(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
Tuesday was the last Augusta Commission meeting of 2022 unless they have a special called meeting before the end of the year to give away more money. After all, it is Christmas. And Mayor Hardie Davis was in a giving mood with a surprise motion to give the public library $500,000 of the remaining American Rescue Plan money.
Opinion
Commissioner Sean Frantom said if they were going to give the library money, they should put something into mental health. So, they agreed to give Serenity mental health $25,000. Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Williams proposed giving $150,000 for renovations to Sue Reynolds Community Center, which seemed like enough to everybody except Commissioner John Clarke, who prevailed in increasing it to $200,000.
We don’t know whether they’ll meet again to give away more money to worthy causes, but they might. They might even meet to put switches and coal in some people’s stockings. Or maybe they’ll meet just to hear themselves talk again and get their pictures on TV.
Joy to the World!
Tuesday was the final scheduled meeting for Davis, Clarke and commissioners Ben Hasan and Dennis Williams.
They each received plaques and standing ovations before making what passed for farewell speeches.
Davis quoted John Donne and Sir Winston Churchill and took credit for all that is good in the Garden City and then some.
“No man is an island unto himself,” Davis said. “Every stage you stand on, someone else built it.”
He then thanked his estranged wife, Yvett, and his son Benjamin who were nowhere to be seen. They built his stage and got upstaged, it would appear.
As the 84th mayor of Augusta, Davis said his goal was to be “One Augusta,” a goal he probably thinks he achieved although folks in Summerville, Forrest Hills and west Augusta are working to incorporate a Village of Summerville within Augusta. So, there goes your One Augusta.
Davis said the city had worked through the pandemic, housed out-of-town hurricane evacuees, built roads, made unprecedented investments (with taxpayers’ money gratis the federal government) and launched Green Augusta.
Green Augusta is supposedly an environmental program, but in reality it describes the color Augusta taxpayers turn right before throwing up as they think about Davis’s spending and other mayoral shenanigans.
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“The state of the city is incredibly strong, and the road ahead is brighter than ever,” he said. “All areas of our city are poised for growth.”
Hasan said he’d been on the commission 100 months but had studied the government for years before that, informing himself of the inner workings.
Among the accomplishments he listed were a growing fund balance; moving people out of Hyde Park and saving Green Meadows subdivision from encroachment by a drug and alcohol treatment center (Valor Station).
Commissioner Dennis Williams said he’d enjoyed the opportunity to serve his community and that he was personally proud of working for the common good of the people.
Clarke said it had been a “wonderful blessing” to serve on the commission, but he couldn’t say it had been pleasurable every single minute because that would be a lie.
“We’ve had our battles, we’ve had our differences, but it’s all been for one goal, and that’s to try to make Augusta better,” he said.
‘O Wad Some Power the Gifte Gie Us‘
There might be a big difference in how the mayor and commissioners think they did and how some of the public would grade their performance.
Davis might believe that his legacy is One Augusta, roads, a small-business loan program during the pandemic, good bond ratings and a large fund balance, but he had little to do with any of that. It was taxes, federal, state and local that paid for it all. He was out of town most of the time living it up on taxpayers’ dollars.
In my opinion, Davis’ legacy will be running up big credit-card bills on travel, food, makeup, photographs, a $400 resume, a recording studio in his office, videos featuring a B-list actress, a pole dancer and no receipts. It will be spending money from his My Brothers’ Keeper’s budget on a political consultant, putting his alleged mistress on the payroll and getting the city to pay huge legal bills created by his refusal to abide by the open records law and provide receipts for his spending. It will be for moving out of his and his wife, Yvett’s, home the day after she buried her father and filing for divorce. And it will be for creating a Task Force on Confederate Monuments and stacking it with people he knows want to tear them down.
We Three Kings
Dennis Williams’ legacy will be voting along with the majority at least 95 percent of the time and being interviewed by TV reporters after commission meetings. Other than that, I’m not sure he’s even going to have a legacy except for working hard to try to run Gold Cross EMS out of town.
Hasan’s legacy will be his manipulation and meddling in every department and aspect of city government, including trying to bankrupt Gold Cross EMS by cutting the company’s subsidy for transporting indigent patients to zero.
He will be remembered for changing the name of the Fifth Street bridge to Freedom Bridge and having commissioners vote for the removal of the plaques honoring Confederacy President Jefferson Davis, in violation of state law.
Hasan also will be remembered for putting the item to change the city’s adult entertainment ordinance to allow strip clubs in industrial areas to be built closer to major intersections and relaxing some rules for nude dancers, such as allowing lap dancing, as long as the audience can watch.
Folks are speculating whether Hasan will run for the District 6 seat on the school board following the suicide of District 6 trustee-elect Tyrique Robinson.
If Hasan does run for the board, I wonder how he’s going to work his agenda item to revise the adult entertainment ordinance into his platform. Wait a minute! They eliminated the platform the girls used to have to dance on in the revised ordinance. So maybe platforms aren’t all that important.
It should be noted that every sitting commissioner except Commissioner Alvin Mason voted for the revised ordinance.
I heard somebody say, relaxing the ordinance would be opening a can of worms.
That might be true, and they’ll all be crawling toward Augusta.
Clarke’s legacy is one of pithy comments on almost everything that happened on the commission. He’ll also be remembered for speaking his mind and refusing to go along to get along. Another thing he’ll be remembered for, which is unusual among Augusta commissioners, is answering and returning phone calls from constituents and trying to address their complaints.
Some people consider Clarke to be a loose cannon, which makes the establishment interested in maintaining the status quo nervous. The establishment wants someone they can influence, dare I say “control” in office. And nobody can control John Clarke. Not even John Clarke.
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Who’s Really in the Dark Here?
The current government has been accused of trying to keep the citizens in the dark since they took office. Now they’re really getting serious about it, letting the streetlights on Greene Street and other streets and highways around Augusta go dark.
This summer it was the overgrown grass and weeds in the cemeteries and medians on Greene Street that prompted resident Kevin de l’Aigle to come before the commission and plead for better upkeep of city property. Tuesday, he was back again to say there had been some improvement in the appearance to both, but the streetlights are out on parts of Greene Street, causing residents to stumble around in the dark and contributing to more traffic accidents.
De l’Aigle said there were no working street lights in the median and along Greene Street from East Boundary and Fifth Street.
“I counted 15 streetlights that were not working,” he said. “Also, between 10thand 12th streets the lights are not working on the medians and on the sides.”
De l’Aigle also said cars were speeding down Greene Street so fast he thought they were drag racing and that he feared for his and other residents’ lives.
“Something’s got to give,” he said, before Davis took him to task.
“We’re not talking about street cars and street racing,” Davis said. “You said you wanted to talk about lights, parks and cemeteries. So, let’s keep it there.”
“The monuments of Greene Street are still broken,” de l’Aigle said, adding that the Tubman and the Gold Star Veterans monuments have not been repaired.”
At that, Davis bristled that he’d like to see a little more philanthropy from the community.
“When you look at issues like this brought forward in other communities, they engage,” Davis said. “They look for opportunities when park benches and things like this come up. And I challenge you and groups you are a part of to be part of the solution. It’s one thing for us to say, ‘City of Augusta, we needs more funds.’ But philanthropy could do a better job with that.”
Afterward, de l’Aigle said he was surprised when the mayor put the responsibility for fixing the streetlights and broken monuments back on him. He said he thought taxpayers pay for the maintenance of city property.
Sylvia Cooper is a columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
