NEWS

Commission to revisit interim appointment, discuss schedule for downtown road projects

Susan McCord
smccord@augustachronicle.com

City leaders will attempt to appoint an interim commissioner to represent District 5 on the Augusta Commission and discuss rescheduling Transportation Investment Act projects in regular Tuesday meetings.

Last week, three commissioners’ nominations for an interim commissioner to replace Andrew Jefferson, who died Nov. 4, each failed to garner six supporting votes. The interim will serve until a March special election but would appear on the ballot as the incumbent if he or she chooses to run.

Commissioner Sammie Sias’ nominee was Johnny Few, a pastor and retired Georgia Power employee. Commissioner Marion Williams nominated Bernard Harper, who served on the commission in 2006 and 2007 after winning a special election. Commissioner Ben Hasan nominated Karlton Howard, a pastor who serves on Augusta Aviation Commission and is the brother of state Rep. Wayne Howard.

Williams remained galled by the body’s refusal to approve his nominee last week and again said, as the super district commissioner who represents District 5, his choice should be respected.

“You’ve got commissioners who want to do it their way,” Williams said. “They want to be in charge of the commissioners they put in.”

District 2 Commissioner Dennis Williams said he’d gotten to know Few at meetings of the Richmond County Neighborhood Association Alliance meetings, where Few formerly served as president.

Super District 10 Commissioner John Clarke said he favored supporting the super district commissioner’s recommendation, but had heard little from his colleagues about the options.

“Anytime you put out three and four names on a six-member vote it’s not going to work,” Clarke said.

Mayor Hardie Davis added the interim appointment to the commission’s regular called meeting Tuesday, which is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. prior to commission committee meetings.

On the transportation projects, Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce President Sue Parr is on a committee agenda to request changing the schedule for two projects approved for funding by the 10-year Transportation Investment Act sales tax.

After reviewing city and state schedules for the projects, Parr said she and other local business leaders want to move the Broad Street project up to 2020 and delay the Fifth Street pedestrian bridge project for further planning.

The regional sales tax projects are locked into three time “bands” and bound to a strict state schedule for design and construction. Changing the schedule requires approval by the local government, a regional advisory board and Georgia Department of Transportation.

In correspondence Parr sent the commission, she said while the $9.1 million project to convert the Fifth Street bridge to a pedestrian thoroughfare is the “best and highest use of this historical structure,” the planned Band 2 construction start date of 2019 is too soon.

Parr said the project should be delayed until the city and groups including the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau, Augusta Downtown Development Authority, Augusta Tomorrow as well as North Augusta can “develop a more intentional plan about the features and use of a pedestrian bridge.”

Parr also asks that the $25 million revamp of Broad Street from Washington Road to Sand Bar Ferry Road be moved from Band 3 to Band 2, with a construction start date in 2020, to accommodate downtown growth and aid the chamber-led campaign for the next TIA.

“This is a highly anticipated and important project along a corridor that is currently experiencing over $50 million in private sector development,” Parr said. “The alternative of leaving Broad Street last in construction could jeopardize incentivizing more private sector investment along this corridor, as well as a projected 2020 campaign for a potential second generation of the TIA program.”

Other items going before Augusta Commission committees Tuesday include:

• Receiving a report from Environmental Services Director Lori Videtto on how other cities, including Aiken, Macon, Baltimore, Memphis and Atlanta, have addressed the problem of blighted properties. Common themes are having a single agency coordinate the effort, using a catchy name such as “From Blight to Bright,” establishing goals such as “1000 houses in 1000 days” and taking a creative approach to funding, according to the agenda item.

• Considering a request from Augusta-CSRA Vietnam War Veterans Memorial initiative to erect a memorial in the Broad Street median between Third and Fourth streets.

• Designating a single Sunday in 2019 for bars to be allowed to open, as Augusta’s alcohol ordinance permits.

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