Why Now? A response to a reader’s question that practically answered itself. We recently had a reader ask the most obvious—and probably the most important—question of all:

“Why now?” As in: why is Kimberly’s long-overdue sewage issue suddenly front-page news… just weeks before a local election? Well, let’s walk through it.

Look—we’re not pretending to have all the answers. We’re not engineers or political strategists. But a few things are blatantly obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention and hasn’t been hypnotized by a last-minute press release dressed up like a campaign poster.

First things first: Yes, Kimberly needs a real sewage solution. It’s long overdue.

This isn’t a new revelation. Businesses aren’t exactly sprinting to invest in a town where flushing a toilet might trigger a town hall meeting. This issue has been lingering for years—like a backed-up drain no one wants to unclog. And folks were raising the alarm about it all the way back in 2020 and even long before that.

Now here’s the kicker: One sitting councilman actually had the audacity to say—on record—that “the mayor has been working on this sewer issue for 9 years. ”As if that’s some kind of merit badge. Nine years? In nine years, you can finish undergrad, go to med school, and start removing gallbladders. If this was really a priority, it wouldn’t have taken nearly a decade to produce… a vague “Letter of Intent.”

And yet, here we are—about 40 days away from a local election—and wouldn’t you know it?Boom. A shiny, well-timed sewer announcement appears. Not an actual plan. Not public debate. Just a cryptic “Letter of Intent” that hasn’t been officially released to the public—only hinted at through the Chamber of Commerce. (Which, for the record, isn’t a government body. It’s a networking club with a Facebook page.)

This “letter” reads like it was ghostwritten by someone’s campaign manager and run through a slogan generator: “Flush Forward 2025: A Vision for a Cleaner Tomorrow.”

And who’s being crowned Prince of the Pipes? None other than newly-appointed councilman Richard Dixon. You read that right—appointed, not elected. The current mayor hand-picked him just over a year ago to fill a vacant seat. And now—surprise!—he’s running for mayor.

It’s all very tidy.

You don’t have to be a political analyst to figure out what’s happening here. It’s a tale as old as time: Sit on a problem for nearly a decade, then dust it off and slap a campaign sticker on it right before an election.

But wait—there’s more.

Another current councilman chimed in to say this project has been “worked on behind closed doors for years” with the Mayor, Mrs. Cowart, and Mr. Dixon.

Couple problems with that:

• Mr. Dixon hasn’t been around “for years.”

• And the phrase “behind closed doors” should make every voter nervous.

You want to restore trust in local government? Try sunlight. (We even have what's referred to as sunshine laws officially as the Alabama Public Meetings Act) Not secrets.

Bottom line? This sudden burst of “progress” isn’t a coincidence. We all know its common to see more miracles occur in the final 90 days before an election than in the three years prior—and this time’s no different.

We’re not plumbers—but we know when something stinks.

—The Real Doss Ferry Chronicle(Still not hypnotized. Still watching.)