Madison County Mayor Harris gives annual State of the County address

JACKSON, Tenn.–“Well, it’s gonna kinda be a review of what went on last year and the kind of things we’ve got going on this year,” said Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris.

Mayor Harris gave the state of Madison County address to the Jackson Exchange Club, Tuesday.
He touched on some current issues and projects going on in Madison County.

Mayor Harris says that some of the biggest projects for 2019 include working on the new jail and public private partnerships between schools.

“This new jail is set to be bigger than the current one to take on the current issue of overcrowding.
This problem doesn’t just affect the inmates, but the other areas, like the kitchen and laundry,” said Mayor Harris.

“We’ve finally gotten under construction, that’ll be about a 2 year process, but at least we got started finally, after 4 years of planning,” said Harris.

The mayor also said there’s a new potential for public/private partnerships for some area schools.

“That’s kind of an exciting project that we should know within the next 60 to 90 days if everything’s gonna work through to that project,” said Mayor Harris.

Mayor Harris says one of the schools would be Madison Academic, which will be on the University of Memphis-Lambuth Campus.
There will also be a new Jackson Central-Merry High School.
Another accomplishment and ongoing project is flights to and from Jackson’s McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport.
The airline, Air Choice One, currently flies to St. Louis and Atlanta.

“Now trying to increase the size of the plane, get approval to increase the size of the plane to fly 19 passenger seat plane to Atlanta because flights are always booked to Atlanta,” said Mayor Harris.

Mayor Harris also discussed the county fire department’s accomplishments, the low unemployment rate, county finances and economy.