Jimmy Harris ends one career this week and looks forward to the next chapter in his life after serving 15 years as Mayor of Madison County.

“I’m going to be working,” Harris said, during a reception in his honor at the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department, Monday, “Why retire if I go home and don’t have a reason to get up the next morning?”

Harris has served as Mayor of Madison County since July 1, 2007.

“The last 15 years I’ve enjoyed – I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in a lot of communities that I otherwise wouldn’t have (and) I can’t say how much it means to me all the loving, caring, committed people we have in our community, and that’s what makes us what we are.

“I’m very thankful for the support and the friendship the people of this community have given me the last 15 years.”

But his daily routine didn’t come without a few obstacles.

“There’s always been challenging times,” Harris said, “The most challenging time for all of us was the COVID Pandemic – trying to determine how do we as a community survive.

“We made a lot of decisions, a lot of them controversial, but by and large we did, I guess you could say we did the best we could with the tools we had to work with … the recommendations from the CDC and the State Health Department.”

Harris also said the purchase of Lambuth University by the city and county, which became the University of Memphis Lambuth – a four-year public institution, and the groundbreaking of a new Pope Elementary School in northwest Jackson.

“We finally got there,” Harris said of the new Pope School, “It’s something that’s been needed for a minimum of 25- to 30 years, and that’s something that will pay dividends for many, many years for our community.”

(PHOTO: Jimmy Harris, Mayor of Madison County, right, visits with Joey Hale, owner of Town & Country Realtors, left, and Bart Swift, Juvenile Court Clerk, Monday)