Tears and Laughter: Only in Wilcox County…will you find this much culture and corruption

If you like to travel, if you enjoy a nice road trip….if you appreciate culture mingled with history and greed with a hint of ignorance, then you have just got to come and experience for yourself a Wilcox County Commission meeting.

Currently, we are drowning.

We are doing all we can do internally as a community to stop it from happening, but the local government is slowly killing Wilcox County.

We are the poorest county in the nation, have the highest unemployment in the state – and that is even after Golden Dragon Copper opened in Sunny South.

Part of the problem is that our county commission is as corrupt as they come. I challenge anybody anywhere to show me a more corrupt place.

At Monday night’s commission meeting, they voted to breach a contract with ClearWater Solutions – the company responsible for water management in Wilcox – knowing it means a lawsuit against the county. But they don’t care about a lawsuit, they are used to lawsuits. What they want is for the county to be in control of the water…so that the county commission can be in control of the money water assures.

Once the crowd got settled down, Commissioner Reginald Southall, who was voted out in the June 3 primary election but will serve until the new commissioners’ terms begin, made a motion to dissolve the Industrial Development Authority and put it too under the control of the Wilcox County Commission.

This motion sprang County Attorney Donald McLeod into action, and once the crowd was threatened again about their gasping and protesting, he strongly advised the commissioners not to support the motion, stating that the commission is not capable of assuming the responsibilities of the IDA. And thank God, Commissioner Rickey Powell chose not to support Southall and Chairman Saulsberry.

With this impulsive attempt to close the IDA, citizens are very concerned about the intentions of certain commissioners and what they will try and destroy between now and November.

There is a push to invite all Wilcox County residents to heavily attend commission meetings between now and the beginning of the new commissioners’ terms.

Reporters, journalists, mayors from nearby towns, commissioners from other counties, anybody in state government, Hank and Rose, our own Jeff Sessions and Kay Ivey, Secretary of State Bennett, Attorney General Strange, Governor Bentley…please. Come to a Wilcox County Commission meeting. There are no words that can express it and the state of Alabama needs to see what corruption we are dealing with. We can show you why Wilcox is so poor.

We are hoping a crowd will cause accountability, but so far all we have been able to do is watch them take pleasure…as they make their will happen. There are already so many of us attending meetings that we have them questioning the fire code. Yet they refuse to move the meeting to a bigger room, even with a courtroom directly over their heads.

We are appealing to any guests that could sit in the room during these meetings and command some level of respect before they vote Wilcox County completely off the map. Meetings are the second and fourth Mondays of the month, at 5:30 p.m., at the Wilcox County Courthouse Annex.

Amanda Walker is a columnist with The West Alabama Watchman, al.com, and The Wilcox Progressive Era. Follow her at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.