(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
Dear Santa,
We here in Augusta, Georgia, are looking forward to your annual visit, and all eyes will be on the night sky to catch the first glimpse of Rudolph’s red nose lighting the way for the other reindeers.
You never fail to delight the children with the toys and presents loaded in your sleigh, along with your jolly “Ho! Ho! Hos!” Most grownups don’t really need that much since President Joe Biden has taken care of most of them with the billions in his various vote-buying giveaway programs like the American Rescue Plan Act. Heck, some people don’t even have to pay their own rent and utility bills anymore. So, for the most part, everything is taken care of for them, and the only things the rest of us have to worry about are inflation and whether we can buy groceries next year. Still, there are a few things I’d like for you to bring us on your way South this year.
A Moving Van and Whoppers
First, is a moving van for the soon-to-be former Mayor Hardie Davis who can’t leave fast enough for the people who’ve been paying attention to his shenanigans the past eight years. Things like renting the Miller Theatre for his second inauguration at a cost of $7,000. It was interesting to see that he hosted his “Holiday Soiree” Friday evening at the Municipal Building. Maybe he’s becoming more frugal with taxpayers’ money in these waning days of his mayorality. If so, which is hardly possible, it’s a little too little a little too late if you ask me.
Santa, Hardie’s moving van should not be big enough to hold that fancy equipment he bought with taxpayers’ money to build a recording studio in the mayor’s office.
And bring him some Whoppers from Burger King because he sure tells a lot of them.
Speaking of Whoppers, he took credit for everything good that has happened in Augusta the past eight years in the slick color mailout that was included in the latest city water bills.
Who, besides Hardie Davis would send taxpayers a mailout glorifying his accomplishments as mayor and the bill to pay for it? There ought to be a law against it.
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Peace, Light and Paint
And Santa, please bring Augusta Commission members a spirit of cooperation and willingness to work with incoming Mayor Garnett Johnson. Also, a little more transparency and a little less straying off legally sanctioned topics in “executive sessions.”
The city could use some paint to spruce up recreation sites and places like the Boat House at the Marina. Major repairs are what’s really needed at some of them like the Boat House, but as everybody knows, a little paint can cover a multitude of sins. Also, if you have room in your sleigh, could you throw in some bricks to replace the ones missing on Riverwalk? If any are left, they could go to city officials who are shy of a load.
Also, please bring the people who live on Green Street some streetlights because they’re living in the dark. So many lights are not working, it’s downright dangerous for them to go out walking at night. And they say electricity from the faulty underground wiring is shocking them.
And while you’re at it, Santa, they need the historic monuments that have been damaged for so long it seems like forever, repaired. If anybody’s going to do it, Santa, it will have to be you because woke commissioners are more interested in tearing down historic monuments than repairing them.
Besides, the mayor thinks they should fix them themselves.
And Santa, please bring in a construction company to finish the work at Lake Olmstead Stadium so that former Mayor Bob Young can quit fuming about it. He said he caught a squirrel in his yard, and since he believes in catch and release, he took it to the Augusta Canal and let it go.
“Driving back, I passed Lake Olmstead Stadium which is looking like hell,” he said. “I question the stewardship of the Development Authority. This sad state of disrepair falls directly on them and the failed Kendrick concert series. And where is the interest of the mayor and commissioners who actually own it? The Development Authority signed a contract with this company, C4Live, who came in and tore it up and then left it. They said the ground was too soft. I don’t know what was in the contract, but there certainly needs to be some penalties written into it to make them complete what they started.”
Speaking of Steven Kendrick, after he lost the mayor’s race, he went back on the city payroll in June as chief deputy tax commissioner with a $110,000 annual salary. He has the exact title and pay that current Tax Commissioner Chris Johnson had before they switched jobs before the election.
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Ho Hum
As of Friday, only 4.5 percent of Georgia House District 129 voters had voted early in the special primary to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Wayne Howard in October.
Some 1,543 of the district’s 34,034 eligible registered voters had voted early. The elections office also had issued 44 absentee ballots and had received 35 back, according to Richmond County Board of Elections Executive Director Travis Doss.
All eligible voters of the district may vote in the special Democratic primary, regardless of their party affiliations. In other words, you do not have to be a Democrat to vote in it.
Four candidates are seeking the seat, including Howard’s brother the Rev. Karlton Howard; security contractor Brad Owens; project manager Scott Cambers; and Georgia Southern University student Davis Green.
I don’t know how effective any of them would be as a representative in Atlanta, but it seems like none of them can figure out the rules on running a campaign.
As of Dec. 8, only one candidate had filed any campaign or personal financial report in the District 129 race, according to Susan McCord, staff writer for The Augusta Press. Another has been fined for a late report, while the other two haven’t registered with the state ethics commission at all.
State election laws require candidates to file personal financial disclosure reports within 15 days of qualifying to run.
Cambers was the only candidate with anything on file with the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission.
The candidates are required to file a campaign contribution disclosure report 15 days before the Dec. 20election but have a five-day grace period. None had filed the report as of Dec. 8.
Howard’s name is in the state system, but he was fined $125 Dec. 8, for not filing a personal financial disclosure report., according to McCord.
Owens and Green, meanwhile, had filed nothing.
While this paperwork might seem burdensome to candidates, once the election is over, chances are good the winner won’t have any trouble filling out his expense reports for reimbursement.
Men in Blue are Human, Too
Three Richmond County deputies were arrested last week after an investigation by the GBI into the roughing up of a handcuffed suspect after the man was arrested for shooting a deputy in the face last month.
Deputies Quincy Cannon, 31, and Andrew Acosta, 25, are charged with battery and violation of oath of office. Deputy Robert Wilson, 45, is only charged with violation of oath of office in the incident that happened at the Sheriff’s Office after an officer-involved shooting involving suspect Vernon Cratic, 34. The parolee with a lengthy arrest record shot Deputy Michael Cole after a standoff at a home on Bungalow Road.
The GBI investigation revealed that Cratic was struck in the face and stomach while handcuffed in the elevator at the sheriff’s office. And Cratic was slammed against an exterior wall of the Sheriff’s Office while handcuffed and being escorted into the building, according to a GBI press release.
Police brutality is a no-no. But how would you feel if it was your friend and colleague who was shot in the face by a scumbag who kept firing at you during SWAT team negotiations in a two-hour standoff?
Deputy Cole underwent several surgeries at Augusta University Medical Center.
No wonder it’s getting harder and harder to find good police officers. Who wants their life to be in jeopardy every day for $42,500 a year and no support when they screw up?
So anyway, they’ll probably lose their jobs and be prosecuted while Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams, who doesn’t like to prosecute murderers, will probably give parolee Cratic a get-out-of-jail-free card.
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The Kidnapping of Jack Connell
Ten or 15 years ago …. It’s hard to tell time flies so fast… Hugh Terrell, who used to work at The Augusta Chronicle gave me a stack of old newspapers dating back to 1912 because he said I was the only person he thought might like to have them. Many of the newspapers bear headlines announcing major world events such as President Roosevelt declaring war on Japan and the other Axis powers; the fall of Bataan; the end of World War II; the death of presidents Roosevelt and Truman and the deaths of every succeeding U.S. president, including JFK, Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.
I wrote about some of the local Augusta news articles in columns, especially after I went to visit Eugenia Lehman who was in her late 90s when I first met her. She lived to be 101. She remembered many of the people in the newspaper articles, such as Ty Cobb who she said was a very good dancer as a teenager, but later beat his wife. And she remembered when the Yankees came down in trains to winter in Augusta and play golf. She said they came to Augusta. They stayed at the Bon Air, then a very fashionable resort hotel.
Genie knew all of the “high muckety mucks” of the day, as she called them.
Anyway, Ernie was trying to declutter our storage house and ran across the newspapers and asked me what I wanted to do with them. He said If I wanted to keep them, they needed to be stored in a better container. I told him I hated to part with them, but that Hugh Terrell might like to have them back.
Meanwhile, I looked through them and read some very interesting stories about murders, adultery and things that were much like the stories of today. And I ran across an ad by The Studebaker Corporation of America, announcing price cuts on Studebaker sedans. A Standard Six Sedan (wool trim) cost $1,295. The same Studebaker with mohair trim cost $1,395. The Big Six Brougham was $2,095, and the Big Six Berline was $2,225.
“See These Cars at Phinizy & Connell Motor Co., Distributors; 627-629 Broad St.,” the ad stated at the bottom.
And I remembered the late Jack Connell, Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives for 26 years, who told me he worked for that company his father co-owned after attending college for two years. That was about the time he was kidnapped, a story he loved to tell.
“I was 17 when I got back from my first year in North Georgia College and worked for my daddy for the summer,” he said. “My first day back, these three men came in and said they’d like to look at a four-door Commander Studebaker. They said they’d like to drive it up the street.”
One of the men hopped behind the wheel and drove to North Augusta, where the man in the back seat with the young Jack Connell pulled a gun. They then drove halfway to Edgefield, turned off onto a one-way pig path and ordered him out of the car.
“They marched me up to the woods, and they acted like they were going to kill me,” he said. “I said, ‘Hey fellas, if you tie me up, nobody will ever find me up in these woods.’ One of them said, ‘Let’s flip a coin and see whether we tie him up or let him go.’ It came my way, and they took the tape off, and I took off.”
The stolen car overheated and exploded on the way to Edgefield. The men were arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Jack Connell, a decorated World War II bombardier-navigator, died in 2013 at the age of 93.
Sylvia Cooper is a columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
