NEWS

Spending your money is on the minds of Augusta commission

Sylvia Cooper
t.sylvia.cooper@augustachronicle.com

After reading the proposed 2020 budget for Augusta government, the only thing I can figure out is the more money city officials have, the more they think they have to spend. It’s a little complicated for ordinary folks to understand where it’s all going.

They expect to have $5.5 million dollars more coming in from growth in the tax digest, increased sales tax, ad valorem tag and electric franchise fee collections, but $2.5 million of that is already committed to new programs.

General government and law enforcement fund expenses increased to $168.2 million, or $3.63 million, for 2020, from $164.6 million this year.

Those are about the only budget highlights I know.

Budget lowlights

Interim Administrator Jarvis Sims asked for a $95,168-a-year construction project manager for his office, but turned himself down. Still the recommended budget for his office increased by $166,230 to $1.17 million. Could someone please tell us why that office needs that much more money next year. Maybe they’re planning to redecorate again.

The recommended budget for King Hardie Davis’ royal suite increased by $25,230 to $444,410, some $10,000 less than the King requested. Why he needs more money is beyond my imagination. What the folks in his office do now besides answer the phone and go for takeout is a mystery to me, especially with him out of town half the time. Maybe he’s planning to hire another royal ring kisser. His My Brother’s Keeper budget held steady at $38,750 although he’s spent only $2,364 of it so far this year. In my opinion, somebody in Augusta would have a good case suing the city for discrimination to sisters.

The King also asked for $10,000 to fund the Mayor’s Masters reception, but Jarvis didn’t recommend it. I guess that means Jarvis won’t get invited next year.

Jarvis has approved Fire Chief Chris James’ request to hire nine new EMS lieutenants at $48,554 a year, plus benefits which brings the total to $557,118. James claims that will be offset by $454,713 in part-time salaries. James is paying mega mandatory overtime to get fire trucks and ambulances staffed.

Commissioner Brandon Garrett opposes hiring EMTs and bringing them on as lieutenants to staff ambulances only.

“Chief James agreed with the Firefighters Association when he started running ambulances that any ambulance person could only start at the highest rank of sergeant and then must earn lieutenant rank over a one-year period,” Garrett said. “The reason was his policies make fire suppression personnel spend a minimum of three years at each rank, plus take classes and also compete through testing.

“A suppression person must work an absolute minimum of six years to maintain lieutenant. These sergeant and lieutenant jobs just being given away as they are destroys the very system he set in place. There is absolutely no need to have sergeants or lieutenants on ambulances unless he plans to drastically expand the ambulances.

“A sergeant equals a first line supervisor,” Garrett continued. “A lieutenant equals a first-line supervisor. So the ambulance rank structure is a supervisor supervised by a supervisor. Utterly ridiculous!”

Shrinking cost

It seems appropriate the proposed budget also includes $80,000 for mental health contractural services for the sheriff’s department. Maybe a psychologist could help Sheriff Richard Roundtree with anger management.

It sure would be cheaper than sending 10 cadets to the Pickens County Training Center some 209 miles away in Jasper, Ga., for training instead of to neighboring Columbia County out of spite. Roundtree got mad because WGAC radio Show talk host Austin Rhodes was invited to speak to the graduating class of the Columbia County GPSTC Academy in May. The cadets could have received the same 11-week training at the Columbia County Academy and saved taxpayers a bundle on room, board and mileage.

Act I, “Let’s Grow Augusta Government” Commissioner Bill Fennoy set the King up to deliver a soap box sermon on the need to create a new department in city government – a communications department.

Fennoy said he’d gone to a free James Brown birthday bash at the Augusta Common, as well as an Angie Stone concert and most recently a Drifters and the Tams concert, but only a handful of folks were there.

“A lot of people I talked to said they didn’t go because they didn’t know about it,” he said. “I just want to know what needs to happen to make sure we get the word out.”

Commissioner Ben Hasan said they should hear from the person who’s in charge of the Riverwalk office.

“Here’s a person you have on the ground that lives and breathes on that site,” he said. “She’s a person who’s directly engaged to give us some insight.

Commissioner John Clarke asked what the Convention and Visitors Bureau has done to promote events since they receive half the city’s hotel-motel tax money.

Then Davis announced he was going to get up on his “preaching soap box.”

“We have GO Augusta. We have used $150,000 and approved a promotional icon with Green Go logos on them. And absent my getting text messages, I didn’t know about the Tams, the Drifters, Angie Stone, and I’m the mayor of Augusta,” he said.

“We are as disconnected in creating this wow factor whether we’re working with the CVB, the Arts Council, and I’m sick and tired of it. Month after month we go through this disconnect. I started this conversation four years, nine months and 15 days ago about a communications department to focus solely around talking about Augusta, what we’re doing, and it falls on deaf ears because it’s my idea.

The proposed budget doesn’t mention a communications department or marketing, he said.

“It doesn’t talk about any of those, and I’m sick and tired of it,” he said.

Is it possible he has in mind hiring his church choir, so they could sing the praises of King Hardie and mention Augusta in passing?

Afterward, Clarke said the CVB gets about $5 million a year to promote Augusta.

“It’s not the city’s job to promote private events at our facilities,” he said. “The shows have promoters to do that. They make money from he events, not the city.”

Nowadays, everything’s an “investment”

They’re finally having a meeting about the Depot project Monday with everybody at the table. The only people missing will be those from the media whose job is to keep the public informed on how the government is spending their tax money. King Hardie announced it would be closed.

Why? What could anybody possibly say about a project that’s been in the newspaper for more than a year that the public shouldn’t hear?

It won’t be closed for any legitimate real-estate secret because everybody already knows the city is practically giving the prime land away and $14 million to boot.

The 10 a.m. meeting at Augusta Municipal Building follows a 9 a.m. work session to discuss ways to spend the city’s next Transportation Investment Act sales tax, which would go into effect in 2022 if voters approve it, according to Chronicle Staff Writer Susan McCord.

Downtown streets, Augusta Regional Airport and the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam are top priorities as Augusta officials decide which projects to pay for with the next Transportation tax, McCord reported.

You might expect important projects like that to get top billing on the TIA priority list, but it was the $25 million for “water-based transportation such as a ferry and operations costs” that I asked commissioners about.

“A ferry boat will carry about 30 people to ballgames in North Augusta,” said Clarke. “To get that many people over to the ballgame, they’ll have to start about five hours before the first pitch. And on the way back you’d have to tell them, ‘Don’t be in no big hurry.’ ”