(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
There’s good news, and there’s bad news in Augusta.
The good news is that a bill was introduced in the Georgia Senate calling for a referendum on giving the mayor a vote.
Opinion
The bad news is that it will never pass.
The reason is that the Black commissioners are in the majority and have the power to do what they want to do, and the White commissioners are sucking wind.
The late Augusta Commissioner Grady Smith summed up the situation succinctly back in 2014 about why he was going to make a deal to become mayor pro tem.
“The Blacks are now in charge,” Smith said. “I ain’t got no cards to deal with. They’re in control. They’ve got the six votes. It’s like playing 21. You look across the table at the dealer, and he’s showing two aces, and the most you’ve got is a 3, a 5, a 7 and a 9. He’s got you. How much money are you going to put on that game? I’d say fold ‘em. It’s Black and White. You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. “
Who can argue with that? Who throws away his political aces in exchange for a losing hand?
Well, that’s just my opinion based on history and horse sense. There are other opinions, and …
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Everybody’s Got One
So, let’s start with consolidated Augusta’s first mayor, Larry Sconyers, who praised the bill at first and then barbecued it.
“That’s great,” he said. “That would be a step in the right direction, but what good is it going to do? They’ll just get up and walk out of the meeting or abstain.”
Sconyers said Augusta has “the most screwed-up form of government in the country.”
“It’s like a company with 10 board members running things, and the company president doesn’t get a vote.”
The second mayor of the consolidated government, Bob Young, said change is “long overdue,” but a referendum is not really needed.
“We just had a referendum when we elected Garnett Johnson mayor,” he said. “And he had campaigned on this. I think people are tired of all this silliness. The mayor’s vote is being suppressed by certain commissioners who are using the shield of abstention. And with any case of voter suppression, which was the big issue in the last election, I suggest we go to Staci Abrams, the Godmother of Voter Suppression, and say, ‘Help!’”
The third mayor of the consolidated government, Deke Copenhaver, who always sees the glass half full, said he fully supports letting the citizens have the final say.
“When I first ran in 2005, our team conducted a poll in which we asked the question, ‘Should the mayor have a vote?’ The percentage of respondents who said yes 18 years ago was 72 percent, and I honestly believe our citizens would overwhelmingly approve the referendum if given the opportunity. In the end, this should be about the will of the people.”
In 2015, the fourth mayor of the consolidated government, Hardie Davis, tried to get the charter changed to give him more authority, including a veto. When that didn’t happen, Davis took matters into his own hands and launched a hostile takeover. He called a news conference and announced he was going to be Augusta’s CEO and would be in charge of the budget, city finances and everything else. But, as you know, that fell flat because he was up against 10 hostile commissioners.
I called Augusta’s best former administrator Fred Russell who’s had more experience in facilitating ideas and projects in the government than anybody, and he said, “You could take five graduate students and ask them to develop something that didn’t work, and they would replicate Augusta’s charter.
“Giving the mayor an opportunity to actually participate is probably the easiest solution to improving Augusta’s efficiency,” Russell said.
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“What’s Past is Prologue”
As many of you know, the saga of revising the charter has been going for more than 20 years.
In 2002, Mayor Young commissioned a Blue-Ribbon Committee to study it and make recommendations. The committee met and haggled for a year, and finally made some recommendations, but nobody remembers what they were.
Thereafter, changing the charter would at least be mentioned during every Legislative session.
In 2008, a facilitator from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government sent a report on a recent commission retreat where commissioners agreed to work on 14 areas and were assigned specific tasks. But only Russell had delivered, with a plan for signs and banners at major and minor gateways and throughout Augusta.
Mayor Copenhaver’s task was to lead a commission review of the “charter” and recommend changes. I predicted that would take a little longer. Say, well after the signs they put up at gateways were rusting off the posts. And I wasn’t wrong.
Stranger Things
In 2009, the city’s General Counsel Chiquita Johnson tried to change the charter to give herself more power, but her bosses on the commission rebuffed and rebuked her proposals to put restrictions on the news media at public meetings and to change the charter to beef up the powers of the law department.
Johnson said there were inconsistencies between the charter and ordinances.
Her new ordinance would have given the law department power to launch investigations into any city department, authority or contractor, with its investigations having “peace officer” status. The city attorney would also have power to hire any outside counsel of her choosing, without commission approval, so long as the work didn’t exceed $50,000 already in the city attorney’s budget.
Johnson said the changes she sought were considered “common business practice” in most cities.
“Augusta is the exception rather than the rule,” she said.
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Well, she got that right.
In 2011, members of the Augusta Baptist Ministers Conference sued the city and six White commissioners who voted to approve the city’s revised policies and procedures manual that gave the administrator hiring and firing power. The plaintiffs contended it was an illegal attempt to change the charter.
The meeting at Antioch Baptist Church lasted more than two hours with speeches, singing, praying, bitching and moaning and passing the plate to help with legal expenses. And the overall message I heard was, “Wake up, or the White people will screw you over!”
Now it’s the White people who are being screwed over. Oh well, turnabout is fair play.
Anyway, despite what Deke’s poll showed, I believe Grady was right, “They’ve got the six votes,” and they’re going to fight tooth and nail to maintain and enhance their power. Besides, when the Black ministers machine gets cranked up, it won’t be like the recent elections when it was “Souls to the Polls.” It will be “Polls to the Souls.” And to hell with tax-exempt churches and separation of church and state. That’s a joke nowadays anyway.
Two Million Dollars Down the Drain
After all the recent commission talk about botched repairs at Diamond Lakes Regional Park, Larry Jones, owner of Universal Plumbing Inc., and Business Manager Shalanda Morris, came to Tuesday’s commission meeting to set the record straight about the company’s work on the scoring towers.
Jones told commissioners that his company was initially hired in 2019 to install 21 floor sinks on the observation deck of the towers to catch debris and drain rainwater coming off the roof. And that was the extent of their work at the time. While there, Jones said he noticed the tile on the floor of the observation deck was worn and shattered and would have to be replaced, and another contractor came in and put in an epoxy floor.
Three months later, Jones got a call saying that water was still coming into the restrooms, and he went out to check the floor sinks to make sure they were still sealed tight. Then two or three months later he got another call about water coming into the restrooms although his company hadn’t done anything to the pipes.
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“So, we got the blueprints, and we discovered the piping was non-acceptable,” he said.
And after Jones’ company had jackhammered through a wall, they found a pipe coming down from the storm drainage system. And after cutting through it and taking a part out, they discovered it was almost closed up with a very hard substance.
“Our conclusion was this was something that happened during the original construction of that building,” he said.
Rather than take leftover tiling compound, referred to as “mud,” down in buckets, workers apparently poured it down the drains, and before it got to the exterior of the building, it had hardened, Jones said.
“We had no idea that the piping was compromised,” he said. “The calcification in drain lines, and there are several in both buildings, are in the ceilings and walls. Whatever is in the slab, wherever it goes, it’s not confined to the walls and ceilings.”
Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle said, “It’s shame that we’re spending all this money, knowing that the issue was on the front side.
Commissioners voted during Tuesday’s meeting to spend $850,000 to replace the plumbing in the scoring towers. That’s on top of $982,181.60 that’s already gone down that black hole.
Circling the Drain
Now that the former assistant director of the Parks and Recreation Department Tim Fulton has taken legal action against the city on grounds of racial discrimination by Director Maurice Mc Dowell, maybe the next thing to go down the drain in the recreation department will be McDowell himself.
Fulton, who is White, says McDowell purged the department of White employees and made his life on the job “a living hell.”
Fulton wrote a scorching resignation letter in October and named seven people in senior positions who were forced to quit, retire early or were fired. He said all of them were highly qualified and all were white.
According to Scott Hudson, senior writer for The Augusta Press, Fulton’s attorney in Augusta, Kenneth Ratley, said he’s prepared to file suit should his talks with the city’s General Counsel Wayne Brown break down.
Well, Mr. Ratley, you should go ahead and get the lawsuit typed up.
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Code Words
Commissioners had a work session Wednesday with the Code Department and learned everything you’d ever want to know about code enforcement, or code compliance, as Planning Director Carla DeLaney prefers to call it. The slide presentation was educational and worthwhile if you’re interested in hearing what they’re up against trying to get rid of shacks, junked vehicles and overgrown properties in Augusta.
Of course, there aren’t nearly enough officers to handle the city’s multiplicity of code violations, and they aren’t paid but $37,500 a year, so the jobs are hard to fill. And it is dangerous work, going up to people’s houses and telling them their neighbors want them to cut their grass.
The department is about to launch the new “Supply to Comply” program with $50,000 of your tax money; whereby property owners who can’t afford tools will sign up for vouchers to take to a store, such as Home Depot, and redeem for tools.
There are 50 municipalities across the country that have such programs. Two of them are in Georgia, Atlanta and Athens, and they’re working well, and everybody is “happy” now. Of course, nobody is talking about what happens to the tools that are damaged, misplaced or stolen, and they never will.
During the “Supply to Comply” presentation, a constituent texted commissioners Wayne Guilfoyle and Brandon Garrett about needing property maintenance and asked them to place his order for a zero-turn lawnmower with grass bagger, a weed eater, rake, shovel and a monthly payment for gas..
Sylvia Cooper is a columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
