A half hour into Jackson’s final budget meeting Wednesday, Councilmember Vernon Hartley wanted to know if — out of the hundreds of millions of dollars the city council was poised to pass in the annual budget — the city could allocate $2.5 million to blight control equipment.
Pieter Teeuwissen, the chief administrative officer, leaned down from the dais to speak with one of his employees before offering a counter: That would work if Hartley dropped the number by a million.
“No sir,” Hartley said…