They took “Cops” off TV, and now Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree wants to fill the void by getting back to his roots and patrolling the streets.
Roundtree will star in “Car One to Dispatch, RCSO,” a program to be aired weekly on YouTube.
“Each week I will post videos of me conducting traffic stops promoting awareness of the dangers of distracted driving (cell phones), pedestrians in the roadway and random citizens encounters,” he said, according to a Friday article in The Augusta Press by correspondent Greg Rickabaugh, founder of “The Jail Report.”
“All in an effort to, one, get me out of the office and more importantly re-connect with the people who put me in office and hopefully save some lives,” Roundtree continued.
So, saving lives ranks third to getting out of the office and politicking?
And commissioners gave him a $50,000 raise to do this? They could have hired two deputies for that and doubled the impact.
Anyway, making traffic stops doesn’t seem like a good way to reconnect with people who voted for you unless you only give warning tickets to them and traffic tickets to out of towners.
Voters Didn’t Show Either
SPLOST 8 voters were like the raindrops that were supposed to fall during a storm that was predicted to be so severe it closed Richmond County schools and government last week. Very few showed up – less than 7 percent of eligible voters in fact.
The people who always push the vote for a SPLOST package are those who think they have the most to lose if the tax fails and the government raises property taxes, which is always the unspoken threat. So those with the most and highest taxable property, business owners, commercial property owners, those with million-dollar houses are going
to campaign to get out the vote for SPLOST. After all, they say, “It’s the only fair tax because everybody pays it.”
There are exceptions to those folks, though. Those who own property and come out and vote against SPLOST because they know that taxes are already so close to the tax cap in Richmond County it really wouldn’t make much difference.
Some people vote for SPLOST because they look forward to paying $150 more in taxes on a house assessed at $100,000 for the next 50 years to pay for a new arena while others look forward to splashing around in a water park and being double-taxed for stormwater and roads.
Some people don’t care enough about it either way to come out and vote. And some people don’t even know how to say SPLOST, much less what it means.
The Cure Worse for Zoom Meetings is Worse than the Zoom Itself
City Administrator Odie Donald presented Augusta commissioners with an updated 57-page Covid 19 plan last week that is nothing less than overkill. It includes all sorts of forms, statistics, guidelines, graphs, plans for telecommuting, vaccinations, enforcement, as well as pictures, including a great big one of himself on Page 4 that dwarfs the mayor’s and commissioner’s pictures.
The latest draft and two-page letter were partly in response to commissioners directing him earlier to recommend a plan for resuming in-person commission meetings.
The draft details how seating in commission chambers has been reduced from 184 seats to 43 and reduced from 45 seats to 18 in the waiting area outside. Those numbers, however, do not factor in allowances for people crossing over others to get to their seats which would decrease seating 8 more.
Considering the folks who have to be there, commissioners, mayor, staff, directors, only 4 seats would remain for the general public in chambers.
Six-feet-high by 2- feet- wide Plexiglas dividers are already in place between each seat on the dais, but everybody still needs to wear a mask, Donald states.
The lack of seating coupled with the hazards present if commissioners, mayor, general counsel, administrator, directors/department heads contracted COVID-19 in mass may pose an operational hazard to the government, Donald also states in the draft.
Therefore, he recommends:
—Allowing only people required for life/safety protocols in commission chambers in addition to the public, commission and mayor;
—Allow directors/department heads to remain present virtually;
—Utilize the Beazley Room for overflow needs while watching the session streamed live;
—Enable live TV monitor viewing in the waiting/overflow area outside of commission chambers.
Donald also recommended that commissioners receive a briefing directly from the Georgia Department of Health before returning to in-person meetings. He also recommended holding only full commission meetings in chambers with committee meetings remaining virtual to be phased in later in the year.
After reading all that, which I’ve condensed drastically, I’m convinced the cure for Zoom meetings is worse than the Zoom itself.
And I believe Donald could have made everything a lot simpler and saved a lot of paper and staff time, all of which taxpayers pay for, by issuing these Covid 19 guidelines:
—Wear your mask.
—Stay six feet apart.
—Use hand sanitizer.
—Don’t come to work sick
—Go home if you get sick at work and don’t come back until you’re well.
—Sanitize all doorknobs, desktops and other work surfaces daily.
—Get your shot.
—Tell the politicians to stop shaking hands and kissing babies.
Remembering the Goat Man
It was a fortuitous moment indeed when memories of the Goat Man unexpectedly popped into my head more than a dozen years ago, giving me a good story to tell and triggering reminiscences from dozens of folks who remembered him too.
“I woke up one day last week thinking, of all things about the Goat Man and wondering if any of you remembered him,” I wrote at the time. “He was a bearded character who used to travel the highways and byways of South Georgia on his way to and from Florida.
The fire whistle going off in town or the road scraper coming down the road paled in comparison to shouts of ‘The Goat Man is coming!’
He was a frizzled, bearded old man who went south to Florida every year in his wagon drawn by a herd of hard-headed companions. Wherever he went, he drew a crowd, and if I’m not mistaken, he would allow you to take a picture of him and his herd for a fee. I can‘t remember how much. He used to come down U.S. Highway 41, and he also went along
U.S. 129 in Nashville, Ga., because Ernie’s Daddy, a photographer who recorded all the historic events of the time in Berrien County, took still and moving pictures of the Goat Man. It was really a sight tosee an old man travelling around with a herd of goats.
But I got to thinking it really wasn’t so different from all those people in cars and campers heading to Florida every winter with one old goat, except that the Goat Man probably had more fun.”
Those few paragraphs triggered more response from people than anything I’d ever written about except for the mysterious screaming creature in Hahira when I worked for the Valdosta Daily Times.”
“Omigosh! It’s been YEARS since I thought of him,” e-mailed Mary Wise, a domestic engineer, mother and grandmother. “My parents took us to see him once. He was camped on Schultz Hill. It was a cloudy evening. He spoke to his herd, ‘Looks like it’s gonna’ rain, goats.
“That became a well-worn phrase in our house whenever the weather was threatening. In fact, it still is…ah memories.”
Goats & Guts
More than a year later, I wrote about the Goat Man again and received a booklet “Goats & Guts,” from Annette Harlan who thanked me for my “delightful column’’ and praised me for encouraging a sense of humor, which she said helps people deal with politicians.
“I know you enjoy the Goat Man, “she wrote. “Don’t you like that the book is as dirty as he was? I grew up in Twiggs County, Ga., and he lived there in his later years. He was not so appealing on closer acquaintance…but that is true of many people! Thanks again for the
many laughs and smiles.”
The foreword to “Goats & Guts” stated the book was “intended to give, as nearly as possible an accurate and factual account of the travels and troubles in the life of the Rev. Charles McCartney.” It was signed by McCartney and Hub Gardner, who probably was the author and photographer who made the photos in the booklet, one of which was the wagon loaded and ready for a trip to the White House.
McCartney, staked the goats out to graze and used other means of travel for the next few days in the District of Columbia area. The next photo shows McCartney and Earl Moates taking a last long look before leaving behind the wagon that had been home to MCartney for more than three decades.
The last two pages is a reprint of an Oct. 23, 1969, Rome News Tribune article with the headline, “Wandering ‘Goat Man’ to end travels.”
“After 45 years of sleeping on roadsides, living in the back of ramshackle wagons drawn by a team of goats and preaching to small gatherings of people from Maine to California, Chess McCartney, known to millions as the ‘Goat Man’ is calling it quits.
While encamped this week on the outskirts of Rome, the elderly nomad confessed he has gotten his social security and ‘I’m going to pull in now.’
McCartney, his left eye in a perpetual squint, said he plans to complete the remainder of his life preaching at a small mission he built at Jeffersonville in Twiggs County.
Married three times, McCartney has children by each of his wives. One son, a product of his third marriage, has been missing in action in Vietnam for two years., he said. Another son travels with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and one is employed by a New York City newspaper.
In his book “Chess McCartney, The Goat Man,” he wrote: On cold winter nights, my goats are the finest electric blanket I can find. The colder it gets, the more goats I cover up with. Thirty degrees is a one-goat night and below zero is a five-goat night.”
With this, his final journey through Georgia, Chess McCartney is calling it a day. For America’s most bizarre wanderer, it has been a rewarding life. A strange yearning has led him from the lobster bays of New England to the clam beds and orange groves of California. The man who has shaken hands with Presidents, appeared with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show and preached sermons on roadsides and in fields is finally retiring.”
Sylvia Cooper is a Columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
