The Augusta Commission voted Tuesday to hire a North Carolina search firm to assist with recruiting a permanent city manager.
The commission voted to hire Developmental Associates of Chapel Hill to conduct the search for a $31,750 fee. The firm scored the highest of nine that bid among qualifications, strategy and references in the city procurement.
The firm’s website lists its clients as cities and counties all across the Tarheel State, but has handled a few searches in Georgia, including for the Savannah police chief and the Statesboro police chief and city manager.
Some commissioners had reservations about hiring the search committee’s pick because one of its consultants is former administrator Janice Allen Jackson, but Commissioner Sean Frantom said the city has been assured Jackson won’t be involved in the search process.
Augusta has had an interim administrator, Central Services Director Takiyah Douse, since the resignation of Odie Donald II last year.
City maintenance workshop planned
In other business, the commission voted to discuss numerous maintenance concerns at a workshop within the next 30 days. The matters raised by several commissioners and Mayor Garnett Johnson include right-of-way maintenance, vacant lot cutting, tree work, inmate labor, Augusta 311 and maintenance schedules. Tuesday the commission added a request from Commissioner Catherine Smith McKnight and Johnson to hire an arborist and McKnight’s ask for new Henry Street irrigation to the workshop.
The commission postponed action on renaming city facilities for deceased city leaders Tom Wiedmeier and Andy Cheek and put off decisions that would allow new Parker’s convenience stores on Barton Chapel and Wheeler roads.
In other action, the commission informed food truck owner John Ennis that the commission has not banned food trucks downtown, as Ennis said he’d been told, but agreed Augusta’s food truck ordinance needed revision.
The commission also heard former commissioner Moses Todd’s request that allocated funding be spent on road and pothole work at historic city-owned Cedar Grove and Magnolia cemeteries.
He also asked for action on a fallen section of brick wall at Magnolia, which Parks and Recreation Director Maurice McDowell said had been poorly constructed. Todd, who chairs citizen committees that attempt to care for the cemeteries, said the wall is over 200 years old.
