County redistricting suddenly resurfaced on the Sept. 30 Board of Supervisors agenda, after being off the radar since a public hearing in June.

Redistricting consultant Ellis Turnage, a Cleveland attorney who presented a plan early in the summer, pulled the rabbit out of the hat during his report this week. At the June 28 hearing, the Tunica County Redistricting Committee also submitted a plan, labeled 5A.

“The Board has seen four or five plans,” Turnage reported. “All these plans follow the rules of law: about the same number of people in each district; contiguous districts; the one person-one vote rule: and Section 2.”

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Tunica County went on a spending spree in 2013, financed largely by a $4 million windfall from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a utility rebate.

The one-time money took the county’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget from a total of about $48 million to over $52 million.

Tunica County unexpectedly received $3 million from FEMA last fall for expenses related to the 2011 floods. Entergy also refunded just over $1.3 million to the county due to overcharges at the Tunica RiverPark.

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A new truck for the Tunica Fire Department will be paid by fire rebate funds and fire protection funds, following a vote by the Board of Aldermen.

Mayor Chuck Cariker said the truck is slated to arrive in November. The town had initially applied for a $50,000 grant from the state of Mississippi and the program has not been funded for the last two years.

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OXFORD – Felicia C. Adams, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, and James E. Ward, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General announced that Tamya H. Jones, 36, of Houston, Texas, formerly of Sledge, Mississippi, was sentenced by Senior United States District Judge Glen H. Davidson in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and Laura Van Horn, 34, of Lansing, Michigan, formerly of Tunica, Mississippi, was sentenced by United States District Judge Sharion Aycock, following each defendant’s plea of guilty earlier this year to one count of fraud in relation to a claim for disaster benefits.

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