(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column of those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
Local resident Kevin de l’Aigle opened a can of worms Tuesday when he asked Augusta commissioners whatever happened to the Keep Augusta Beautiful initiative during his presentation about the city’s failure to keep the grass cut on the Greene Street median and in city cemeteries.
Commissioner Sean Frantom’s response that the program has been or is disbanding piqued the innate curiosity of The Augusta Press’s senior reporter Scott Hudson who looked at Keep Augusta Beautiful’s city check register, which piqued his curiosity even more.
The register showed that since 2018, Keep Augusta Beautiful has written nearly $100,000 in checks, and some of them would pique the curiosity of anybody who was paying attention.
Keep Augusta Beautiful paid $14,716 to a South Carolina environmental services company that specializes in radioactive waste removal and storage. So, they’ve got the mayor’s receipts in a radioactive storage vault somewhere up there.
And the check register shows that company was not paid with one check but with multiple checks written on the same day in lesser amounts than the city’s Procurement Department’s $5,000 cap.
Well, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see that as just an attempt to circumvent the purchasing process. Even a third-rate crook would be smart enough to write the checks on different days.
Keep Augusta Beautiful also made $9,741 of purchases from a company that sells heavy equipment such as generators, pressure washers, power tools, lawn and garden equipment and farm supplies. And that company was paid with multiple checks in lesser amounts all cut on the same day, which would avoid scrutiny from the Procurement Department.
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Other checks totaling $7,069 were written to a tractor and equipment company.
So, the big question is, “Has anybody ever seen the equipment they supposedly bought?”
Perhaps it’s in storage in the vault next to the mayor’s receipts.
Although Keep Augusta Beautiful had the equipment to do the job, they apparently couldn’t find volunteers to operate it and had to pay $11,816 to Augusta Staffing Associates for temp workers. But what did they do? Obviously, they didn’t cut the grass.
According to Hudson’s story, Keep Augusta Beautiful had two employees. Sholonda Smith, who’s listed in city records as a customer service representative making just over $30,000 a year. However, the initiative’s check registry shows a total of $4,492 in checks written to her personally.
Another employee, Edkesha Anderson, who’s listed as a program manager, has received $4,362 in individual payouts through the initiative’s checking account.
The checks the employees wrote to themselves raise questions about who authorized the checks and why they were paying themselves additional money?
I would ask for copies of the receipts, but I’ll bet they’re in the radioactive vault, too.
The check register is just part of Keep Augusta Beautiful’s financial picture.
City budget records show the actual budgets for 2019, 2020 and 2021 totaled $413,987, which would include salaries for two employees. A generous estimate of $40,000 annual pay for each over three years totals $240,000, which left $173,937 that could be used to pay five people to cut grass at $15 an hour for a whole year, with enough money left over to pay a part-timer.
This year, there would be even more money to pay more people to cut grass since Keep Augusta Beautiful’s 2022 budget was increased to $339,550.
But, of course, some supervisor or director would have to tell the grass cutters where to go mow, and the city has plenty of those making six-figure salaries. The problem is that three different departments are responsible for grass cutting, which can be confusing. That’s what they say although people making that much money ought to be able to figure out which area they’re supposed to cut.
Keep Augusta Beautiful’s website shows an interim program manager, photographs of the executive board and a picture of three volunteers in T-shirts. The Events Calendar is empty.
If all of this isn’t proof positive that the more money government throws at a problem, the worse it gets, I don’t know what is.
Commissioners voted to create a Keep Augusta Beautiful affiliate in September 2017 and end the recycling program in an effort to reduce littering and blight around the city.
It was irony to the nth degree.
The More Things Change…
The discussion Augusta commissioners had Tuesday about surplus city properties was just a continuation of chatter by previous commissions.
Actually, I suspect there have been discussions about selling surplus property in Richmond County even before there were commissions. Discussions since Gen. James Oglethorpe established Augusta in 1736. After stealing the land from Creek and Cherokee Indians, I’m sure the British attempted to sell the parts that flooded back to them for a profit.
In more recent history, former Augusta Mayor Charles DeVaney, now deceased, proposed auctioning off surplus city property to help pay the bills and keep the old City of Augusta from going bankrupt. But DeVaney and other city leaders discovered there were too many legal obstacles. So, they came up with a plan to bail the city out by merging with Richmond County, which found out after it happened they’d been duped into covering the old city’s bills. Of course, Richmond County got the river and the city’s water, so it wasn’t all bad.
And more recently, officials of consolidated Augusta talked about selling the Deans Bridge Road landfill, but once again it became complicated, and the city backed off the deal. But considering the millions of dollars they’ve had to pour into the landfill to keep it operating, they’d have been better off giving it away than keeping it and going through a succession of environmental services directors, aka, landfill directors.
Tuesday’s surplus property discussion centered around the empty, rundown Boathouse at the Marina and the Old Engine Company 7 fire station on Central Avenue. District 3 Commissioner Catherine McKnight put the item on the agenda, which was funny because I remembered former District 3 Commissioner Barbara Sims doing the same things about 17 years ago with the same results that McKnight had.
“I tried to do a museum, and that was a no-go,” Sims said when I called her Friday. “I wanted to do a museum. I think they just wanted to leave it like it was. I couldn’t get the votes, so I guess they just wanted to leave it idle.”
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Augusta Fire Chief Antonio Burden, who surely already knew which way the political winds were blowing, told commissioners the fire station is still a part the department’s critical infrastructure and has been used during hurricane relief efforts.
They don’t want to sell the Boathouse either because it’s prime riverfront property. Mayor Hardie Davis wants to tear it down and build something “signature” there.
Maybe they should tear it down and pave everything from there to Fifth Street. That way they wouldn’t have to cut the grass. They could make it into a big parking lot and have some of the empty buses they’ve got running around take people back and forth to the Civic Center and downtown.
Another good idea might be to sell all of the parks and do away with the Parks and Recreation program. That way they wouldn’t have to worry about cutting the grass. The city might have to keep the cemeteries because they wouldn’t want anybody to find out where the bodies are buried. And since they don’t maintain them anyway, it wouldn’t cost a lot to keep them.
But none of these good ideas will ever get off the ground, no more than getting rid of surplus properties because who defines what’s surplus? One man’s surplus property might be another man’s castle.
Change for the Sake of What?
Frantom also proposed moving commission meetings from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. because he thinks commissioners can engage the younger generation when they flock to the meetings. But if they do that, they’ll be discriminating against old folks who eat dinner at 5 o’clock and can’t drive after dark.
Frantom also thinks it will keep the 6 o’clock TV news from showing them bickering, or worse yet, perhaps, showing Commissioner Bobby Williams getting into a shoving match with someone in the hall after the meeting.
“That’s very important because all people see is what happens on the 5 or 6 o’clock news,” he said. “Now, we all know we agree 98 percent of the time up here, but they are going to take a snippet of us arguing or having a heated debate, and that’s just not a reflection of this city.”
Does he really think the TV stations won’t show their heated debate the next day at noon and again at 6 and 11 p.m. and prolong the controversy if they hold the meetings later?
They changed the meeting time to 5 p.m. in 2010 to accommodate Commissioner Matt Aitken’s work schedule, and people still stayed away in droves.
So, no matter when they have the meetings, the only time people will come is when there’s a specific issue on the agenda that concerns them – unless they serve hot dogs.
Anyway, the meetings are live online and archived and may be watched anytime.
McKnight says she took the commissioner job to work full time, and they all knew what the meeting times were.
“The last thing people want to do after getting off work is sit in the Marble Palace at dinnertime,” she said. “Sean wants younger people involved, but when younger people get off work, they want to meet up with friends and party. And millennials have young children involved in activities. And it’s not right to keep employees like the marshals and finance there until 8 o’clock at night after they’ve worked all day.”
Hot Topics
The delegation part of Tuesday’s commission meeting will feature Venus Cain speaking about the Board of Assessors’ new tax assessment increases. And Russell F. Gambill III will speak regarding Augusta’s Confederate Memorials. Tim Spivey will speak about relocating the Kermit Radford Memorial monument from its present location on Milledge Road.
An agenda item almost certain to have sparks flying on the commission is Commissioner Brandon Garrett’s, which calls for a motion to adjust the current Gold Cross EMS Memorandum of Understanding subsidy to $1.6 million and payout to Gold Cross immediately, minus the amount already paid out to date for 2022, and instruct the administrator to continue negotiations on a contract.
Sylvia Cooper is a columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
