Over the past year, the Augusta Land Bank has made headlines for all the wrong reasons and, now, at least one Augusta commissioner says it is time to break the Bank.
We agree.
To put it into perspective, the Augusta Land Bank is nothing other than a “shell” corporation that is loosely associated with the Augusta government and is in charge of putting city-owned property on the market with the stated goal of returning the land back to the tax digest.
The first red flag should be the hideous conflict of interest in having the Tax Commissioner, Chris Johnson, as the chairman of the Land Bank Authority.
While we certainly are not accusing Johnson of corruption, the amount of cronyism conducted within the Land Bank reeks worse than a raw sewage pond in a heatwave.
Land Bank Director Shawn Edwards has been caught selling land to his political buddies for ridiculously low prices and even trying to get his friends a great deal on property to be used as a strip club.
It seems like the layers of the onion stretch into infinity as it has now come to light that the Land Bank is seeking to sell city property to a tiny homes developer when other developers have been turned down because the land in question used to be a city park and, by law, former city parks cannot be sold without the express consent of the Augusta Commission.
This is a loophole that needs to be closed and closed for good.
If the city has surplus property, then said property needs to be auctioned off to the highest bidder on the courthouse steps and not handed over to a friend-of-a-friend with a wink and a nod.
District 3 Commissioner Catherine McKnight says she intends to place the Land Bank on the commission agenda for discussion.
We applaud McKnight for her efforts and urge the other commissioners to take this matter seriously. It is time to declare a “land bank holiday” for the city of Augusta.
