Newspaper Page Text
April 13, 2022
ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
by Don Daniel
Let grand jury
look at special
river land deal
T he conflagration of the county--
-the five commissioners, county
manager and county attorney-
—selling county property is deep
ening and spreading
as you read this. The
way it is shaping up
the county flagrantly
violated the law.
The county
manager has even
taken to personal
attacks on me and
the editor, Will
Davis, emailing
Wills business
partner how in his
opinion the story
of the sale in last
weeks Reporter was in such error but yet
still refusing to accept any responsibility for
encouraging the sale and failing to tell Will
how the story was in error. Guilty parties
often attempt to point fingers and just try to
protect themselves. Looking to blame some
one else other than accepting responsibility.
Sorta reminds me of President Nixon and his
staffs Watergate shenanigans.
There seems to be a fear of the truth
permeating the third floor of the county
administration building.
Simply stated, the district attorney should
convene a special grand jury to investigate
just how the law was broken. Anyone who
broke the law should resign. Simple.
The county manager, whom I earlier have
applauded for being hired, has implied that
I have called him names. Shucks, maybe I
did, calling him a “foreigner” since he does
not even live in Monroe County commuting
daily to his home in southwest Georgia via a
county supplied car for his twice-daily hour-
and-a-half commute.
Then at the county commission meeting
last week, a citizen addressing the commis
sioners said while he was at a ball game at
the county recreation park, he was hit in
the head by foul ball. The county recreation
director admitted they had to remove the
protective net where the accident happened
but they could not find a replacement to
order! Covid? Could have strung up some
chicken wire.
Here are some unattributed county com
missioner comments made at the last meet
ing: “I’m in favor of something along those
lines”; “I lean back on other commissioners”;
“to clarify what you are saying”; “That’s just
bad on us”; “Where I am at”; “Sounds about
right to me”; “I don’t want to set you up with
a problem” “Back in the saddle”; “What’s an
acceptable risk?” “I’m playing Devil’s advo
cate” and “I don’t know about that”.
OVER AT city council, here are a few unat
tributed comments from their latest meeting:
“I’m losing my voice”; “No one had thoughts
about that”; “Yes, I have a question”; “Okay”;
“My concern is” ; and Councilman Chris
Hewett voting his approval with a wink.
There was discussion of moving the For
syth Farmers Market from North Jackson
Street to the Old Mill location which is
owned by County Commissioner Eddie
Rowland who owns Old Mill Market. What’s
your opinion on the move?
WONDER WHEN the Downtown Lofts
are going on the market. The lofts are located
on the square above The French Market,
which has apparently closed.
REALLY SURPRISED at the number of
the correct answers to last week’s The Ques
tion with Marty Leverett emailing the first
correct answer: “Atlanta man was arrested
in High Falls for being naked”. Lisa Jenkins,
Chris O’Neal and Teresa Hobbs were close
runner-ups.
Here’s The Question for this week: how
much did the county sell the Juliette water
plant for? First correct answer after 12 noon
on Thursday, gets the goodie certificate of
Dairy Queen Blizzard, Whistle Stop fried
green tomato appetizer, slice of Jonah’s Pizza,
Scoops single dip, dozen Dunkin Donuts,
slice of Shoney’s strawberry pie and a Re
porter and Main Street t-shirt.
HERE ARE a couple of definitions from
the book “Illustrated Dictionary of Snark”;
Give 110 percent—Can’t be done. Might be
time for that refresher math class.. .from the
third grade. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the
sound of how awesome I am”.
This is a fun one: Repeat the following
conversation 10 times to the same person:
“Do you hear that?” “What?” Never mind it
is gone now”. And this from WC. Fields: “A
man’s got to believe in something. I believe
I’ll have another drink.”
Contact Don Daniel, the founder of this
newspaper, at tullaybear@bellsouth.net.
@ Reporter
Page 5A
Leaders debate controversial
river-front Juliette land sale
County made mistakes
but intentions were
good, no malfeasance
Egregious, nefarious
sale of plant shows
contempt for voters
By George Emami
gemami@monroecoga.org
In response to the article regarding the
county selling the water plant in Juliette at
a $600,000 loss, and in a spirit of transpar
ency, I felt compelled to provide a more
detailed explanation of the events sur
rounding this sale.
After inquiring with the other commis
sioners, county administration, and our
legal department; and after reviewing the
facts of the matter, there were administra
tive and procedural mistakes made by the
county in the sale of this property. So far, from what I can tell, all
mistakes have been made with the best of intentions and without
malfeasance by the commissioners or staff.
However, when mistakes are made on our watches, we are
ultimately responsible. We as a commission accept responsibility
for the procedural mistakes made, and have already put in place a
process for selling surplus assets that will prevent these mistakes
in the future.
The first mistake was made after agreeing to sell “all” land
and buildings associated with Plant Camellia in executive ses
sion. None of us (commissioners and staff) can remember with
certainty that we did have a public vote to declare the property
surplus. Some recall that we did and perhaps didn’t document
the vote in the minutes as it would have happened right after
re-entering our regular session. I (Emami) do not have a good
enough memory to say for certain and will therefore presume
that we didn’t properly surplus the property. Either way, an error
was made. Secondly, state law provides for advertising in the local
organ 15-days prior to accepting sealed bids. In this case, we
failed to meet the 15-day requirement and bids were opened prior
to the end of the 15 day period. This is an inexcusable procedural
error and we are continuing to scrutinize the matter in order to
document where the ball was dropped, and to ensure account
ability. Additionally, a clerical error was made in the advertise
ment stating Plant Camellia was located on 94.41 acres when in
fact, “all” land totaled 103.75 acres. Our internal procedures have
been amended to ensure we meet the minimum state require
ments going forward.
Regarding the county selling the property at a loss, after digging
into the history of this property, it was purchased 14 years ago
by the Development Authority (not Monroe County) for $1.7
million. About one half of the land and all of the usable buildings
on the property were sold in an economic development transac
tion for just over $ 1 million and the “remainder” of property was
deeded to the county. At the time of this letter, we are still trying
to determine if the county purchased the property or if it was a
deed of gift to the county. Regardless of whether the property was
gifted to the county or if it was bought, the fact is that the acqu-
sition had no bearing on this current board’s decision to sell the
property. No member of our current board was a member of the
board at the time of that transaction. If the county did indeed pay
$700k+ for this property in 2009, it is my opnion that the loss is
due to overpaying for a property that has been completely useless
to the county ever since and had very little redeemable value at
the time of the sale in 2021.
I do not believe we (the board currently serving) undersold the
property in 2021. The treatment plant had already lost its federal
and state permits to withdraw water from the river (again prior
to this boards tenure). To be clear, this is not pristine river front
property as there is a completely useless, massive wastewater
treatment facility that occupies much of the property. Another
portion of the property has wetlands and is completely unbuild-
able and much of the property is in the flood plain. According to
County Manager Jim Hedges, the estimate from Peed Bros., Inc.,
for remediation of the plant, was over $3 million. If we had done
all this work, that property would still not be worth anywhere
near $3 million. Meanwhile, the county was incurring the risk of
someone being injured or killed on the property, which has never
been monitored. There was no upside to holding this property
and it had a lot more value to the adjacent property owners than
it would to anyone else as its only access was through an ease
ment through the adjacent property. We also considered the fact
that by selling we would be putting the property back on the
tax digest and begin collecting taxes on it again (as government
owned property doesn’t produce tax revenues).
Lastly, though I have not always seen eye to eye with Chairman
Tapley, and though I have no idea what comments were made
between him and the buyers, I do know that the purchase price
of the property was set before he ever went to the closing and
was agreed to by the entire board of commissioners. According
to the Chairman, his comments to the new owners were made
post-closing and were relating to duck hunting privileges associ
ated with usage of the facility by the Outdoor Dream Foundation,
a non-profit organization granting outdoor dream adventures to
children and youth under 21 years of age who face some of life’s
toughest challenges. If the comments were made at closing, there
would have been no opportunity for the chairman to negotiate to
change the price after it had been set by the commission.
As always, we are all available to our constituents to discuss the
details of any of our decisions more at length in person. Anyone
who wishes to discuss further are welcome to call me at 706-207-
0383 or email me at gemami@monroecoga.org.
George Emami represents District 4 on the Monroe County Board
of Commissioners.
EMAMI
By Mike Bilderback
hurricane 1000™ juno.com
I t is difficult to decide which
aspect of the County’s disposal
of the Plant Camellia property
is more egregious, the multiple
violations of state law or the loss of a
rare and unique resource that would
offer this County and the City of
Forsyth water independence. For the
purposes of this editorial, I will con
centrate on the latter and allow law
enforcement time to review this case.
The purchase of the Plant by the County took over 6 years
to achieve, engineering studies were paid for and plans were
made to utilize the raw water intake, the 20 inch source main
and clear well. With an ultra filtration plant planned to be
built next to the old conventional filter plant, it looked like
the Monroe County Water System might become a real water
utility. Tragically, a series of elections replaced those com
missioners with others who obviously had radically different
ideas on how to manage a county and serve its citizens.
Their way forward, as they love to call it now, is to spend
$30 million to build out a huge distribution system over
a 400 square mile county and purchase every drop from
outside utilities. How smart is that? It’s like renting a car your
entire adult life while having the means to buy one. A single
water main contract they are letting would build a new ultra
filtration plant. To add insult to injury, the Rum Creek and
Juliettte water main contracts are running right down the
same roads that a transmission line from Plant Camellia to
the elevated tank in Smarr would have ran. All this opportu
nity to deliver value to the customer was lost.
The nefarious disposal of the Camellia property becomes
ever harder to understand when you consider the reservoir
supply shortages with Forsyth’s system. EPD watches this
system very closely because a drought of 2 to 3 weeks and
they are in low flow conditions. The Bunn Rd. City/County
connection signed back in 2016 was meant to be a Band-
Aid until a permanent solution could be accomplished. The
Ocmulgee River has thousands more cubic feet of flow than
the Tobesofkee Creek and I remember certain City officials
thought the river would be a much more reliable source.
Has it dawned on these Commissioners we are buying
water from other jurisdictions that we compete with for
industry? How can we offer competitive rates to prospective
industry when we already pay high rates? Producing our own
water gives us control, but we have none. For purely political
reasons, we gave up having control over the cost of water. We
have zero ability to vote against water authorities outside our
county.
The way these Commissioners operate, one would think
they’re using the Biden energy policy as a template for Mon
roe County’s water policy: make the end user pay twice as
much, destroy the means to be independent and tell citizens
if they want to save money don’t use it. That attitude seems
eerily similar to the contempt for the American people com
ing out of Washington.
Mike Bilderback is the former chairman and former District 3
representative on the Monroe County Board of Commissioners.
BILDERBACK
PORCH
Continued from page 4A
Not well it seems.
In this 70 percent conserva
tive, Trump county, Hedges
has ramped up county
spending big time. When he
was hired, we checked with
observers in Ashburn where
he had served as mayor. They
said Hedges had skills at
giving Powerpoint presenta
tions and finding money. But
they also warned us that he
liked to spend a lot of money.
Those predictions have come
true. Hedges has persuaded
commissioners to spend $20
million for the Juliette water
project, $6 million for new
fire trucks, millions more for
new heavy equipment and
HVAC in county buildings.
Under his leadership the
county has raised the sales tax
from 7 to 8 percent.
Amid all the new taxing
and spending, you would
think Hedges would be
hungry to sell some riverfront
property at a premium price.
That would be more revenue
to spend. Instead he sold it
for a song, and illegally at
that.
When I requested a meet
ing with Hedges last week to
discuss this situation, he re
fused to respond. Instead, he
sent a message to my business
partner in Blackshear.
“Mr. Williams the headlines
in today’s MCR is (sic) so
false, inaccurate that there
are numerous letters being
submitted to this outrageous
reporting,” wrote Hedges.
“Will Davis is so wrong and
yet you support him!”
When we finally received
those letters, it was only
one letter (see above), and
it conceded our story was
basically correct. Hedges
is mad that he got caught.
Hedges needs to retire. As for
commissioners, the best thing
they could do is to admit they
were wrong, rescind the deal,
and re-open the land to a fair
and legal bidding process.
That could go a long way
toward re-building trust with
those they serve, the ultimate
bosses, the people who actu
ally live in Monroe County.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Reader would love swamp land at $1,000 per acre
To the Editor:
W;
y dicin' t they list or auc
tion the water treatment
plant for sale? I would
have and will today pay
double what they sold it for at the drop of that it is.
a hat! Anybody out there that has ANY
LAND they will sell for $1000 an acre call
me and I'll take it right now. I don't
care if it’s swamp land and honestly hope
Stacy Waits
Monticello