$140,000?

Well Memphis, in its own way is like most river towns all over the world. And modern times in the US, Memphis is like Detroit.

Ringed with exburbs where a decaying city can't reach for tax revenues, but middle class people are free from crime.

Memphis sits on the border of Mississippi. Some tax refugees live about 10 miles south of Memphis, but in the Magnolia state. This is important for two reasons.

First, Memphis can NEVER annex you, if your exburb is in Mississippi.
Second, crime in extreme north MS is amazingly low. That because people who do crime in MS go to Parchman. Parchman is a legendary prison.

So, just south of Memphis there are three towns, about ten miles apart in east/west direction; Olive Branch, Southaven, and uhmm, what's that other one?
I feel just like Rick Perry now...

Oh yeah! Horn Lake! Well, this concerns Southaven. It's an urban sprawl masterpiece with about 20,000 citizens.

The mayor is Greg Davis, and BOY, is he in trouble! He's finally come to attention of state auditors. It seems for past five years he's been padding the expense accounts... uhm, somewhat.

Like $176,000 of suspicious expenses. It's been painful to watch. He used his personal car and billed the city for mileage for example? Turns out he was driving about 50,000 miles a year on city biz.

Well, I've been a road warrior myself at times. You got to get up early to log 1,000 miles a week. And I don't see how that leaves one much time to be mayor.

Yes, he reimbursed the city for week long trip to an AZ spa with wife, where they also had some kind of motivational speaker thing.

Yes, some expenses he charged city for turned out to be purchases at an Ontario adult bookstore that caters to homosexual males. So now Mayor Davis is out of the closet.

This is old stuff, I bet the mayor of Babylon or Rome had similar problems at one point. What REALLY bugs me?

You get paid $140,000 a year to be Mayor of Southaven???? No kidding, Southaven, really nice town. Scarsdale it ain't though.

It has a very nice library, and I know where there's a picturesque old cemetery in the shadow of I-55 overpass, however? Southaven is the ONLY town I know of (and I've visited LOTS of places) where a McDonald's went out of business!

Yeah, no kidding! How the heck does a McDonald's end up with plywood over the windows? Well, the plywood is now covered with gang grafitti, so obviously there's no clue there!!!

It is stupid to pay an individual $140,000 for NOT doing a job, while ripping off taxpayers, that I could find a very capable woman who'd perform admirably at a salary of $70,000.