City leaders pushed for cleanups all around the city just prior to Masters Week, but apparently no one told the folks in code enforcement.
Just a couple of miles away from the internationally famous golf course is a green sign on Broad Street with an arrow directing golf traffic “this way.” A couple of yards away from the sign is what is left of the collapsed building that once housed Catholic Social Services.
The building has literally fallen into the street.
The city, through its spokesperson, claims the matter is tied up in court.
Excuses, excuses. That building has been a pile of rubble for the last seven months. Not only is the rubble all over the sidewalks, it may contain contaminated materials.
Considering that the building could constitute a public hazard, the city should have cited its own ordinance, passed in 2021 and given the owner two weeks to remedy the situation. After the two weeks passed, the city should have immediately had the mess cleaned up and filed with the court to seize the property.
Instead, Director Carla Delaney and her department have sat on their hands.
This is the director who took away the safety vests from inspectors, refused to hire weekend staff to monitor unlicensed food truck activity and proposed giving owners of blighted property vouchers to rent the equipment needed to cut their grass.
Delaney also sits on the board of the Augusta Land Bank Authority, and just two weeks ago, she joined with Tax Commissioner Chris Johnson and Interim City Administrator Takiyah Douse to deny a hapless landowner the ability to purchase a small vacant lot that abuts his property, thereby extending his back yard..
Delaney claimed that putting up a privacy fence would “alter the character of the neighborhood.”
The man will have to register as a “developer” and reapply, even though the lot is not large enough to support anything other than a large garden shed.
On the one hand, Delaney turns a blind eye to obvious blight ordinance violations and on the other, she has no problem denying a citizen the ability to purchase and rehab blighted property, because she doesn’t like what kind of fence he plans to install.
This is yet another example of a blighted bureaucracy that needs to be reformed from the top down. Placing code enforcement back under the purview of the Marshal’s Department would be a good first step.
