Residents can voice their opinions on how CCG knowingly neglected the required maintenance of the downtown government center while it heavily advocated for a $200 million tax to replace the building by contacting their city council members.

This article was originally published on January 20, 2023.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — A technical document produced by the Columbus Consolidated Government shows it knew the downtown government center wasn’t being maintained since at least 2007.

Despite the 2007 document showing a known lack of maintenance for the past 16 years, three different mayoral administrations have continued to blame the building’s ‘old age’ for its decrepit condition.

Now, taxpayers are left to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to fund the replacement of buildings their local government knowingly failed to maintain for no less than 16 years; a third of the 50-year-old building’s entire existence.

Let’s have a look at the details.

2007: JIM WETHERINGTON

In November 2007, under the charge of then-mayor Jim Wetherington, a technical document produced by CCG stated that it was not capable of performing the preventative maintenance required on its own buildings. Page 133 of that document states:

“Present staffing levels do not allow for preventive maintenance on systems or buildings. The Division has identified the need for an additional 13 employees and 8 vehicles to improve maintenance services.”

Staffing has continued to be a serious problem for CCG and the city of Columbus in general, as the ‘talented and educated people’ the city seeks to retain continue to leave for greener pastures elsewhere instead. 

The lack of skilled workers has continued to have an effect on the city’s ability to maintain its infrastructure. During the city council meeting on January 3 of this year, current mayor Skip Henderson cited a lack of plumbers, electricians, and other skilled tradesmen as causing the city to pay for outsourced private contractors instead.

THE CITY MANAGER

City manager Isaiah Hugley has been in his role since 2005, amounting to roughly 18 years as the city’s chief administrative employee. According to CCG’s official website, ensuring the city had the employees necessary to maintain the government center appears to fall under Hugley’s responsibility. The city manager’s web page reads:

“The City Manager's office is responsible for planning, directing and supervising the activities of all City employees. It develops, implements and administers policies of the City, manages and controls functions of City departments and performs duties and functions relative to a wide range of City programs and functions.”

Hugley’s Small Fixer-Upper

In 2008, city council approved a request for just $1 million worth of superficial renovations to the building. Those renovations only included basic items, such as new lighting, restrooms, and some fresh paint on the building's ground floor. 

At the time, the building was only 34 years old. In terms of steel-and-concrete buildings, it was only a third of its way through its possible 100-year lifespan — which could have been extended even further with proper maintenance.

Despite the known lack of proper maintenance revealed in the technical document shown above, no major work was performed on the building to properly inspect, repair, or replace any of the building’s infrastructure. The building was knowingly left to rot from the inside-out as the lack of maintenance continued.

2017: TERESA TOMLINSON

Nine years later in May 2017, a second mayor was now perpetuating the narrative of the building’s alleged ‘old age,’ despite the known lack of maintenance for the past ten years. Then-mayor Teresa Tomlinson began lobbying support for replacing the government center building after only 43 years of its existence. Tomlinson blamed poor insulation from the glass windows leading to increased costs on air conditioning and heating, saying:

“First of all, this is a necessity, not an amenity. I know that everybody always thinks, whenever we're getting a new city building, that it's somehow just an amenity. Do we spend a couple million dollars replacing corroding pipes in a building that, really, is no longer serving our needs and is, frankly, dangerous from a safety perspective on many different levels," said Tomlinson. 

2019: SKIP HENDERSON

Just two years after Tomlinson’s pandering to replace the middle-aged structure, a third mayor was now continuing to push the narrative of ‘old age,’ despite CCG’s 12-year lack of maintenance. Mayor Skip Henderson was now furthering the move to demolish the existing building and build an entirely new one, funded by a SPLOST that CCG erroneously anticipated to be largely-funded by ‘tourists.’ 

In 2019, Henderson was quoted as saying: "It’s because of the age of the building, the instability of the systems currently in place, and its inefficiency is costing us a lot of money in terms of a heating and cooling standpoint.” The building was only 45 years old at the time of Henderson’s quote.

During that time frame in 2019, CCG announced that the new building was only originally projected to cost a measly $1.1 million. That figure has now grown by nearly 182 times its initially-projected amount to a total of $200,000,000.

THE TAXPAYER

Taxpayers are now left to foot the $200,000,000 bill to replace the negligently-ignored and knowingly- poorly maintained-building. That is just one of several similar costs that bring the city’s current infrastructure ventures to an insane $743 million. 

With a per capita income of just $28k per resident, Columbus’ population of 205k are left to pay that tax bill at a rate of more than $10k for each of its 70,000 households.

The reveal of CCG’s 16-year-long knowledge of the government center’s deterioration serves as yet another example of its continuous focus on expansion without even being capable of maintaining the infrastructure it already has — yet it continues to double-down on building more and more of it, at a billable rate of more than one-third of the city’s per capita income,  as crime continues to ravage the city’s decreasing population anyway.

Mind you, we haven't yet even raised the question of why CCG thought it best to facilitate the building’s decomposition. We’ll leave the reader to draw their own conclusions on that topic for now.

Perhaps city officials should step outside, get some fresh air, and then re-smell their own cooking when they step back into their aMaZiNg kitchen. It stinks. Expensively.

Residents can voice their opinions on how CCG knowingly neglected the required maintenance of the downtown government center while it heavily advocated for a $200 million tax to replace the building by contacting their city council members.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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