Boswell blasts Loblolly

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June 15, 2009

By Jennifer Jacob Brown The Meridian Star Mon Jun 15, 2009, 10:59 PM CDT

The official stance of the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors on the Loblolly project: We're still counting on it.

Lauderdale County District 5 Supervisor Ray Boswell's stance: I'm not going to wait another second.

Early in this decade, county supervisors passed a $10 million bond issue to fund improvements to a Lauderdale County industrial park, all based on a promise by timber manufacturer Scrimtec that they would build a manufacturing plant called Loblolly on the site, providing over a hundred jobs to Lauderdale County.

The plant was supposed to be completed in 2005. Today, the first brick has not been laid. A test facility that employs a couple of people was erected, but no manufacturing plant, and no return on the county's $10 million investment.

Boswell, a vocal dissenter on many board issues, told the public and the rest of the board just what he thought of the Loblolly project after the board was asked to make a purchase for the Loblolly site.

"I never did think that project was going to be a viable project," Boswell said. "We have spent about $8 million down there... and I'm not going to vote to spend another penny."

Boswell said he doesn't believe Loblolly will ever provide the promised jobs to Meridian, and called for the rest of the board to stop voting to spend money on Loblolly as well, saying, "It's time for this board to take notice and quit wasting the taxpayers' money... It's time this board quits throwing good money after bad."

Boswell placed blame for Loblolly's broken promise directly on Wade Jones, director of the East Mississippi Business Development Corporation, saying of Jones, "If you take a horse to a race numerous times and he doesn't come up a winner, it's a losing horse."

Boswell's comments were ignored by the rest of the board, who instead chose to focus on the request put before them to approve the purchase and installation of gates for the existing fences around the Loblolly site.

The board voted 3-2 to approve the installation of the gates, with Boswell and District 2 Supervisor Wayman Newell voting no.

Lauderdale County resident Raymond Huffmaster also took issue with the board's decision to make another purchase for the Loblolly site.

"Loblolly's starting to become a cuss word," said Huffmaster, who has been a very outspoken critic of the Loblolly project. "I can't gather it all in. It seems too strange to be spending that much money, any money, out there."

Boswell told Huffmaster that he thinks "somebody needs to be responsible," but did not place that responsibility upon himself or the board on which he sits. Instead, he said, "I think it needs to come from Wade Jones and the EMBDC."

Boswell also took issue when the tax exemption status of another company who has promised jobs to Meridian came up, saying: "When we give a million dollars to somebody to create jobs, we ought to check that they create the jobs."

The board voted to withhold approval of all tax exemption requests until a position on tax exemption eligibility for each property is received by the tax assessor's office.

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