Street Talk
By Mickey Howley
Your Water Valley Main Street Association has a yearly schedule and the “New Year” just started. That does not make a whole lot of sense, sometimes things don’t make sense, but the WVMSA year runs from middle of October to the middle of the next October. It’s 2015 already. Well, sorta. It is the same way budget years are not the same as the calendar year.
So last Thursday at the Annual Meeting we did a quick review of the last year. Just a variety of things with the common focus of downtown. Action such as the full-length movie that was filmed here last spring. And the Valley was the subject of another, but shorter film—this one not fiction—but as the Creative Economy poster town at the Mississippi Central Park Picnic in New York City.
During the meeting we also noted that there are 11 downtown buildings under major renovations right now, the ArtCrawl was the best one yet, and the Farmer’s Market jammed on for a 7th year. Preservation Magazine featured the Valley big time in the spring edition and the big boss of Main Street visited this fall. The BTC Cookbook first printing was 26,000 copies. (No Dixie and Alexe aren’t rich now).
High Speed Wi-Fi is coming and Yalobusha Brewing is distributing in south Louisiana and well as most of Mississippi. That’s just a random sampling of the “last year” Main Street action.
The bigger point is the WVMSA has been in action for the last seven years and it has been a good and lucky seven for the whole town. Twenty new businesses, 70 new jobs, a whole bunch of buildings fixed, and tens of thousands of empty commercial square footage back in use. There is lots of work still to do, but Main Street Water Valley feels good and the best part it has been a huge collective effort. Everybody has pitched in and that’s why it is working.
This year we wanted to thanks the folks who day-in and day-out take care of downtown – the hard working people at the City of Water Valley. If you like the smooth asphalt of Main Street, thank the Street Department for sweating it out and getting the job done.
Every big project begins with the Water Department—as how to get good fresh water in and black water out of a building. The Parks Department keeps the town neat and clean and green, never do the parks and green spaces look rough – makes a big difference.
The Electric Department is always there to keep the energy we need coming. The Water Valley Police Department is a 24/7/365 operation and they’re the first guys you call when you need help.
And when things get hot, the Fire Department is ready, rolling, and responding. The city only functions with every department and the mayor’s office working hard in a common direction and WV’s Main Street depends on all of them. So if you see one of the city folks, tell them “thanks” for being on the job and getting it done.
