The other day, I was telling my friend this might be a good week to try my hand at writing something to see whether I could still make chicken salad out of chicken you-know-what because there’s so much of it in Augusta it would be a pity to let it go to waste.
For example, where else would city leaders allow the county jail to become so crowded, damaged and dangerous that a news reporter would describe touring it as “almost like going through a haunted house set in an insane asylum?”
That was the impression of Scott Hudson, senior investigative reporter for The Augusta Press, while touring the Charles B. Webster Detention Center with Sheriff Richard Roundtree, Mayor Garnett Johnson and commissioners last week.
It was an eerie scene amid the pungent smell of synthetic marijuana, according Hudson. Bad guys packed together with nothing to do but make trouble. And shanks from metal torn from light fixtures. Two tables full confiscated in two days. And there were scars aplenty of vandalism and destruction in a facility designed to be a minimum-to-medium security jail forced into being a maximum-security prison. Only about 50 inmates are there on misdemeanor offenses. The rest are violent offenders, including 85 charged with murder, Roundtree said.
No wonder the jail is so short-staffed everybody on the force has to do jail duty, even the command staff. What person in his right mind wants to work in a building with 85 accused murderers?
The prison has space for 1,050 beds, but has 50 to 200 more inmates above that number almost on a daily basis, leaving some to sleep on the concrete floors, which in my increasingly retrograde opinion on prison reform damn well serves them right.
They try to place some in other jails, but for the most part nobody will take them because they’re so bad, Roundtree said.
It’s so awful out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sheriff Charlie Webster was so embarrassed by it all, he didn’t rise from the dead and say he wants them to take his name off the building. The only place more dangerous I can think of is Broad Street after 2 a.m.
And given the condition of Riverwalk, l wonder whether the late Augusta Mayor Ed McIntyre would actually be honored to have his name on that.
We thought the Fourth Street jail they tore down was bad. It might have leaked in the administration building, but the jail tower had plenty of cells.
Bread Before Circus
Richmond County desperately needs a new $40-million jail pod, but there is no money identified to build it. Still Augusta officials want voters to approve spending $300,000 million for a new James Brown Arena. How’s that for mixed-up priorities?
Well, He Thought Wrong.
So, imagine Mr. Ming F. Lin coming before commissioners Tuesday thinking they were there to help residents like himself with a problem he’d not been able to solve by appealing to city staff and department heads.
When Wrightsboro Road was to be widened five or six years ago, Lin was going to lose access to the road from property he owns there. So, according to Lin, as part of a settlement agreement between the Georgia Department of Transportation, the city and himself, the DOT agreed to extend a driveway out of a cul-de-sac that gave him and a neighbor access to Wrightsboro Road, and it was subsequently built. Lin had a copy of that DOT drawing showing the completed driveway.
Then one day four years ago, City Engineer Hameed Malik sent a crew to demolish Lin’s part of the driveway. When Lin saw what had happened, he contacted Malik to ask why he’d done that. And, according to Lin, Malik told him that his neighbor had complained that some people coming from the nearby Peanuts Laundromat were using the driveway as a shortcut.
So, Lin appealed to Malik repeatedly to rebuild the driveway or do something else to compensate him until Malik quit taking his calls, and when he went to Malik’s office Malik wouldn’t come out, Lin told commissioners.
After Lin had told commissioners what had happened, they began asking him whether he had proof that what he was saying was true.
“It was built,” Lin said. “I was using it. That is the proof. How can they come around and demolish it?”
Still, they kept asking him for proof that what he was saying was true. Lin told them he had been working with the city’s Deputy Administrator Charles Jackson, and they’d had a three-way call with a DOT agent who confirmed that what Lin was saying was true.
So then, Interim Administrator Takiyah Douse said she had met with Lin, but she had no proof of his claim, and without proof she could not do anything.
Strangely, they didn’t ask Jackson to come up to the podium, but called Assistant Public Works Director John Ussery up who said the DOT plan Lin was holding was a construction plan that was not a legal document.
“That would be a plat,” Ussery said.
So, before he was politely dismissed, Lin was told to present documentation or have the DOT agent he and Jackson had had the three-way conversation with to contact them.
“I am very disappointed,” Lin said. “You are representing the people. Nobody is above the law.”
She Just Wants a Little Bit for Henry Street
And Commissioner Catherine McKnight had no more luck with her attempt to line up a new irrigation system for part of Henry Street than Lin did with his disappearing driveway.
The city owns and maintains the median in three sections of Henry Street where residents have been trying to get the 17-year-old system replaced for years. So, McKnight, who had been conferring with Parks and Recreation Director Maurice McDowell, placed an item on Tuesday’s agenda to discuss the situation.
McDowell said there was money for irrigation in SPLOST, but the priorities were Diamond Lakes Regional Park, Eisenhour Park and others, but if any was left over from those projects, Henry Street irrigation might be eligible to receive some.
McKnight said she understood the parks came first, but that it would be good if any money was available to do at least one of the three irrigated sections.
“We just want a little bit over here,” she said.
Commissioner Alvin Mason said he wasn’t opposed to anything being done on Henry Street, but would be opposed to a haphazard plan to use money for irrigation that’s designated to parks and recreation.
McKnight tried to get a cost estimate for that one section, but Douse said that was not the proper procedure for procurement.
So that was that. But since commissioners showed no interest in McDowell Street irrigation, perhaps some of the homeowners should pack commission chambers with copies of their property tax bills. It might be futile though since most commissioners don’t give a fig about taxpayers’ bills. They just like spending the money.
Eye Opening is an Understatement
Next up was Aaron Matthews seeking a property tax abatement for the property at Gordon Highway and Molly Pond Road where the partially condemned Gordon Highway Inn is being demolished. Matthews’ family which owns Matthews Motors adjacent to the hotel bought the property for $800,000 and is spending $400,000 to tear it down. Their $10,000 tax bill is based on the $800,000 valuation as of Jan. 1. The land without the building will be reevaluated in January, but until then they owe $10,000.
Some commissioners were sympathetic to the Matthews’ plight while others didn’t seem to be, and voiced concern about setting a precedent. Attorney Wayne Brown said the Matthews should pay the taxes first and then ask for a refund which the commission could grant totally, in part, or deny.
Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle said the Matthews were helping improve the appearance of the city by cleaning up an eyesore at one of Augusta’s main entrances. He noted that the city condemns a number of houses each year and spends about $7,700 to demolish each one.
“The amount you’re asking for is not much more than what we pay to demolish houses,” Guilfoyle said.
Commissioner Jordan Johnson and Guilfoyle thanked Matthews for what they were doing.
“They’re doing us a favor by demolishing the building,” Guilfoyle said.
Commissioner Alvin Mason said $10,000 is not a lot of money, but the bottom line is, when you begin going down that road like the city did with non-profits it keeps growing more and more and at what point do you cut it off and when do you drop the amount of taxes.
“Also, I take a little exception to the terminology and verbiage that’s being used that they’re doing the city a favor,” Mason said. “You bought that land for a reason …”
And Matthews took exception to Mason’s comment that $10,000 wasn’t a lot of money.
“It might not be a lot of money to someone with budget of millions,” he said. “It is a lot of money to us.”
Then Matthews asked whether he would have to come back and go through everything again to ask for a refund after the taxes were paid, which was sort of funny because he’d said earlier, “This is my first commission meeting, and I have found it to be an eye-opening experience.”
Panhandling
Panhandling in Augusta has some commissioners calling for a countywide panhandling ordinance similar to what Columbia County has in place although that one is being challenged as unconstitutional by the University of Georgia clinic.
Meanwhile, some commissioners want to know how the panhandling ordinance would be enforced and its impact on poor folks. They’d rather spend $25,000 on a program called “Change that Counts” to educate the public on panhandling and get them to donate money to the city’s non-profit agencies instead.
Will that work? I don’t know. Did “Keep Augusta Beautiful” or any of the other anti-littering campaigns to educate the public the past 50 years work?
Match Game
Match the quote with the public official who made it and win bragging rights.
1. “I’m never going to be interested in supporting an ordinance that criminalizes poverty.”
(Hint: He’s always crying crocodile tears over ne’er-do-wells.)
2. “Also want to make sure that we are protecting our homeless population, because that is very important as well.”
(Hint: That’s not surprising, coming from a Realtor. Maybe she wants to sell them all tiny homes.)
3. “When we look at this money going to these agencies that are helping the homeless, what happens to those that are not homeless, and they are just panhandling because they don’t want to get off their butts to work?”
(Hint: The first sensible question he’s asked since he was sworn in.)
4. “A cat walked down to my house. I fed him, and the next day he came back.”
And:
“In my own opinion I don’t see begging for money as free speech.”
(Hint: His own opinion is the only one that counts.)
5. “I got panhandled yesterday on Washington Road when I stopped at the car wash.”
(Start washing your car in your backyard like the rest of us hicks do. Problem solved.)
6. “What we have is an organized panhandling group of people out there. They work in shifts. It’s time to call it quits.”
(Hint: He’s a business owner. He knows about quitting time.)
7. “I think we need to make sure we’re doing what we in Richmond County can do; not what Columbia County are doing. We need to look at best practices from all over Georgia. I think so.”
(Or she could actually come up with an idea of her own for a change.)
8. “It is a very, very, very, very narrow hole that this ordinance could pass through to be considered constitutional.”
(Hint: He’s a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law.)
9. “We’re interpreting things the wrong way within our Law Department when it comes to this ordinance, and I’m not quite sure why,” said Garrett.
(He’s kidding. Right?)
10. “Hotel business in my district is suffering because of the impressions that people get when they come, whether it’s loitering, whether it’s the panhandling going on right in the major corridors.”
(Hint: He represents the district with the most hotels?)
Match the Official to the Quote
A. Commissioner Bobby Williams
B. Augusta Staff Attorney Samuel Meller
C. Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle
D. Commissioner Jordan Johnson
E. Commissioner Staci Pulliam
F. Commissioner Sean Frantom
G. Commissioner Francine Scott
H. Commissioner Brandon Garrett
I. Commissioner Tony Lewis
J. Commissioner Catherine McKnight
