Business, economics, and what is coming next in Jackson.
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Budgets, taxes, rates, wages, and the numbers that decide what Jackson can afford.
City Attorney Drew Martin told the council Oct. 27 a draft is days away. The sales tax exemption MDA advertises for certified data centers covers the equipment and building materials a project would buy.
The council tabled the surplus-property option Oct. 6 after Ward 1’s Ashby Foote questioned the price. A state lawmaker pressed the deal Monday, and the land sits in the Pearl’s floodplain.
Commissioners authorized a predevelopment deal with a Carlyle-led team on Oct. 26. The only cost figures on the record cover design, not construction, and the airport got one proposal.
Visit Jackson’s 2024 annual report put its tourism tax collections at $3.5 million, flat year over year. The Nov. 3 ballot asks voters to raise both rates that feed that line.
Vero Fiber finished buying TEC on April 14. Six months later, docket 2026-UA-63 to move TEC of Jackson’s assets and customers to Vero Fiber ABS is still open on the PSC’s docket.
MDEQ records show draft air permit modifications for Amazon’s Canton and Ridgeland data centers opened for comment Aug. 17 and Aug. 24. No hearing is posted for either.
The city announced a full $3.1 million match in four installments. Mississippi Home Corporation’s published manual caps supportive services at $300,000 and rental assistance at $500,000 per applicant.
The 754-megawatt plant Entergy says data centers help pay for cleared its last major state environmental hurdle on Oct. 14, and a pretreatment draft went to the facility a day later.
Henifin’s plan would have a new authority borrow $120.8 million to buy Jackson’s water and sewer systems, saving about $1.4 million a year. Horhn wants a hearing instead.
The five-story building is the largest single capital commitment on the UMMC campus in years. Private donors have pledged $100 million, the state added $100 million, and $8.5 million in federal money pays for site work.
Jackson’s monthly check from the Department of Revenue edged down from a year earlier, while Ridgeland and Brandon posted double-digit gains and Pearl fell sharply.
The council packet lists a surplus-land option near the Pearl River, three federal grant applications worth $2.17 million, and the airport grant to restore Chicago service. The casino item is the one that stalled.
Jackson voters decide Nov. 3 whether to raise the prepared-food tax to 1.5% and the lodging tax to 2%, with the money dedicated to Visit Jackson. The resolution and the certified ballot language are now on the record.
The council adopted the per-ton rubbish fee on Oct. 6, resolving a question the Wire’s own coverage left open. The same week, the city said the Byram site still cannot take full loads.
MDEQ posted its formal response to public comments on Entergy’s 754-megawatt Ridgeland plant, the document the Permit Board will use to decide Tuesday. A newly posted transcript also shows Ridgeland’s zoning board voted no before aldermen overrode it.
The state’s Workforce Housing Program will fund only new single-family construction, capped at $4 million per project. Hinds County is the largest of six qualifying areas, and no local government has yet signed on.
The city posted RFQs for asphalt milling, paving materials, and housing rehab on Oct. 8, the same week the council amended engineering contracts for a resurfacing program that began in 2023.
Two March appraisals valued the city’s riverfront tract at $110,000 and $112,000, based on comparable sales of $1,566 and $3,500 an acre. The developer’s own consultant says comparable land costs up to $1 million an acre to make buildable.
The council ratified a 12-month Cityworks renewal on Oct. 6, the same week bids closed on an ERP system whose own addendum names Cityworks as a system to be integrated or replaced. The new software is not scheduled to start until Oct. 1, 2027.
The Capitol Green Connector between the GM&O Depot and Hal & Mal’s is expected to finish construction this month, an $8 million bridge over Lakeland Drive broke ground in August, and planners want the trail to run from Jackson State to LeFleur’s Bluff. The identified money so far is roughly $10 million, not counting the connector. A May 2026 study counted $14.2 billion in private investment along Atlanta’s BeltLine.
MDEQ’s air division has concluded the 754-megawatt Traceview plant can meet every state and federal standard, and the decision now rests with a nine-member board that meets the second Tuesday of each month. The draft permit’s own fine print says the permit expires if construction does not begin within 18 months.
The Oct. 6 agenda asks the council to accept a federal Small Community Air Service Development grant for Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers and to schedule a public hearing on the Downtown Jackson Business Improvement District’s district plan. Both are money decisions with named payers.
Midtown Partners won a three-year Community Economic Development award to expand three existing enterprises in Jackson. The money started Sept. 30, and the only public notice came from Rep. Bennie Thompson’s office.
PJ Waldrop took over the Mississippi Development Authority on Oct. 1 after Bill Cork’s retirement, inheriting 12 divisions and roughly $400 million in annual spending. The metro’s biggest projects, from Amazon’s Madison County campuses to Jackson’s own incentive pipeline, run through the agency he now leads.
The 183-day moratorium the council passed July 14 runs out in about 16 weeks, and the city attorney told the council in August there is no new draft ready. A 230-acre rezoning request in northwest Jackson is waiting on it.
The city’s second lease-purchase solicitation in two months lists 36 vehicles and machines, from a $385,570 street sweeper to a $1,452 bucket, and projects a Nov. 20 funding date. It also says the city expects to be non-bank qualified, which narrows who can bid.
Mississippi diesel hit an all-time high of $6.06 a gallon on Sept. 23 and sits at $5.99 today, up 83% from a year ago. For a 200-gallon fill that is $544 more per stop, and the metro’s 302,100-payroll economy moves on trucks.
The city’s RFP 94654-092926 asks lenders for an interest rate on a lease-purchase financing, with bids due Sept. 29. The solicitation names no asset, no principal amount, and no term, and it lands three weeks after the council adopted a 2026-2027 budget that never mentions the borrowing.
The city posted RFP 94654-092926 on Sept. 17 asking banks for an interest rate on lease-purchase financing. Bids close Sept. 29. The solicitation names no asset, no principal amount, and no term.
Jackson’s monthly sales tax diversion rose 9.5% in August 2026, and Ridgeland and Byram posted the metro’s largest gains.
Opinion. The city is about to reopen its landfill at prices below what private landfills charge the suburbs. Nobody has said the plan is to become the metro’s cheap dump. But look at what the numbers reward, and ask who benefits when a public asset is sold at a discount.
Absentee voting opened Sept. 21 with a Jackson-only question on the November ballot: a tourism tax to fund the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The county’s own meeting record shows the money is already being counted in the budget cycle.
The council’s new weight-based fee schedule reads like an increase. Run the arithmetic on the old volume-based rate and a pickup load of debris gets cheaper. Mississippi already has the lowest landfill fees in the country, and the last cell filled past its permit in 2024 with no replacement ready, which kept the gate shut for the better part of two years.
A Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business won the sealed-bid contract on Sept. 21, with work starting Sept. 30. The 18-month job is fully funded and drew just three bidders.
The Jackson metro added 3,500 jobs in a year, the strongest August on the BLS series. On the same day the state announced an $8.5 million federal grant to build short-term training pathways, the metro’s labor force is still smaller than it was in February.
The county’s new criminal justice facility is running into supply delays, WJTV reported Monday, the same day supervisors held a special called meeting and one day before a work session. The millage that pays for it was adopted Sept. 10.
The Sept. 22 council agenda carries a MetLife renewal for city workers, a new cafeteria-plan administrator, a solid waste fee ordinance and a quitclaim sale of three parcels to Wil-Mat Investments. None of it has been reported.
Mississippi diesel averaged $6.05 a gallon on Friday, up 84 percent in a year, while the national average set another record at $6.44. The bill lands in a specific order: farmers in the middle of harvest, owner-operators who pay for fuel before they get paid for the load, then a city that just passed a budget with no room in it.
A resolution on Tuesday’s agenda would let the city contract with Municipal Intercept Company to collect unpaid debts under a state setoff law, a step that puts a private firm between residents and money the city says they owe.
An ordinance introduced on the Sept. 22 council agenda would amend Section 106-148 of the city code, the section that sets what it costs to dump at Jackson’s solid waste facility. The same agenda carries a resolution to hire an outside firm to chase unpaid debts.
Supervisors closed an $8 million gap on Sept. 10 with a tax increase that generates about $2.3 million a year. The new criminal justice facility is the single largest reason the county says it needs the money.
A 30-page financial plan filed in federal court proposes Jackson sell its water and sewer assets to a new, city-independent authority. The document’s own tables show what that buys: smaller rate increases, and a bond that only works if the city gives up control.
The Council set the city’s millage at 63.03 mills on Sept. 3, a week before the budget deadline, committing to no tax increase even as Public Works faces a roughly $8 million cut and the city stares down a $23 million to $36 million shortfall.
Mayor Horhn’s flat $112.9 million general fund plan trims Public Works by $8 million even as the city folds its parks crews into the department. The council has until Sept. 15 to find a different answer.
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask voters for a 0.5% prepared-food tax increase and a 1% lodging tax increase. The money would go to Visit Jackson, and the tax has not moved since the bureau was founded in 1983.
Interim manager Ted Henifin filed the utility’s financial management plan with the federal court Friday, projecting a 10% increase in spring 2027 and further hikes in 2028 and 2029.
Mayor John Horhn pitched a $112.9 million general fund budget as flat for fiscal 2027. It is $23 million below the current year’s adopted budget, and two council members are questioning whether the revenue it counts on will actually arrive.
Mayor Horhn’s $112.9 million general fund proposal holds spending flat, but two revenue lines drew sharp questions from the council’s finance committee on Monday.