In the news

■ Lynn Spruill, mayor of Starkville, Miss., has no misgivings about the city spending most of its $6.2 million in U.S. pandemic relief funds on parks and recreation, calling it “onetime major money” and the “best way to reach the largest percentage of citizens.”

■ Marcus Jackson, the only Black member on his city’s City Council in Alabama, declared “It’s a good day in Prattville” as the body approved his measure to recognize Juneteenth as an official local holiday.

■ David Hill, a parent in Newton, Miss., said “The violence has got to stop. … Parents should be able to send their kids to school and know that they’re going to be OK,” as a 6-year-old boy recovers after surgery for a bullet wound in his leg, an injury he suffered when a gun in a student’s backpack discharged.

■ Dana Kelly, owner of the Reign Restaurant nightclub, says her business is being scapegoated as the cause of violence in downtown St. Louis, after a city official called the club a “threat to public safety and welfare,” and it was ordered boarded up for a year in the wake of a spate of shootings.

■ Francisco “Frank” Pichel, 59, a former police sergeant and a private investigator who’s running for mayor of Miami and already faces questions over reported misconduct, has been charged with impersonating an officer in the Florida Keys.

■ Taylor Scarbrough, 57, who resigned as mayor of Nashville, Ga., got six months in jail and 9½ years of probation for climbing aboard a contractor’s excavator and causing an estimated $12,000 in damage to the machine.

■ Rush Gordon, 90, who’s spent his life mentoring Boy Scouts, wore his Eagle uniform to the opening of the rechristened Rush Gordon Multi-Purpose Center in Meridian, Miss., telling people he lives by the simple motto “Always do something positive.”

■ Russell P. Cook, an Air Force colonel, noted that an HH-60G helicopter used by the 41st Rescue Squadron had flown missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the Horn of Africa dating back to 1994, as Moody Air Force Base in Georgia retired the copter after one last ceremonial flight.

■ Mark Riley, a lieutenant with the Georgia Department of Public Safety, said “it seems like people run more and more from the police; I really don’t know what the catalyst is for that,” as the agency noted a 1,200 jump in sometimes-fatal highway chases last year as compared with 2019.