Mayor Gary Jones will have at least two challengers in the upcoming November election. Councilmember Ceretta Smith announced her candidacy as reported by Susan McCord on July 21. Councilmember Deborah Fisher also announced her candidacy for mayor back in May.
Over the last decade Grovetown has seen a ton of changes in its political landscape due to growth. I can personally attest to how messed up Grovetown government was prior to Jones becoming mayor. Things have drastically improved since then.
Jones came in guns blazing, tackling issues left and right in the city and helped facilitate substantial growth. There were many challenges, and still are, but for the most part, it seems Jones has done an outstanding job. It makes little sense that anyone would challenge him, and it is highly unlikely that either challenger will unseat the highly popular mayor.
It is my prediction that the race will get nasty quickly. This column is also NOT an endorsement in the race for any one candidate by The Augusta Press editorial board. That decision will be made at a later date.
Fisher, who served in the Army, for which we should all be thankful, got very angry at The Augusta Press for announcing that Ceretta Smith was running for mayor and not announcing her own candidacy. The omission was not intentional.
How were we to know she was running? No press release was sent that I can find. Was it sent via email, snail mail, phone call or messenger pigeon? If Fisher can’t properly get word out that she is even a candidate, how can citizens expect her to properly communicate as mayor?
Fisher proved in this little incident that she is not ready for the task. In addition, her tone and demeanor towards me over the whole thing was very distasteful.
I almost posted the emails and voicemails for people to see but changed my mind as I didn’t want to create a deeper controversy over a candidate that doesn’t have a prayer of winning anyway.
Fisher demanded that we make a retraction stating that Councilmember Smith is not the only one challenging Smith. She vehemently demanded it despite never notifying us she was running.
Her campaign manager should tell her if you want to be mayor don’t, provoke the local media covering the race with unfounded demands. And certainly, don’t threaten to stop subscribing in retaliation if they don’t cover you. It might result in opinion coverage you won’t like (would not influence news coverage in any circumstance).
Councilmember Fisher, I think we have sufficiently covered the fact you are running for mayor of Grovetown. If you disagree, you may feel free to write a letter to the editor, which we will happily publish. If you follow through on your threat to unsubscribe and pull your monthly $7.99, we won’t take it personally.
Sheriff’s office poll results
Speaking of elections: I previously wrote a column stating that Marshal Ramone Lamkin needs to be the next sheriff. With it a non-scientific poll was placed online. I have been asked to share the results of that poll. The results are below but I would caution everyone that Lamkin has not said he plans to run, and the powers at be all say that he has no plans to run for sheriff. Also, the poll is non-scientific, so the results are not very reliable.
As you can see, Roundtree received nearly 14% of the vote and Lamkin 86%. This doesn’t prove that Lamkin could win a race against Roundtree, but I believe it does prove that Roundtree’s popularity has taken a huge hit in recent months. Roundtree made one of the worst political moves I have ever seen by deciding to own the homelessness crisis plaguing our city.
Fire Department is on fire
I planned to write something about the problems at the fire department but this morning’s editorial covered it pretty well, so instead here is a link to that article.
We are still trying to get information out of Chief Anthony Burden on the ambulance incident involving the chief that ran over and dragged the dead body. He still refuses to give details about.
City Law Department attempted to hide invoice data and lost
A story written by Susan McCord on July 17 highlights one of the main objectives and reasons the The Augusta Press was created: to insure transparency in government.
When asked for copies of invoices from the city law department, the response was to hide much of the relevant data citing exclusions under the Open Records Act. The response was from the lawyers employed by the city of Augusta. Either these city lawyers don’t know the law, or they sought to violate the law to avoid providing what they were obligated to under the law.
I don’t know which one is worse.
TAP refused to accept that outcome and hired a lawyer to educate the city lawyer, yet again, on the law after, which Wayne Brown the city attorney caved like a cheap folding table.
What the unredacted documents reveal is a gross level of government waste. The documents prove that the city law department is not needed, and the city would be better off just hiring outside counsel.
Citizens are effectively paying double for legal expenses. Taxes are being spent to fund a legal department that doesn’t know the law or seeks to subvert it as well as outside council to do all of the actual work. One of the two needs to go.
Local attorney Randy Frails has been the beneficiary or more taxpayer money than any single person I have been able to find to date. Frails behaves in lock step with Brown to subvert the Open Records Act and hide as much as possible information from the public as possible. It is far time for him and Brown to go.
For what taxpayers are paying, they deserve way better than Brown and Frails.
