It seems that everyone in “leadership” in Augusta is vying to become viral YouTube stars. Perhaps city leaders are so bored with their jobs that they have to resort to producing internet videos for fun or to build their personal brand.
Mayor Davis has led the charge by converting the mayor’s office into a video production studio, spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in the process. Even still, he finds it necessary to spend even more tens of thousands of dollars on out-of-state video editing.
Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree followed the mayor’s leadership and jumped on the YouTube craze with his “Car One To Dispatch” series. The videos feature the sheriff, who is paid $176,000 a year, pretending to be a traffic cop and issuing warning citations to citizens whom he caught driving violating the hands-free law.
MORE: Sheriff Roundtree Plans to Make Traffic Stops Himself & Post Video on YouTube
To be fair, some of the videos contain body camera footage of officers doing their jobs and even getting into some very tense situations. Those videos are interesting and show good officers doing their job and protecting the public. However, the vast majority of the footage is of the sheriff, not doing his job, pretending to be a road cop, riding around with uncopyrighted music blaring in the background.
Meanwhile, there are over 60 open and unsolved murders in Augusta/Richmond County. Perhaps one or two of those could have been solved if the countless hours spent playing movie star had been focused on actually investigating the open cases.
Augusta City Administrator Odie Donald also has now decided to use taxpayer resources to build his brand in his own series on YouTube titled, “Leadership on Location.”
In this set of videos, Donald, who is paid $240,000 a year, is seen visiting the public transit department, a fire department substation, the 911 center, and is recorded interviewing a spokesman for 100 Black Men of Atlanta.
Couldn’t Donald find a spokesman for 100 Black Men of Augusta? Apparently not.
In the videos, Donald claims to start his workday at 6 a.m. and continues on until calling it a day at 10 p.m. He does make it clear that he does not have meetings after 7 p.m. but otherwise tries to present himself as someone so committed to his job that he literally has no personal time.
And he has a camera crew to prove it.
However, the star of the show has to be Mayor Hardie Davis, who has created an entire recording studio in his office and spent thousands upon thousands of dollars creating his video presence on the internet.
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As noted in several investigative pieces published by The Augusta Press, Davis’ city-provided credit card covered enough expenditures for film production equipment and editing to make a local independent film producer red with envy.
Moreover, Davis is on record claiming credit for essentially saving lives by putting out a video urging Augustans to get outside, move about and get exercise in defiance of the pandemic.
That particular video featured a marching band, an awkward “dancer” on stage and a C-list (at best) celebrity, who was paid nearly $6,000 to speak, urging people to “move.”
The entire video was shot indoors during a time when the mayor was against having public meetings in person, yet he claims his taxpayer-funded video saved lives.
This hubris is flat-out remarkable.
What is not remarkable is the actual number of people who have viewed these videos. Donald’s first three videos have received a combined 397 views as of June 21, 2021.
The city of Augusta needs leadership, not a bunch of people vying to be the next internet sensation.
