The 13th annual State of the Community was free and open to the public, this year, an accommodation which was “not done lightly,” according to Columbia County Chamber of Commerce President Russell Lahodny, who hosted the event.
“This year, we wanted to do something for the community,” Lahodny said. “We wanted to be able to do that, so we opened this up to the community.”
The Board of Commissioners and the cities of Harlem and Grovetown partnered with the Chamber to coordinate the yearly occasion, catered with vendors Chik-fil-A and Smokehouse Southern BBQ and partly comprised of an expo showcasing local businesses.
The program consists of a series of presentations by Columbia County representatives updating residents on issues and initiatives impacting the county.
This year’s program was staged in an interview format, in which Lahodny sat down with presenters and asked questions, giving space for them to elucidate various community projects.
Col. Reginald Evans, garrison commander at Fort Gordon, revisited topics he touched on last year: “child development centers, housing and transportation on the installation,” saying, “in each one of those areas, I’d like to report that we are trending in the right direction.”
Evans noted improvements with both child development centers and privatized housing on post. Child development at Fort Gordon suffered from staffing issues in the previous year, Evans said, still struggling after COVID, and operating at 60% capacity. Staffing, he stated, is now at 80%
Likewise, staffing at the post’s privatized housing department has been operating at 50%, leading to “horrible customer service” and a backlog of some 1,400 work orders, according to Evans.
“I’m happy to say that the corporate office stepped up, got us the right leadership in the right places throughout the installation,” said Evans, which led to housing offices operating at 100% over the last nine months.
The colonel also announced another major event: the ceremony commemorating the renaming of Fort Gordon to Fort Eisenhower on Oct. 27. He also encouraged the public to express their opinion to command about the renaming.
“Sitting here within the four walls of the installation, we don’t hear any negative sentiments about the remaining,” said Evans. “But I know in the community there may be some, and I’ll ask if you hear of any, please get that back to us so that we can address those, and address that audience the right way, with the right answers.”
Representing Columbia County School District, Superintendent Steven Flynt highlighted the district’s Academic Curriculum for Excellence (ACE), which emphasizes academic rigor; as well as NexGen Cyber, the school system’s initiative to develop a K-12 cyber-oriented curriculum.
“Our curriculum is going to be one that we created with parents and with the community,” said Flynt, noting that the district will host annual reviews of the curriculum, to which the public can contribute. “What’s better than a community where businesses have input into the areas of workforce that you’re teaching in school. We have that, and we’re going to continue to grow that over time.”
Grovetown City Administrator Elaine Matthews reminded locals that the town’s project to build a community center at the old train depot at the center of town is still under way, and spoke on SPLOST improvements, such as those at Liberty Park.
Debra Moore, city manager of Harlem, talked about the two new upcoming developments, as well as the city acquiring the property that used to be the site of North Harlem Elementary, and the project to convert it into a multi-purpose park.
Columbia County Manager Scott Johnson was the State of the Community’s final guest before Lahodny’s closing remarks.
After extolling Columbia County as a “community that has some of the lowest taxes, not just in Georgia, but really the country,” Johnson mentioned two new road construction projects, Hereford Farm and Hardy McManus Roads, are to begin over the next two years, and upcoming Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) projects, including repairing roads and paving roads in older neighborhoods.
Johnson lauded county district attorney Bobby Christine and the work of the two-year-old Columbia County Judicial Circuit in addressing crime in the county, particularly gang activity from offenders coming from the Columbia, S.C. area.
“A safe community is the best community,” said Johnson. “It doesn’t matter how good our roads are, or how good our schools are, and it doesn’t matter how nice our parks are, if you don’t make it safe and secure.”
Alongside SPLOST and infrastructure updates, Johnson spoke on the Sheriff’s Office’s institution of a “real time crime center” in which dispatchers, through use of a sophisticated camera system drawing on the county’s ground-installed broadband network, to allow dispatchers to potentially address crime in real time.
Johnson stressed that the tech is “not to issue traffic tickets” but to “put bad guys in jail.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
