Shelton, Messina, Powers Are Best Qualified For Central Mayor, At-Large Council Seats

The Central City News is today endorsing three candidates in the Nov. 6 election. The three ­— Jr. Shelton, Wayne Messina, and Kim Powers — want nothing except to serve their fellow citizens and keep Central stay a great place to live, work, and study.
Endorsements can be difficult, especially if you have no standard for evaluating candidates. At the Central City News, we favor candidates who meet the following standards:
• Honesty, integrity, and high character
• Conservative values, which include limited government, low

taxes, balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, deregulation, right to life, traditional marriage, keeping government within the limits of the federal and state constitutions, respect for the rule of law, equal rights under law, and respecting the will of the voters as expressed at election time.
• Having the competence, intelligence, energy, and interest in serving our citizens and doing the right thing, even if it is not always popular at the moment. Perhaps most important is that they have common sense and use it.
We also believe that when someone is serving in public office and doing a good job, they should be retained, barring some extraordinary circumstances.
On the other side of the coin, one or more candidates on the Nov. 6 ballot have by their past actions disqualified themselves from our consideration.
Considering all of these factors, we recommend the following candidates in the Nov. 6 election:

Mayor, City of Central
Mayor Jr. Shelton

The Mayor of the City of Central is the city’s most important leader, the voice of the city, and an important symbol of the city. It is very important that he or she be honest to a fault, competent, and conservative. It is also essential that the Mayor be energetic and hard working.
It is difficult to imagine anyone doing a better job as Mayor than Jr. Shelton has done. He is completely honest. In four years, there has not been a hint of scandal of any kind. He has never used his office for personal gain or to enrich his friends and supporters.
He has been a strong conservative. He has made sure city government lives within its means. He has refused to raise taxes or impose a city property tax, which could be done under state law without a vote of the people.
Yet, even without raising taxes, he has by frugal management increased the city’s surplus by more than $20 million, bringing the surplus to more than $40 million — an amount unheard of in a city this size.
Mayor Shelton’s work habits are exemplary. He arrives at city hall early and works late. His energy seems boundless, and he is always either at his desk or out with the people of Central working to solve their problems.
During and after the Flood of August 2016, the Mayor’s level of energy rose to an even higher level. It seemed he never slept and was everywhere. In fact, for the first 72 hours of the flood, he did not sleep and worked around the clock.
After that, for the next year, there was very little sleep. He took it upon himself to personally try to help every Central citizen who needed help. He sat with them in his office or went to their homes. He listened to their stories. They cried together, and he went to work for them.
The notebook he kept from that time details, person by person, the hours spent helping each one. In an era when people get little personal attention as they try to deal with a faceless bureaucracy on the phone or online, it was a blessing of enormous proportions to have a Mayor who really cared and went above and beyond the call of duty.
Like President Trump, Mayor Shelton has been subjected to a continuing barrage of unfair criticism. In the Mayor’s case, it has come week after week for four years from a local “newspaper” that has but one goal — to destroy Jr. Shelton. Unfortunately, the reality is, if you tell a lie enough, some people will begin to believe it.
Reading that fake news, you would think that Mayor Shelton was responsible for the Flood of August 2016! But of course, nothing could be further from the truth!
Some people simply don’t want to recognize that Central is a relatively low-lying area between two rivers without levees that for many thousands of years has flooded. When you get 41 inches of rain, it will flood! A day or two later, the rivers will flood. That’s reality!
Since the flood, Mayor Shelton has overseen the cleaning of 47 miles of canals and ditches, removing 4,600,000 pounds of vegetation and foreign matter. Who could have or would have done more?
Now he has announced what is truly a remarkable accomplishment. He has gathered commitments from the state and federal governments of more than $100 million in funds for drainage improvements — all right here in Central! No one anywhere has ever done that!
Central is very fortunate to an honest man as Mayor, a man of integrity who works tirelessly in the best interests of the citizens of this community, and we are proud to endorse Mayor Jr. Shelton for reelection.

Council at-Large
Vote for Two — Wayne Messina and Kim Powers

Five candidates are running for two seats on the Central City Council at-Large. The election on Nov. 6 will be from the throughout the city. Each voter will get to vote for two candidates. Without it reflecting adversely on the other three candidates, we believe the following two candidates are best qualified.

Wayne Messina

Wayne Messina is an honest, hard-working Councilman who returns all of his phone calls and does everything he possibly can to help the citizens of Central.
Wayne takes a very active part in the community of Central serving on the BREC Finance Committee, the Food Bank, and the Central Community Alliance. He takes an active part in the Council on Aging representing the City of Central and attends all meetings pertaining to the Comite Diversion Canal. He speaks out at the State Capitol. As a result of the Mayor’s efforts, Councilman Messina, and others, $375 million has approved for Comite Diversion Canal, $70 million from the Army Corps of Engineers, $13 million from East Baton Rouge Parish, $14 million from the Amite River Basin Commission, and $13 million from DOTD — with all the money going toward drainage that will greatly help the City of Central.
Wayne represented the city very well, and we need his experience, expertise, integrity, and voice working on the Central City Council.

Kim Powers

Kim Powers is a newcomer to politics, having never run for public office. However, her father served as a conservative Republican Mayor of Slidell and Councilman at-Large. He is her role model, and she learned as a child how important it is to have good men and women serving in city government.
Kim was an honor roll student in college and studied political science. She married and has three daughters. One is 21 but the other two are students at Central Intermediate School. They live across the street from the school, and she is actively involved at CIS.
Kim Powers is the advertising manager of the Central City News, which brings her in contract with business owners throughout Central and keeps her grounded on what policies work and don’t work for business owners here. As a business owner herself, Kim is executive producer of Central High football and baseball broadcasts, which keeps her in touch with students, faculty, coaches, and parents.
She is a conservative woman and was a strong supporter of President Trump. She is a member of the National Rifle Association and Louisiana Right to Life. She believes in the right to carry. She serves the community through the Istrouma Kiwanis Club.
Kim Powers was raised on a farm and knows how to drive a tractor, round up cattle, and birth a calf.
Her No. 1 goal is improving drainage in Central. No. 2 is preserving Central’s rural lifestyle. “I love the balance we enjoy between city life and country life, and I want to keep it that way.”
Beyond drainage, her top project is to jumpstart the four-laning of Hooper Road and to extend Hooper with a bridge across the Amite to Watson, as the key to solving traffic problems along Sullivan and Wax.
She hopes to lead beautification efforts in Central. “Central is so beautiful, but we have cover these open ditches along our roads which are a hazard to safety and an eyesore.”

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