Augusta is living the effects of the downward spiral that has occurred for years and now, just in time for Masters week, commissioners are trying to find ways to pull out of the spiral before the plane hits the ground.
Thanks to a hiring policy that put unqualified and ineffectual department heads in place, city owned Parks and Recreation facilities were allowed to go to seed. Someone watching how the knee-high grass on city owned land was chronically left to nature might have called this the canary in the coal mine.
It didn’t take long for landowners in some of those areas to follow suit, allowing their properties to fall into disrepair, knowing that the city would do very little, if nothing at all, to force them into compliance.
At the last public services committee, Commissioner Jordan Johnson brought photos of a house that he claims to have lived two doors down from in 2018. According to Johnson, the house was in terrible shape when he lived in the neighborhood and now it is completely open to the elements and the homeless.
Of course, Johnson does have the tendency to exaggerate. We can’t forget his tales about the homeless man who lived under his front porch and who serenaded him each morning as he headed off to work. However, it does beg the question that if Johnson lived next to a home with the windows busted out, why has it taken him almost five years, as a commissioner, to bring it to anyone’s attention?
If such a property were sitting in the midst of an otherwise decent neighborhood, why hasn’t the city moved on this property owner along with scores of others?
It was city policy not to, that’s why.
The same administration of Odie Donald Sr., and later Takiyah Douse, turned a blind eye to former Parks and Recreation Director Maurice McDowell while the Boathouse all but slid into the river.
McDowell was never called on the carpet for his ineptitude and, in fact, it was his “wandering eye” that ultimately got him fired, um, resigned, not his inability to keep the grass cut on city properties and solid roofs on city buildings. Meanwhile, other people in the same government who showed competence were stymied in their every attempt to do the right thing, lest they join some of their colleagues in the unemployment line.
This same set of administrators, who I might remind made salaries never seen before in Augusta government, tied the hands of Planning and Zoning Director Carla Delaney in her attempts to clean up blight on private land.
Years ago, people snickered at Delaney when she proposed to the commission a “kinder and gentler” Code Enforcement Department which would be accomplished by taking the Kevlar vests away from code enforcement agents and offering vouchers to landowners to rent equipment to clean up their property.
What people, including the commissioners, didn’t know at the time was that Delaney knew better. She knew that a voucher to Home Depot was not going to fix a house with a nearly collapsed roof.
Rather, Delaney was simply stating the direction of her boss, Douse, at the time; and she did it with a straight face, which I think requires talent. It is too bad to me that Delaney, an otherwise competent department head, was forced to run her department in a manner antithetical to what she knew was right. But she had to spout Douse’s nonsense if she was going to keep her job.
Delaney also had to deal with the Donald/Douse constructed Law Department that couldn’t find its way down a one-way street with a compass, a map and a flashlight. Even with a new blight ordinance, the legal department couldn’t navigate its way through court to get a building that had fallen over into Broad Street cleaned up for well over a year.
Delaney had bulldozers and permits at the ready, but no court order allowing her to proceed with demolition.
In the matter of the house that Johnson complained about, city attorney Sam Meller claimed before the committee that the house was owned by a trust of which all of the beneficiaries were dead or unidentified. He claimed to have researched and could find no living relatives.
So, instead of going over to the courthouse and petitioning to have the trust deemed invalid and land abandoned, Meller has told Code Enforcement that there is nothing they can do.
Former General Counsel Wayne Brown may be gone from the building, but the stench of ineptitude he left behind remains; and his former deputy, Meller, wants to be general counsel.
Now, the Augusta Commission seems to be scrambling for an answer to the blight that was almost encouraged, and for good reason.
Augusta saw somewhere in the neighborhood of 340 new, single family houses built last year, according to Delaney. This is not a sign of a city in decline, this is a sign of a city that is bouncing around rock bottom.
I haven’t asked, but I would feel certain placing a bet that our most recently elected commissioners keep a bottle of Tums handy.
Augusta Mayor Pro Tem Wayne Guilfoyle has floated the idea of a moratorium on building new apartment complexes; however, this is like putting a Band-Aid on a lateration, in my opinion.
It is true that apartment complexes do not bring in the same tax revenue of a non-attached, single-family home and they have about a 20-year functional lifespan where they are attractive to college students, military families and others who are more or less transient because of their jobs, but after that period many do not hold up and become obsolete.
The Former Sans Souci apartments on Washington Road is a good example. It was built as a luxury apartment complex directly across from the Augusta National in the 1960s and offered all the amenities a young couple starting out or retirees looking to downsize could imagine.
After about 20 years, the owners of Sans Souci began to offer some units as Section 8 government-subsidized housing and it wasn’t long after that that what was once a luxury “lifestyle” complex had become a central location for crime in the neighborhood. Anyone who lived in Augusta in the 1980s remembers the decline of that apartment complex and how everyone cheered when the Augusta National bulldozed it smithereens.
However, banning, or placing a moratorium, is not going to solve the underlying problem.
Developers do not want to take the risk of building McMansions in areas that are blighted. It is just that simple.
In response to Susan McCord’s article, reporting on the commission committees, last week, “Augusta committee debates apartment moratorium,” commenter Tedd Antonacci had this to say:
“Did any one in the meeting ask the question, ‘Why would anyone want to build or buy a house in Richmond County? Good schools? Low crime? Well maintained infrastructure and recreational facilities? A history of efficient, transparent, and accountable government?’“
I have to agree with Mr. Antonacci on this one, and there is no further proof that Augusta’s downward spiral began with ineptitude at the top, and I mean the very top.
Former Commissioner Sean Frantom recently posted a photo of an illegal sign sitting in a city right-of- way. The post was tagged to several sitting commissioners along with the caption: “Please pick these up if you see them in rightaways (sic). I got 4 this morning. We need to start fining these people..”
Duh, Mr. Esteemed Former Commissioner! As a public service, this spreader of blight also included their phone number for code enforcement to call and ask where to mail the citation!
Oh, and Mr. Frantom, remind us, how long were you a commissioner?
.Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
