of the city and into Byram. Not having to pay city taxes was also a bonus for my single mother.
As Tom Brokaw highlighted in his 2006 special “Separate and Unequal,” Jackson is not very sexy. There are limited jobs, the more successful citizens usually don’t stay, the schools are often subpar and crime and racial tensions are a reality.
My grandparents moved out of their Jackson neighborhood shortly after my family left in 2001 because teenagers continally vandalized their property, crushing the windows of my grandparents’ vehicle. Almost every senior citizen still living in Jackson at that time had a story about another old chap being harassed by local teenagers.
Is there a racial problem going on here? As Brokaw pointed out in his report, white people move out often to avoid the ghetto. However, there are more complicated problems than racial ones. Jackson has many problems that probably overlap each other and would take a trained sociologist to figure out.
The bottom line is that Jackson is increasingly becoming a bad place to live. Its own mayor for the past four years is an out-of-control vigilante, and Jackson can’t really prove to residents of Byram that it will do better if allowed to annex and grow.
Byram, on the other hand, has grown in recent years, and there is a lot of potential for business. I have not met a resident of the Byram community who doesn’t want the place to be incorporated. It seems obvious to me that it wouldn’t be right for a poor city like Jackson to annex a vibrant community that doesn’t want to be annexed. Doesn’t the will of the people ever matter in these decisions?
According to a recent editorial in The Clarion-Ledger, “Jackson and Byram should move on and seek cooperation rather than competition.”
It would have been nice for Byram and Jackson to have been able to become one and grow together, but Jackson wasn’t able to promise that. Despite the fact that Byram will need to tax its residents more in order to provide a city infrastructure and government, Byram has every reason to want to incorporate into its own self-determining city.
Matt Watson is a senior majoring in communication and Spanish. He can be contacted at [email protected].