Augusta Commissioner Jordan Johnson has called a town hall meeting tonight to talk about Transportation Investment Act projects ongoing downtown.
The city’s $12 million Greene Street project, which runs between East Boundary and Fifth Street, caught the public’s attention after contractors launched the project by removing dozens of mature oak trees from the median and rights-of-way.
Johnson said trees as well as traffic issues around Heritage Academy were the primary impetus for the meeting, set for 6 p.m. at the Heritage auditorium on Greene. Augusta Engineering and Environmental Services Director Hameed Malik and Traffic Engineer John Ussery will attend to attempt to answer questions, Johnson said.
Johnson said residents and business owners in downtown and Olde Town and “anything in between” were welcome to bring their concerns to the meeting.
Kevin de l’Aigle, a downtown resident who has spoken out about upkeep of the city’s historic assets, said the wide stumps that currently line Greene, Sixth and 13th streets were upsetting to many, as are the large downed trees and collapsed brick wall at Magnolia Cemetery.
“A lot of people are concerned with how catastrophic Greene, Sixth and 13th look now,” he said.
Contractors “eventually” will remove the stumps as they continue work on the streetscape projects, Ussery told The Augusta Press.
“Typically, the trees are removed, and the stumps will come out while they’re doing additional demolition of concrete items, and it will be done fairly early in the project,” Ussery said.
A funding shortage caused the Greene Street project to be split in two, with the second section between Fifth and 12th streets now being “rescoped” to determine how to proceed, he said.
In the lower section, “we’re going to redo some of the roadway, put in new sidewalk and curb and gutter and repave the road and do some drainage improvements and put in new streetlights, and all kinds of stuff,” he said.
Ussery said all the trees being removed had reasons to come down.
“Whether the trees are near the end of their normal life, or diseased, or they’re in the way of a future improvement like sidewalk and curb and cutter, or they’re line of sight or in the way of future streetlights, they all have to be removed,” he said.
The 13th Street project, budgeted at $3 million, includes extensive work on an Augusta Canal bridge near Telfair Street, he said.
Voters in 2012 approved the 10-year Transportation Investment Act sales tax or T-SPLOST, which brought sales tax rates to 8% in all but one of the CSRA district’s 13 counties. The tax raised more than $713 million for road work in the district and voters in 2020 voted to extend the tax for another decade.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
