Assuming Tuesday night’s election numbers hold up, Indianola will swear in a new mayor come January.
Ken Featherstone appears to have unseated three-term incumbent Steve Rosenthal.
Featherstone is a native of Indianola, born and raised here. He graduated from Gentry High School, and like many others who were brought up here, he went off to college, got married, started a career and built a life elsewhere.
During his adult life, he’s worked in law enforcement and in the insurance industry. He’s lived in Detroit, Michigan and in Birmingham, Alabama.
Over the past few years, however, his heart has yearned to return home to help his hometown.
It’s no secret that over the past couple of years Featherstone has had one foot in Indianola and the other in Birmingham.
His family, for the most part, still resides there. His wife, Cheryl, has a high-profile job with the state of Alabama at the Department of Youth Services, he said.
As Featherstone put it in last week’s mayoral debate, they came to a “family agreement” to allow their son to graduate from high school there.
After that, Featherstone said, Indianola’s presumptive next first lady will retire from her job and join him full-time here.
The majority of Indianola voters appear to have taken Featherstone at his word, as they voted him in on Tuesday.
Mid-day through election day, Delta Council Executive Director Frank Howell was addressing the Indianola Rotary Club about a host of issues ranging from the Yazoo pumps project to the 2023 farm bill, and a lot in between.
The highlight of Howell’s presentation, however, had to do with the Delta’s decreasing population.
Howell presented two maps, one depicting the Delta’s population loss since 1980 and the other since 2000.
The 16 counties in Delta Council’s coverage (not including Tunica, Tate and DeSoto) show a population loss of 110,000 people since 1980, and 80,000 of those have disappeared since 2000, Howell said.
“It’s sobering as all get out,” Howell said.
Howell went on to point out that Sunflower County has lost the equivalent of the current population of Indianola.
Leflore County has lost the equivalent to the current population of Greenwood, and likewise in Washington County with Greenville and Bolivar County with Cleveland.
“That’s how many people have vanished,” Howell said.
Howell pointed out that population trends impact education, health care, the region’s tax base, infrastructure and the amount of federal dollars that are assigned to the region.
Howell did suggest that although key indicators show the Delta to lose more population in the coming years, it’s perhaps not going to be as steep of a drop as we’ve seen in the last four decades.
“We have to reverse these trends,” Howell said.
It’s hard to know how Featherstone’s mayoral administration will flesh out over the next four years, but he could actually become a trendsetter for the city and the region.
So many people leave Indianola, and other surrounding towns, and they never return, mostly because they find opportunities elsewhere.
It’s not because they don’t want to come back. Indianola, and other small towns have so much to offer in terms of quality of life, but education in the region leaves much to be desired, and job growth is stagnant.
Featherstone himself left his parents, extended family and his hometown decades ago to attend college, the military and start a career.
The new mayor will represent Indianola’s current citizens, first and foremost, but he also represents a large body of those who once lived here, then left, but given the slightest opportunity with jobs and education, they’d be back here in a heartbeat.
Featherstone’s residency was for a lot of voters their biggest concern, but when it’s all said and done, it could perhaps be the most valuable perspective he brings to the table.
One mayor is not going to replenish four decades of lost population for the Delta, but if the statistics Howell presented are going to be reversed, why not start in Indianola and Sunflower County?
