Editor, Sun-Sentinel:
For the third time our county leadership ordered a new numbering of all addresses for our Emergency Management Agency.
That would seem to be a good thing, and I do not oppose it. However, I was taught a phrase long ago ... “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, I have needed an ambulance a few times over the years. The ambulance service, which has improved greatly over my years in Tallahatchie County, has become very efficient. They have not failed us.
Now if the new numbering (and changing the name of every street or road on which we have property) makes for improved service and safety, I am fully in support of it.
However, I have not seen any improvement. My UPS and FedEx packages do not arrive. Fortunately, I was able to chase a delivery man down and tell him where my wife’s chemotherapy drugs go. I call daily on Google to see if my new addresses work. One of them does. Finally. The old addresses don’t work either, until today, and the old address is working again. I call this incompetence.
Still, my mail is coming to the new address and I’m told the new address is correct. I have spoken with my supervisor, the mayor, the president of the Board of Supervisors, the folks at Emergency Management ... all deny any responsibility and pass the buck along to someone else. Now it’s the bad folks at Delta State, and somebody with the Mississippi Association of Supervisors. Whatever is going on, when I type in the address of the house where my wife’s family has lived for 70-plus years, I get a message from the lady who talks on my Smartphone, “I can’t find that place.”
That’s the same message emergency responders apparently got when called to attend to a friend who had suffered a heart attack in an easily accessible place in Tallahatchie County. After 45 minutes he was taken to an emergency room in a car, but it was too late. The family met an ambulance looking for the place. My friend has been dead almost two months. And the new system still doesn’t work.
Somebody is accountable, and it’s time somebody man up and admit it. It’s time Tallahatchie countians expect more of our government and its agencies. All I get is excuses and folks asking to be re-elected. When we question anything, we are labeled as the bad guys.
Joe Young
Charleston
