January is the namesake of the Roman god of gates and doors, Janus, who had two heads facing opposite directions: one looking back, the other looking forward. Last December, Janus said 2019 was “A Dam Year to Remember.”
Janus said that, not only for all the things that happened after the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ little experiment drawing down the Savannah River that left downtown Augusta and North Augusta high and dry, but for all the other dam news we had to put up with.
Janus had so much to say about last year he didn’t get around to predicting anything about this year, but if he had, I think he would have predicted it would be a “A Damned Whole Lot Worse Than 2019.”
And that’s because of Covid-19, the virus that escaped from a laboratory in China and now covers the world like the dew covers Dixie, although the word “Dixie” is no longer in the lexicon of the politically correct crowd who’re busily going about digging out anything remotely related to Dixie, root and stock.
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Alas, I have wandered from my main topic of looking back at the goings-on of 2020, the major one being, of course, the aforementioned Covid-19 that has destroyed lives and livelihoods, not to mention the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – locked down and masked up.
Other than that, perhaps the most important thing that’s happened this year for the cities of Augusta and North Augusta is a judge’s ruling in the South Carolina and Georgia federal lawsuit, prohibiting the Corps from demolishing the New Savannah River Bluff Lock and Dam.
The judge ruled that the Corps’ plan did not adhere to the federal Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016. That act requires the river pool to be maintained at the level it was when the law was passed in 2016.
You might recall that 2016 was the year local officials got hornswoggled by the Georgia Ports Authority (whose motive was the deepening of the Savannah harbor at all costs), the Corps and the Savannah Riverkeeper into giving tacit, albeit naive, approval to removing from the WIIN Act the Charlie Norwood amendment that protected the lock and dam. We can only hope they won’t be caught napping again.
Earlier this year, 12th Congressional District Republican Congressman Rick Allen had support for a bill that would repair the lock and dam and create spawning grounds for endangered sturgeon downstream from the lock and dam, but opposition from environmentalists and the Savannah Riverkeeper thwarted it. And every time Augusta gets a setback like that, the Savannah Riverkeeper Tonya Bonitatibus is all over the media, smiling and telling folks to get over it. What’s amazing about that is she and her operation, whatever it is, are occupying 12 or more acres of prime riverfront property Augusta officials leased to her for $1 a year for 100 years, and she’s working against them. That just shows you what fools they can be.
The mayor got so agitated at one meeting by a suggestion that the Riverkeeper was the city’s spokesperson on the river, he said “The Savannah Riverkeeper does not speak for the city! The Savannah Riverkeeper does not speak for the city! The Savannah Riverkeeperdoes not speak for the city!”
Maybe not, but she and the local media seem to think so.
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Just in Time
The Corps had planned to begin demolishing the lock and dam park this month and installing a river-wide rock weir fish passage that supposedly would allow sturgeon to swim upstream. That they would actually do that has never been proven. The fish, I mean.
Another positive development is that the Corps’ new regional commander, Col. Jason E. Kelly, said he’s open to discussing alternatives that would leave a higher pool of water in the river.
There’s still a long way to go, but we’ll take any good news we can get.
A Pig in a Poke with No Place to Park
In January, the vaunted $94 million Depot project on the Savannah River seemed to have soured, which it did, mainly because Augusta commissioners bought the Downtown Development Authority’s pig in a poke with no place to park.
The city had promised Unisys 530 parking spaces for their employees, and even paved a parking lot for their use on the same Depot property the city agreed to let the commercial real-estate services firm Bloc Global develop.
It all comes down to the fact you can’t give away property to one party (Unisys) and then try to sell it to someone else, or even give it away.
Along with the Depot deal, curbside recycling was also headed for the dump in order to cut operating loss.
One man’s trash used to be another man’s treasure, but China doesn’t treasure our trash anymore. And recyclables are just trash to most folks in Augusta. Of the 24,000 residential customers with recycling carts, only about 4,800 put them out each week, and 85 percent of the recyclables are contaminated with garbage or rain and end up in the landfill. Isn’t that just disgraceful?
Another deal that appeared to be headed for the dump is the mayor’s downtown parking meter plan. Don’t worry though. Parking meter plans in Augusta are like the Phoenix, rising from the ashes every two or three years before dying another inconspicuous death.
So Many Task Forces. So Little Time.
The coronavirus kept Augusta’s gadabout mayor in town more this year, so he’s busied himself with pandemic updates, issuing executive orders at press conferences, creating task forces, committees and sermonizing.
In March, he launched a social media campaign for Democrat presidential hopeful, billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg came to Augusta, and he and Davis had coffee at a downtown café before they both spoke at a press conference Davis had arranged. I suspect it was payback for Bloomberg footing the bill for the mayor’s Harvard and London trips and a grant for Augusta, but that’s the way the world turns. Davis picked the wrong horse to get out of town on, though, so it looks like we’re going to be stuck with him until the end of his term.
This fall, Davis issued an executive order creating a task force to consider the city’s Confederate monuments, street names and places, and nobody was surprised when the committee, a majority of which he appointed himself, voted to move the monuments, remove signs on Jefferson Davis Highway and change the names of Calhoun Expressway, Gordon Highway and Fort Gordon because they were named for Confederate generals.
His latest executive order would create a discrimination committee whose members could issue fines to businesses found guilty of discrimination. The Metro Augusta Chamber has strongly objected, but that won’t stop the man who would be King Hardie.
Not Fired. Smoked Out.
Well, it took about three years and near-revolt in the ranks of the Augusta Fire Department before Augusta commissioners would consider putting Fire Chief Chris James out to pasture, much less fire him, but a majority finally realized things couldn’t keep going the way they were.
They tried to avoid doing anything about the complaints of forced overtime to staff the department’s ambulances and the Augusta Professional Firefighters Association going public with 700 pages documenting irregularities in the department. Commissioners even hired a consultant to do a needs assessment of the department, and when the consultant made it as plain as the nose on your face that the main problem was a leadership vacuum, they still didn’t act, although they did park the ambulances. I believe what it took to force them to do something was a story by a local TV station about a man in his 60s whose family called for an ambulance because he was having trouble breathing.
The fire department ambulance responded, and the EMTs took away his oxygen in order to give him theirs, but they couldn’t get their equipment to work. The man had a panic attack because he couldn’t breathe, according to his two daughters who were there.
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When the EMTs finally got him on a board and were taking him to the ambulance, they dropped him. He died later in the hospital, and his daughters contended he’d still have been alive if the treatment hadn’t been a “circus,” as they called it.
So now, James is on a leave of absence until August when he will retire with a nice severance package.
Here Comes the Judge
Augusta Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Carl C. Brown Jr. has been trying to get commissioners to create adequate space for juvenile court operations for three years. At first, he asked them to renovate the old Joint Law Enforcement building at 401 Walton Way into juvenile court space, but they refused.
Then in July, the judge issued an emergency order commanding the city to pay for renovating that facility and the old Craig-Houghton Elementary School on Fourth Street for use as judicial space. He also ordered the full Augusta Commission to appear at a hearing on Sept. 16.
So, what did commissioners do? Days later, they voted to proceed with the demolition of 401 Walton Way as voters had approved in a $1.5 million SPLOST vote. And they appealed the judge’s order, which the appeals court sent to the state Supreme Court where it is docketed for January.
Then, Brown issued another order on Sept. 28 demanding the city hand over more than $3.57 million in COVID-19 relief money for the renovation of 401 Walton Way and the elementary school.
Well, they gave Paine College $1.3 million of the federal relief money, and it doesn’t provide a government function.
Gone but Not Forgotten
This year, the city lost Utilities Director Tom Wiedmeier to COVID-19. He was as fine a man as you will ever know and much loved by the employees in his department and others throughout the city, not to mention by the love of his life, his wife Kelly.
And sadly, Augusta Code Enforcement officer Charles “Chip” Case died at the hands of a felon who ambushed and shot him from behind for no reason after Case posted a condemned sign on a building. It was a terrible crime that made his wife a widow and left his children fatherless.
Also passing on this year was former Augusta City Councilman, Richmond County Commissioner, Augusta Commissioner and interim Augusta Mayor Willie Mays, a political icon. He retired from public life after losing the mayoral race to Deke Copenhaver and concentrated on his business W.H. Mays Mortuary.
Sylvia Cooper is a Columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
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