Results from an ongoing parks usage audit reveal that very few of Augusta’s parks are adequately utilized, although more data is needed for some.
Abie Ladson, the former Engineering director conducting the audit for his firm, Infrastructure Systems Management reviewed the results with Augusta commissioners Tuesday. The findings came from thousands of images snapped by cameras mounted at most city parks over the last few months.
The city has revised its count of parks from 70-plus to about 50 after removing community centers from the mix, Ladson said. The new audit looked primarily at parks but included some facilities such as pools.
A scoring system gave points for factors including the type of park, condition, distance to other parks, size and usage. The results showed only four parks — Diamond Lakes Regional Park, the Riverwalk, the Augusta Common and the Riverfront Marina — as adequately utilized.
Twenty-one parks were considered underutilized. These included A.L. Williams Park in Harrisburg, the W.T. Johnson Center on Hunter Street and Sand Hills Park.
Another 19 parks falling somewhere in the middle needed “more data” for officials to make a determination. At the low-scoring end of these parks were Brookfield Park, Bernie Ward Center, Jamestown and May Park. At seven other parks including Blythe, Hickman and Warren, faulty cameras failed to capture their usage.
In other action, Gayla Keesee, co-chair of the League of Women Voters of the CSRA, called for accountability in Augusta’s charter review contract with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.
The $320,000 contract charges institute to support the charter review committee’s work, but consultants have failed to meet key obligations, she said. These include delivery of timely documentation, neutral facilitation and adequate public transparency.
Instead, the committee has encountered “research delayed or missing, facilitation lacking, documentation incomplete, independence compromised,” she said. “Augusta deserves better than generic drafts and missed deadlines.” An example was when a subcommittee recently tabled motions to allow the consultants to prepare supporting materials, but the materials were never provided.
Interim General Counsel Jim Plunkett said he would forward a link to Keesee’s remarks to the Vinson consultants working with Augusta as well as the charter review chairman, Marci Wilhelmi.
The charter review committee meets at 10 a.m. Thursday in the commission chamber.
In other action, the Finance Committee voted 4-0 to have staff create Tax Allocation District 5 – Wheeler Road – to encompass a redevelopment plan that includes a pickleball complex.
Engineering Services referred discussion of the emergency procurement of a public relations firm for Augusta’s downtown streetscape project to a future meeting, in the absence of Augusta Engineering Director Hameed Malik Tuesday.
