Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

On Wednesday, LaGrange Mayor Jim Arrington gave the annual mayor’s update at the Rotary Club. The mayor will give the state of the city remarks at several civic clubs throughout the week.

This is Arrington’s first opportunity to give the remarks as mayor, having taken office about 10 months ago. Arrington was voted mayor in a special election to fill the seat of the late mayor W.T. Edmondson in May 2024.

“When you don’t go with a mayor for four or five months, and then I stepped in in May and won the election. It was crazy. I had my feet on the ground, running. I had zero time to do much anything else. I let a lot of things go on my business. But now I feel like we kind of got our feet on the ground and going, and we’ve got a groove happening,” Arrington said.

Arrington praised the help he has gotten from the council and city staff, particularly City Manager Patrick Bowie, who he said helps keep the city operating with no property taxes.

“We’ve got one of the greatest city managers that I’ve ever been able to have the opportunity to work for. He is wonderful, and he continues to strive to make us have zero property taxes,” Arrington said.

Arrington said that, like everywhere else, city costs are rising. But they are continuing to work to keep costs down and in turn, utility rates low.

“The City of Grange has some of the lowest utility rates in the state. We rank in the top 15 of the lowest utility rates in the state. That does not mean that your utility bill for your house is cheap. You gotta have to be able to manage it. You have to have energy-efficient stuff in there. But we do have some of the lowest utilities in the state,” Arrington said.

Arrington said public safety is his biggest concern, noting the two murders of the past weekend.

“I’m sad to have to stand up here today because last Wednesday, I stood at the same exact podium, and I was able to tell that we have not had any murders so far this year. And now here it is one week later, we’ve had two,” Arrington said, remarking on the recent shooting deaths of Kiian Hodnett and Zymerious Cofield.

“Y’all have my word that we’re going to do everything possible. I don’t know the answers. I’m looking to the community to help me with the answers, to figure out what, how and why this violence continues,” Arrington said.

A couple of the ways the city is working to tamp down crime is adding additional patrol shifts at the LaGrange Police Department. He said LPD has two officers that spend at least 16 hours of their week just patrolling the city. Another is the quick response drone system that was purchased for LPD. When someone calls 911, the drones can get anywhere in the city in 90 seconds to give police an early eye on the scene.

Arrington said the raises the council approved for LPD have also helped with recruitment. The department is only five officers down, with three going through the academy, he said.

The mayor also touted the city’s investments in infrastructure.

“People will tell you all the time that we don’t maintain our infrastructure or we don’t build new infrastructure. We do. We just finished $32 million worth of infrastructure upgrades, so we’re pretty proud of that, and we’re making sure we can take care of the growth that LaGrange has had,” Arrington said.

Arrington said the city is also working to clean up the city with litter clean-up projects and stepping up code enforcement.

“Code enforcement has stepped up their inspections and court cases. I’m not talking about houses with peeling paint, leaky roofs or a window that’s broken. I’m talking about abandoned houses where the doors are wide open. The houses where people are doing drug deals. [Sometimes] there are people living there, but they’re not supposed to be living there,” Arrington said.

“I do believe that if we as a city, that if we clean up and people take pride in where they live and what they do, then we will have a better city,” he said.