LaGrange had an eventful 2024 with both sorrows and triumphs. The future looks bright for the city as it transitions mayors and continues to grow.

The city’s year started off on a tragic note, with beloved mayor and longtime city council member Willie T. Edmondson passing away in February. Jim Arrington was elected as the city’s 14th mayor in May to take over for the late mayor.

Arrington said he was proud to continue some of the things Edmondson started after coming in mid-year, especially the Mayor’s Christmas Ball.

“I was proud to raise money for some local students to go to college,” Arrington said. “We’ve still got to continue to work to clean up LaGrange and make it safer for the citizens.”

The city has put a renewed effort into cleaning up and tearing down abandoned houses, where people go in and out doing drug deals or illegally (and dangerously) camping in them, he said.

“We’re getting rid of a lot of those things throughout the neighborhoods in LaGrange and cleaning up overgrown lots just to make people feel safe because of the things that were going on in those areas,” Arrington said.

“We’re getting street lights back working and trying to get them back on just, just for just the purpose of feeling safe. Being able to see what’s going on your street makes a big difference,” he said. “I want to make LaGrange a safe community. In some areas, you feel safe, and in some areas, you don’t feel safe. I want people to be able to feel safe anywhere you go in LaGrange.”

Arrington also said the city has done a lot of work attracting a diverse array of businesses.

“Remington is a big deal for LaGrange and the soy sauce manufacturer that’s coming. Hopefully, we can start breaking ground next year on them along with Aerotron,” Arrington said.

“It gives us a lot of diversity. When that automobile industry, if it ever slows down, and we hope it doesn’t, we’ve got diversity within our industrial park so that we don’t really notice a  big slowdown, like we did when the textile industry kind of started on its decline,” Arrington said, “They all have made some significant changes in their what they’re doing, and they all came out on top also, but, but, you know, there was that period where the textile industry slowed way down.”

Arrington said one of the biggest challenges they have is keeping the police department and fire department at full force. The city has made great strides in doing so at the LaGrange Police Department, which was down 20-plus officers a year ago. 

“[Now] we’re only down four or five officers, and we got three coming out of the academy, coming up in the next three or four weeks, so we’ll only really be two officers shy,” Arrington said. “I’m hoping next year to add some more. They stay busy, and they’re overworked.”

Arrington also wants to continue Edmondson’s efforts to bring the LaGrange community together.

“I want to continue to make people feel like they’re needed in our community and make them feel part of the community,” Arrington said.  “I want to try to do more things, community-wide, events downtown, just to make everybody feel welcome and make everyone feel like they’ve got something to do.”