Happy Easter to you!
Probably not so happy for Augusta’s two deputy administrators. The Easter Bunny– call him Augusta City Administrator Odie Donald– came a little early and laid pink slips in Deputy Administrators Jarvis Sims’ and Tony McDonald’s Easter baskets.
The move caught some commissioners off guard when Donald sent them the news via email Thursday afternoon.
“Tell you the truth, it shocked the hell out of all of us,” said Commissioner John Clarke. “It was an email just stating that they were no longer with the city and wishing them luck in their new endeavors. I wish he’d fire more.”
Sims, hired by former Administrator Janice Jackson in 2018, was appointed interim administrator after Jackson resigned in 2019.
When the job to replace Jackson was advertised last year, he applied but lost out to Donald. He then took a leave of absence and applied for a job with the city of Forest Park, Ga., and became a finalist but someone else got the job. So, he came back to work as deputy administrator.
McDonald also was hired by Jackson. He was administrator for Richland County, S.C., until he retired in 2016, amid a state Department of Revenue investigation into the county’s misuse of sales tax money.
And now, as Donald states in his email to commissioners, Sims and McDonald “are no longer with the Office of the City Administrator.”
Clarke said Sims should have known he was on shaky ground when he didn’t get the administrator’s job in Augusta.
“And McDonald left Columbia under less than the best circumstances,” Clarke said. “We take everybody’s rejects.”
Commissioner Catherine McKnight said she didn’t know anything about the firings until she got Donald’s email late Thursday while she was at the beauty parlor.
“But if others knew, I’m going to be upset,” she said. “I thought they (Sims and McDonald) were doing alright, but Odie has come in, and he wants new staff. And I think change is going to be good. I think Odie does need new blood in there.”
Commissioner Brandon Garrett noted that both deputy administrators were holdovers from Jackson’s administration and that everyone assumed they’d be moving on.
“The administrator’s office is his own department,” he said. “If I was in that position, I’d want to hire my own deputies.”
We Suspected as Much
In addition to pink slips for his deputies, Donald also emailed commissioners the results of his “Executive Salary Exploration,” a comparison of authorized executive-level Augusta positions and salaries with those of six other municipalities.
Commissioners weren’t as surprised about that email when they received it late Thursday as they were about the previous one because Donald had talked about it during the legal meeting earlier that day, although, based on my understanding of appropriate topics for legal meetings, that is not one of them. But then, I suspect they talk about a whole lot of stuff, in those legal meetings that’s against the law.
Anyway, based on the current market salary analysis, Augusta is a great place to work if all you care about is money and not job security.
Of the 32 total positions they compared against the current market value, ten are under market value and 22 are over.
Of those that are under market value, eight are within 10 percent and two are less than 10 percent.
Of the 22 positions that are over market value, 12 are within 10 percent of market value and 10 are over 10 percent of market value.
Here are a few executive level employees and how their pay stacks up, comparatively speaking:
— Anthony Taylor, assistant director, Augusta Engineering Department: Salary: $110,893; Current Market: $72,046; 154 percent over market value
— Hameed Malik, director, Augusta Engineering Department: Salary:$152, 250; Current Market: $105,361; 145 percent over market value
— Geri Sams, director, Procurement Department: Salary: $127,756; Current Market: $89,711; 142 percent over market value
— Tameka Allen, director, Information Technology: Salary $148,999; Current Market: $123,493; 121 percent over market value
— James H. Hill, director, Animal Services: Salary: $104,342; Current Market: $87,723; 119 percent over market value
And interestingly enough, Donald didn’t do a Salary Exploration of his own $240,000 a year salary, or if he did, he hid it like an Easter egg.
Can a New Ordinance Change the Face of Augusta?
Augusta officials have been talking about getting tough on blight, dilapidated buildings, absentee landlords and slum lords for at least the past 30 years. I know because that’s how long I’ve been writing about them. The city pays to have abandoned houses torn down and is left with overgrown lots to maintain and more dilapidated houses coming to take their places. Georgia laws favor property owners, and sometimes finding them can take years if not forever. But all of that is about to change. Maybe.
Thursday, Augusta commissioners voted to have a new blight ordinance written that would allow the city to buy and dispose of blighted property. The ordinance would be similar to those of other Georgia cities that reportedly have banished or decreased blight.
Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Williams talked about taxing blighted property at seven times its current rate. But since many owners of blighted properties don’t pay the taxes they owe now, what makes him think they’ll pay seven times more?
“We can go in and look at property, and if they won’t take care of it, we can take it,” he said.
Spoken like a true authoritarian.
Coup d’etat
A surprise move by Commissioner Brandon Garrett at Thursday’s meeting ended longtime Richmond County Board of Assessors member Bill Lee’s string of reappointments to the assessor’s board.
The board had requested the reappointments of Lee and Henry F. Middleton to new four-year terms, but Garrett made a motion to open the floor for nominations for the District 10 seat that Lee held. And he then nominated Maura Dial who was elected unanimously, as was Middleton.
Commissioner Sean Frantom thanked Lee for his more than 25 years on the board where he served as chairman.
Afterwards, Garrett and other commissioners said there was no consensus to keep Lee on the board.
That meant they’d taken a phone poll or talked about it in a meeting where they winked and nodded enough to know where everybody stood without taking an illegal vote.
Seats on the local assessors’ board are prize political plums because members make $650 a month, and the chairman makes $850 a month. Many members have held on to their seats for more than 20 years and fought to keep them. Chief appraisers make the case that board members have to be schooled to become effective and that they work extremely hard. They say it’s not an easy job.
Well, plenty of other Augusta citizens can learn how to read the reports and make decisions too. And as far as working so hard, I never saw it. Usually, it’s just one meeting a month, and the staff does most of the work and hands the paperwork to them to make decisions on. Maybe that’s changed. If so, I’m sure to hear about it.
Nothing Succeeds Like Success
In the second episode of “Car One to Dispatch RCSO,” starring Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree, the sheriff said his campaign to keep drivers off their cell phones must be working.
“As I’ve been going around, it’s been kind of hard to get a subject,” he said. “That’s a good sign. We’ll keep at it.”
In the next frame he sees a lady texting while stopped at a traffic light. The light changes, he pulls off. She does not because she’s too busy texting. When she pulls off, he turns on the blue lights.
He asks her whether she knows why he pulled her over. She said she didn’t and asked how he knew she was texting.
“Because I pulled off, and you stayed there texting. You know that’s dangerous, and you’ve got some precious cargo back there,” he said, looking into the back seat.”
All in all, it was as pleasant a traffic stop as a traffic stop could be.
Next, Roundtree showed a video of Sgt. A. Herbert, Deputy F. Monga, Deputy T. Miller, Deputy A. Verge and Deputy R. Glenn on the scene after a burglary in progress at a Dollar General store. You get an up-close and personal feel for how dangerous it is for officers to
enter a building where an ongoing burglary has been reported, not knowing who’s around the corner waiting to shoot them first.
Fortunately, the burglar who’d been driving a stolen car fled into the woods, only to be chased down.
“Get up off the ground! Get your ass up!’ a deputy shouted as he pulled the “suspect” out of some bushes and arrested him.
Of Masters Past
In 2003, it was “Burk Stops Here.”
And I’ve got the sign.
When Martha Burk, then-chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, came to Augusta during Masters Week to protest the Augusta National Golf Club’s all-male membership, she and her protesters were not allowed near the main entrance of the golf course. They were relegated to a vacant field about a tenth of a mile away where signs were posted stating, “Burk Stops Here.”
After the tournament, then-Sheriff Ronnie Strength had the signs in his office, he and gave one to then-police reporter Greg Rickabaugh. And I inherited it when Rickabaugh, now publisher of “The Jail Report,” left to start his own business.
I called Strength later to ask about the signs, and he said when he told Burk where she’d be allowed to protest, she said, “You must run a police state.”
“Those are the rules,” he replied.
Burk was later quoted in the New York Daily News as saying, “Augusta is all about Applebees and boredom, so we certainly livened up the place.”
Although the protest wasn’t as successful as she would have liked, she said she felt “vindicated” when the Augusta National admitted its first two women members.
In 2007, Augusta was blanketed with yellow from pollen and journalism from Golf Magazine, which had the effrontery to describe the Garden City as “largely low rent, a bargain-basement mosaic of strip malls, strip joints and unassuming houses – all surrounding the world’s most exclusive club.”
They even threw in a snide comment about Bud Light and beef jerky at the corner store “a short walk from Amen Corner.”
“They only seen the nice areas?” one commenter posted.
Another posted “Well it is about time somebody stood up and took notice. Kudos to GULF MAGAZINE. And to the MAYOR, instead of denying, why don’t you do something about the “Bump and Grind Shops” the “Red Light” district, the Crime and Killings and Robberies instead of spending money on trips to Hawaii? Give the money to the police department to help clean up the disgusting city of Augusta. There was not one word in the article that was untrue.”
(Yes, there was. T-Bonz Steakhouse at 1654 Gordon Highway is not the players’ favorite grub joint. It’s the one on Washington Road. Also, the mayor didn’t go to Hawaii.)
Sylvia Cooper is a Columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
