COLUMBUS, Ga. — There is an extremely expensive theme of newly-constructed government infrastructure in the Fountain City, and the bill will ultimately be footed entirely by taxpayers.
When adding up the cost of the SPLOST for the new downtown government center, the purchase of additional buildings required, and the newly-proposed Muscogee County Jail facility, the total cost comes to an absolutely astonishing figure of $743 million.
As any government is only capable of producing revenue from the pockets of the public, that three- quarter billion -bill will be paid for by yours truly: the Columbus taxpayer.
With a population of roughly 205,000 people, that breaks down to a tax bill of $3,624 from every man, woman, and child in Columbus.
Broken down another way, with roughly 73,000 households in the Fountain City, that cost will be roughly $10,178 per household.
You read that correctly: that’s $10,178 from every household in Columbus to pay for the new infrastructure our local government has already approved to build in our city.
It will all come from our pockets, over time, one way or another, at an average rate of more than ten grand per roof.
As poverty continues to rise throughout the city, it is curious as to why CCG feels the need to place such outrageous strains on their residents, who only have a per-capita income of just $28,523 per resident.
Let’s dive into the details.
THE GOVERNMENT CENTER & SPLOST
Built in 1973, the Columbus Consolidated Government’s 235-foot-tall downtown government center building has endured a total of only 50 years of service. For context, most concrete and steel buildings are expected to have a lifespan in excess of 100 years; proper maintenance can extend that life far longer.
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.”
Despite CCG’s 2007 admission that they were not properly maintaining their multimillion-dollar buildings, CCG continued to blame “old age” as the reason for needing new buildings.
In May 2017, the neglect continued at the taxpayers’ expense, as then-mayor Teresa Tomlinson began lobbying support for replacing the government center building after only 43 years of existence. Tomlinson blamed poor insulation from the glass windows, leading to running up 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.
Then, in 2019, mayor Skip Henderson continued the narrative of “old age,” paying no mind to the deceitful antics of CCG willfully not maintaining the structure since at least 2007. 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.
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.
In 2021, Henderson continued the same narrative in hopes of garnering public support to build a new $200,000,000 building to replace the conveniently-ignored poor maintenance of the existing one:
“1,200 individuals come in this building every day and that excludes employees. We owe it to them to make sure they have a building that’s not costing so much to operate and a building that is safe,” Henderson said.
However, despite the 2007 document revealing a known absence of maintenance, CCG released a document that (wrongfully) claimed that proper maintenance was performed.
The document was used to literally advertise the SPLOST to the public in hopes of garnering votes to take your money from your pockets to build the new CCG government center, sweeping the government’s willful negligence under the rug in the process.
In short: CCG lied, categorically, over a period of nearly twenty years; it contradicted its own 2007 technical document and consistently misled the public by blaming the building’s “old age” instead. You can read the document for yourself and spot the lie with ease.
Now, that negligent twenty-year lie has negligently resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being taxed to its residents to rebuild what they knowingly failed to maintain.
The same document published by CCG to advertise the SPLOST also claims that CCG expected “roughly 30% of the sales tax to come from visitors, tourists and neighboring residents.”
Given the utterly failed state of alleged ‘tourism’ in Columbus — which recently resulted in American Airlines deciding the city wasn’t profitable for them to continue local service — the evidence continues to overwhelmingly show that 30% of that tax will not — under any circumstances — be funded by ‘tourists.’ Buying a beer and a burger on Broadway isn’t footing any significant portion of a $400,000,000 tax. Get real.
The $200 million total for the new government center building only accounts for half of the SPLOST to be raised in its name; another $200 million from the tax is allocated for use in other city infrastructure, such as the Parks and Recreations department and the city’s also-neglected pools.
In 2021, only 7% of the city’s registered voters turned out to vote on the SPLOST. Out of the city’s roughly 141,000 registered voters, only 5,798 voted in favor of the SPLOST. Put another way, only 4% of registered Muscogee County voters voted in favor of it, while the remaining 96% of voters either voted against it or did not vote at all.
The two halves of the government center’s SPLOST brings us to a subtotal of $400 million.
So, in review: Even though the steel-and-concrete government center building should have lasted 100 years, and even though CCG knew they were not properly maintaining the building since at least 2007, and even though no effort was put forth by at least three different mayoral administrations to correct that poor maintenance, the Columbus tax payer will now be stuck with a $400,000,000 bill that equates to over $10,000 per household in taxes to replace a building that was known to be improperly maintained for the better part of twenty years — and the ‘tourists’ aren’t coming to help; it's all on us now. How aMaZiNg.
…But wait! There’s more!
THE ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS
In addition to the new government center building, the city has purchased no less than two additional buildings to house government employees and offices displaced by the new building’s design.
The Synovus Building
First on the list was the Synovus building located on Broadway, which CCG ever-so-generously purchased with bonds backed by taxpayers’ money at a cost of $50 million; The building was purchased for $25 million and will require an additional $25 million in renovations.
On September 28, 2021, CCG simply wished that money into existence through the issuance of government bonds, which of course have to be paid back by CCG once those bonds mature. That money only comes from yours truly: the Columbus taxpayer. A government bond is an “I.O.U.” written to someone who gives them money, with your future tax money as collateral.
The building will be used to re-home several governmental offices that will not be incorporated within the new $200 million government center building. Those offices are currently displaced and scattered throughout the city.
When asked about the purchase of the Synovus building in September of 2021, mayor Skip Henderson offered the following:
“We saw an opportunity to negotiate and bring all of our employees who work in other buildings under one roof,” Henderson said.
The TSYS Building
A second additional building was needed to house the Muscogee County Sheriff's office, which apparently will also not be incorporated into the new government center building design.
To house the MCSO, CCG announced its intent to purchase the former TSYS building downtown. The former building was only worth roughly $3 million as of last summer, though CCG intends to pay a total of $16 million of taxpayers’ money to buy and renovate the building. The building is intended to be purchased for $2.5 million, with the remaining $13.5 million going towards renovations.
In a further demonstration of how CCG uses an insane amount of “spin” to cover-up their fiscal irresponsibility, deputy manager Pam Hodge explained in August of last year that residents should be thankful for the purchase because of the measly furniture that comes with the building’s extreme $16 million price tag to taxpayers:
“There’s a lot of furniture in that building that will remain, so there is no need to purchase new furniture,” Hodge said.
But Wait! There’s more again!
THE NEW JAILHOUSE
After a shocking 22-year legal history, a consulting firm found the current Muscogee County Jail is physically and operationally dangerous once again.
Deputy city manager Pam Hodge presented a plan favoring a rebuild of the entire facility at a cost of roughly $277 million to taxpayers.
In August of last year, deputy city manager Pam Hodge projected that a new jailhouse would cost only $21 million. Now, that total has grown more than ten-fold.
While no locations have currently been explored as potential options, that atrociously-enormous cost may increase substantially, depending on the cost of land.
In addition to the $277 million total, another $3 million has been set aside by the city to perform a series of more in-depth studies to determine the specifics of how to move forward in the jail’s construction.
THE BOTTOM LINE
All-in-all, the total cost of the Columbus Consolidated Government’s recent infrastructure ventures amount to the following cost to the taxpayer:
BILL TO: The Taxpayer, ℅ Columbus Residents: $743,000,000
We hope you’ve set aside enough to feed your family in the meantime as the nation continues to face the highest inflation in over forty years, but CCG is going to capitalize on that inflation anyway by being able to collect a higher amount of sales tax on each inflated transaction within its jurisdiction.
Perhaps CCG should have simply maintained its own buildings instead of willfully ignoring them for nearly twenty years.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
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