After spending a lot of the money in his My Brother’s Keeper’s account for items that are at least somewhat questionable, Mayor Hardie Davis has finally come around to try to do something for Augusta’s disadvantaged youth.
He wants to implement the program of Code Calloway, a mentoring program that promotes positive self-development and career paths for underserved youth. The nonprofit requested $5,000 from an Augusta Commission committee Wednesday for a 2021 Back to School Festival at Josey High School. And Davis thought of a way to spend a whole lot more than that. He wants City Administrator Odie Donald to find ways Code Calloway programming can be implemented in city recreation centers, parks and Housing and Community Development projects.
It’s a new move to take care of the kids. Of course, there’s one hitch. It’s going to cost a lot of money to do it. And I can just hear Davis now, saying, “Give me the money. I can help our kids.”
Just like he did with the My Brother’s Keeper’s money.
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Self-proclaimed great minds think alike when it comes to spending your tax dollars. And don’t let anybody tell you that all this federal aid money in the American Rescue Act that’s flowing in is not your tax dollars. Somebody is going to pay for all of this deficit spending, and you know who it’s going to be.
Davis also proposed providing free child-care services for city employees, and as a happy coincidence, Donald said he’s already working on that and other ways they can give away more of the tax-paying citizens’ money with back-to-school programs and such. He said he’ll present his comprehensive American Rescue Act plan to commissioners July 21.
How Much Expertise Do You Need to Follow the Law?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The change will be in a new system for handling open records requests through the administrator’s office since the mayor’s outrageous spending and lack of receipts and invoices has caused such a scandal. What’s staying the same? You guessed it. They need to hire another employee.
Donald says he needs a coordinator, an open records officer specializing in open records and records management.
Some commissioners questioned that.
“Do we not have a person already doing this?” Commissioner Francine Scott asked.
“So, we have a paralegal who’s assisting us, and we’ve got staff members that we’ve trained,” Donald said. “But that level of expertise in the level that we need it does not exist.”
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Please tell me why so much expertise is needed to abide by the law and let the people who pay for the government see their records. What are city officials so afraid of? People finding out that they need to hire an open-records specialist? That they’re spending your money on things like hiring an actress who plays a stripper on a TV show to come to Augusta to show women and young girls how to move? You already know that.
Anyway, Commissioner Ben Hasan said he was going to have disagree with Donald’s statement about the level of expertise needed being non-existent because they do have that level of expertise in the attorney’s office.
“So, my question is, are you saying it is a better way because to say we don’t have someone doing it now is not right,” Hasan said.
“I’m sorry,” Donald replied. “Not that we don’t have anyone doing it, but I’ll just say – I’ll be pretty frank with you – this is something I believe that I need, so I’m making the request of the commission.”
Then Davis chimed in and said he couldn‘t agree more about having an open-records coordinator because he’d had so many requests, they shut down the mayor’s office.
“Let me just say for the record that we’ve received 51 open records requests in our office which brings us to a grinding halt just in terms of doing the business of the people,” he said.
(And just let me say for the record that if Davis had turned in or kept the receipts and invoices for the thousands of dollars he spent on questionable purchases, Donald wouldn’t need an open records specialist. All he’d need was a copying machine, and maybe they could teach some of the kids in the city’s daycare to run the copy machine.
And if Davis had provided the records that were requested the first time instead of ignoring them for weeks, there wouldn’t have been multiple requests for the same receipt or invoice.)
One of the most disconcerting things Davis said is that the volume of open-record requests kept his office from doing the city’s business. Does anybody find that as offensive as I do, that telling people how he spends taxpayers’ money is not doing the city’s business? I would like to know how many ribbon cuttings he missed because he was looking through suit pockets looking for old lunch receipts.
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Hasan said since it will take a month to get the new open records system in place, would Davis in the meantime be getting open records requests to the proper person as soon as he receives them.
“We do that right now,” Davis said. “All of that’s coordinated through the law department, and we begin working with them… But they’re coordinated already. It’s already happening.”
So, if it’s already happening, why does he think it’s so important to hire a coordinator?
Spotted Like a Dalmatian
As commissioners continue to battle back and forth about Gold Cross EMS vs. the fire department providing ambulance service in Richmond County, the only question I have today is why on Thursday, July 15, was the Augusta Fire Department ambulance on Evans Town Center Drive in beautiful downtown Evans, Ga., at 5:30 p.m. in the afternoon?
They could have gone to Chili’s to eat or to the library to check out some books, or maybe they were looking for Dalmatians at the Evans Town Center dog park. And maybe that partly explains how one Richmond County Fire Department ambulance had a $598,310 deficit for one Richmond County ambulance in 2019. They spent money on gas riding around in Columbia County.
Anyway, Gold Cross wants an increase in the $650,000 annual supplement it receives from the city for providing service to the county’s indigent population, and some commissioners want to cut the supplement to zero. If they do that, Gold Cross will just raise their prices on you non-indigents out there when you need a lift to the hospital.
Why Should Anybody Drive a Garbage Truck When the Government Pays Drivers Not to Work?
Commissioner Catherine McKnight wanted to talk trash at Wednesday’s engineering committee meeting.
“Lots of phone calls in District 3 about trash,” McKnight said. “It’s being picked up two or three days late. Usually, pickup is on Monday. So they call 311 several times. Nothing gets done. Finally, about Wednesday or Thursday they show up to pick up. Also, their recycling isn’t getting picked up when their trash is picked up. Can you explain to me why trash is late being picked up?”
Interim Environmental Services Deputy Director Becky Padgett said haulers were having issues with their aging fleets and they’ve had a shortage of drivers.
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“They’re aging,” she said. “And through the pandemic they were having issues getting parts for their aging fleets. Later on, there was a drivers shortage. It’s a nationwide problem now, that the industry is suffering from a shortage of qualified drivers. With that, they had to use their current drivers to do two or three routes.”
And once a driver doesn’t finish a route one day because he’s reached his maximum DOT hours, he has to start the next day where he left off the previous day which means he’ll be behind on the next routes, so and so forth.
The haulers also had problems with having enough trucks, she said.
The city has addressed the driver shortage by increasing the starting pay of drivers and giving signing bonuses, Padgett told Engineering committee members Wednesday.
So the good news is they now have more drivers, but the bad news is the new drivers have to learn the routes, Padgett said.
Donald said the city is having a job fair July 31 and invited haulers Orion and Waste Management to attend.
Goodwill is participating in the job fair and is donating clothing vouchers so the job applicants can look good for the interviews. Maybe some lucky person will find some of the mayor’s lunch receipts stuffed in a coat pocket.
“You Need to Lower Your (Water, Sewer, Rain Tax, Street Light, Garbage) Rates,” Said No Consultant Ever”
At next week’s commission meeting, Geosyntec Consultants will present findings and results of the rate study on Augusta’s Environmental Services Department. That can mean only one thing. Hold on to your pocketbooks.
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Sandbagged
Poor Commissioner John Clarke. Not only did Commissioner Sammie Sias shoot down his motion to have code enforcement inspect the Regency Mall site to see whether the city’s new blight ordinance would permit the city to take action to force the owner to improve the 50-acre tract off Gordon Highway, but Commissioner Jordan Johnson who seconded Clarke’s motion, turned around and voted against it.
Clarke didn’t take Johnson’s flip-flop lightly.
“I think I was given an obligation of support by one commissioner with a motion to second it and then sandbagged with a no vote,” he said.
Sias objected to Clarke’s proposal on grounds it would be setting a precedent for the commission to decide which blighted properties should be inspected. Then, after voting against the motion, Johnson hijacked Clarke’s initiative and even his verbiage about the Regency Mall owner during a 6 p.m. TV news interview.
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“The owner of Regency Mall has held this city hostage for long enough,” Johnson said, echoing Clarke’s earlier statement in committee about Regency Mall holding the city hostage for years.
“That property is a property that we have great potential to develop,” Johnson said. “And right now, we’re just in limbo.”
… Where you will remain as long as the city doesn’t own the property. If the city owned the property, it would have been developed 20 years ago. Mayors Bob Young, Deke Copenhaver and Administrator Fred Russell would have put something there if they could have. After all, the owner was only asking $50 million dollars for it, give or take a few million. Why doesn’t the city just buy it? It would be a great place for the city daycare center. Remember, you heard that here first. It wasn’t Commissioner Jordan Johnson’s idea.
Sylvia Cooper is a Columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com.
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