Is your cup half full or half empty? I posit that if you went to bed last night with a full belly, woke up with a roof, not an overpass over your head and generally enjoy a modicum of good health, then your cup is not half anything, it runneth over.
I have always been an optimist at heart, I suppose I inherited that from my father; however, I can’t say that I have always been an optimist when it comes to our government in the Garden City. It seems that when voters buy into a glib politician and then, with buyers regret, think we couldn’t have elected worse, here comes Hardie Davis and his “enforcer” former Commissioner Bobby Williams, singing, “hold my pumpkin spice double-lattee, with light milk, hot but not too hot.”
The other day, I wanted to purchase a record album and had a friend drive me to my favorite little record shop, Side A Vinyl, You should check them out if your into collecting record albums (no, they didn’t pay me to say that). Being the passenger, I was able to take notice of my surroundings as we drove through town and I have to say, for the first time in a long time, I was proud to see the area looking like a real garden city.
Our route took us up Alexander Drive, down Berkman’s Road to the store’s location. We decided to joyride a bit and the first thing I noticed is that workers are busy as a bee hive at the old, long retired, Engine Company 7.
I am told the owner is a former general manager of Augusta National and he plans an “upscale” dining establishment. If he does things like they do at ANGC, this is not only going to be a great way to save a historic building, but will be a draw for others to consider investing in the midtown area.
Now, I know that we have had some financial help from the feds, but our park areas and cemeteries are actually looking good. In fact, thanks to Mayor Johnson’s cleanup initiative the city is looking quite good these days.
Remember when some motorist plowed over the Emily Tubman Memorial and, until a public outcry, the city just left the scattered remnants in situ? City officials were fully aware of a two-year deadline to file an insurance claim and even though the motorist was clearly at fault, they never filed anything.
Switch to today, Parks and Recreation Director Tameka Williams and her staff went looking for grant money for hurricane relief, found it and put together the necessary filings on time and now Riverwalk is about to get all new playground equipment and other infrastructure.
This would have never happened under the old director, Maurice McDowell.
Things in Augusta, they are a changin’.
The City Charter Review Committee has announced they are pretty much solidly behind creating a “strong city manager” form of government and this is significant.
It was June of 2006 when I first started covering the Augusta Commission professionally and it did not take me long to realize that city government was being run primarily at the whim of 10 people who were interested in their own personal gain or that of their friends. Those that wouldn’t play the game, would be left out in the cold, just ask Catherine Smith-Rice.
While whipping up the news media to spin everything happening in government as being predicated on racial lines, the corruption became rampant. No one blew the whistle on Betty Beard and Marion Williams for holding secret meetings with the potential developer for the old Depot property. It was, toss them the race card and I won’t tell on you if you don’t rat me out.
Betty, with her grandmotherly manner, was quite the artist when it came to the shakedown. Once, she sold her vote for a zoning variance for Maxwell House Apartments and paid for a friend’s gastric bypass surgery. Of course, when I broke the story, I was branded a racist who pushed little old ladies into mud puddles and the public largely yawned at the story; it was just business as usual.
I clearly remember catching Commissioners Beard, Calvin Holland and Marion Williams meeting secretly with a potential developer for the old Depot property. In the back room of the Red Lobster, the commissioners demanded that the developer include a hotel in his plans to compete with Billy Morris’ Marriott or they would never support his plans.
The developer went back to Savannah with a terrible taste in his mouth and the word spread quickly that Augusta was not friendly to outsiders, no matter how much money they were prepared to invest.
Who can forget Williams plans to have the city build a racetrack. Everyone knew at the time that really the only person who would benefit from such a deal was Williams, his family and his racecar enthusiast friends, but I became the villain for daring to expose the backroom negotiated land deals that were poised to make Williams and his cronies a ton of money. Meanwhile, the residents would have had to have dealt with the noise pollution.
We really saw corruption at its zenith when all of the Covid money hit Augusta and former Administrator Odie Donald made sure that each commissioner got a little something, if they wanted it. At one point, each commissioner would be given $10,000 to play with any way they wished. Yep, eventually those little shenanigans caught the eye of the feds and we are still waiting to see what the FBI has turned up.
When the conservatives on the body questioned how the city would be able to pay for all of the goodies after the federal money ran out, Donald used his well-worn tag line, “it’s baked in.”
Half baked, I say.
If the charter committee continues on its current trajectory, I believe the referendum will sail through as voters continue to see what happens when competent leadership replaces the fiefdom style of government.
What we have in AdministratorTameka Allen is just what the doctor ordered as well. Instead of trying to find new clever ways to kick the can down the road, Allen tells the commission what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
Yes, there will be cuts to services and it is likely that everyone will feel the impact, but we have in place the right administrative team to pull through what looks like a daunting deficit. Yes, the belt is going to have to be tightened and some are going to get sticker shock when they see the upcoming property tax bills, but Augustans have always been a hearty community.
After all, we are the only city I know of that had the guts to taunt “Uncle Billy” Sherman, inviting him for a rematch of the March to the Sea.
I have long felt that if the Augusta Commission were forced by charter to be a legislative body and not ten extra administrators, Augusta would be on track for tremendous growth. This, in my opinion, would really invite outside investment.
Augusta, with its pristine canal flowing through the heart of the city, could really take advantage of its assets, but instead, people yammer on about how Augusta is a city with so much “potential.”
Of course, the major enabler was the fact that for the longest time, Augusta had no investigative reporter willing to pore over stacks of documents. News gathering is quite expensive and the corporate media simply was not willing to pay a reporter to take time away from covering the latest traffic tragedy to go diving down rabbit holes.
It is also my hope that Augusta University will expand its journalism program with “media ethics” at the top of the curriculum. People loved seeing me face down former Sheriff Richard Roundtree and called it courage when I pinned Davis to the wall over his penchant to travel and reward mistresses with cushy government jobs; but that didn’t take courage, I was armed with the researched undisputable facts.
We need to be churning out a whole new generation of journalists that understand that they are the storyteller and not part of the story themselves. We need reporters that understand accuracy and truthfulness are far more important than getting the story first.
As we all prepare to suck it up and pay those higher taxes, it should be a reminder that we also should strive to be the most informed community on the planet. I believe with TAP approaching its fifth anniversary, that it has been conclusively proven that Augusta can support two fully functioning newspapers.
Simply watching the TV news does not make one informed. Nothing against my colleagues in the broadcast media, we have very talented reporters on TV here, and I am particularly fond of George Eskola; but as a former broadcast journalist myself, I can attest that it is near about impossible to cover a complex story in a 45-second package with a sound byte tacked on for good measure.
While TAP was derided by our former mayor as a “trashy little blog,” modern electronic newspapers can do things that were never possible with print. As far as I am concerned, someone too cheap to subscribe to a local news service deserves to have to pay the higher taxes, you can call it the “ignorance tax.”
I am not suggesting that TAP swooped in and saved the day, but when the public saw the extent of the corruption published in black and white, they took their rage with them to the ballot box.
With the continued winning track record of Mayor Garnett Johnson, now, maybe Augustans will learn from the past and stop electing the first smooth talker that comes along with Wink Martindale’s toothy smile and glossy campaign materials that mask their true intentions.
Wait.
I said I was an optimist, not delusional!
Scott Hudson is the semi-retired Senior Investigative Reporter, editorialist and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
