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COLUMBUS, Ga. — From the city having to spend millions from reserves to fight the crime they ignored for a decade, to officials voting in a parking fee for the GOP event but changing their minds in just 48 hours, to wasting countless man-hours and resources so 24 people can ride golf carts across Veterans Parkway, here’s all the muck that’s fit to print from the Columbus, Georgia area, along with a look at what to expect in the week ahead.
CCG FORCED TO SPEND MILLIONS FROM RESERVES TO FIGHT THE CRIME THEY IGNORED FOR YEARS
This story was originally published on May 30, 2023.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” — Aristotle.
The city’s Budget Review Committee recently approved an additional $1.5 million to be added to the upcoming budget for fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1 of this year.
The first reading of the city’s complete budget is scheduled for June 13.
Almost all of the additional $1.5 million is coming from the city’s reserves.
The funding requests, which were made through individual city departments and offices, are largely focused on crime reduction, law enforcement, and our city’s court system.
After hearing from several rounds of presentations from various offices, city councilors voted to either approve or deny each individual item through what is known as the “add/delete list.”
The list effectively serves as a means to balance additional budget requests made by departments.
In theory, as new items are requested to be added to the budget, a corresponding amount must be pulled from somewhere else to cover the cost.
This year, however, that didn’t happen — and given the state of the city’s current crime epidemic, that’s probably a good thing.
The roughly $1.5 million in additional funding was not balanced out of other items cut from the budget. Instead, funding was allocated from the city’s reserves, which are effectively like the city’s savings account.
Generally speaking, under normal circumstances, pulling funding from a savings account — from reserves — should only ever be done in an emergency. However, our city councilors appear to finally understand that we are in fact in an emergency: our city’s homicide rate is currently more than six times the national average.
Had this sentiment been realized and — dare we say — acted upon in a timely manner sometime throughout the last ten years, this drastic funding action may not have been immediately required in a reactive manner.
Now, in order to provide our law enforcement and courts system the resources they need to begin seriously tackling the city’s extreme rates of crime, the additional funds had no other place to come from but reserves. If the funding was cut from other places, it would simply disrupt that area and cause other problems somewhere else.
In short: increased crime rates require increased law enforcement, courts, and jails — and all of that must work hand-in-hand, and all of it is expensive.
Perhaps our city officials should consider the expensive reality we now find ourselves in instead of erroneously focusing on tOuRiSm for the next decade as the city rapidly descends into a irreparable state of urban decay.
Explore the full story to see the complete itemized list of approved budget additions for yourself.
CITY ANNOUNCES REC CENTER PROJECT TO ‘PREVENT CRIME’; IMMEDIATELY DISPROVEN BY SHOOTOUT AT REC CENTER
This story was originally published on May 31, 2023.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — “We have seen the movie before, where you put a bunch of resources in a place and then you decide your strategy. I don't think the output that we've seen in those decisions has all together been good.” — White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs, describing the U.S. strategy of ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan, 2009.
Just hours after city officials proudly announced a plan to expand offerings at local neighborhood recreation centers in hopes of ‘preventing crime,’ a widespread shootout at the Shirley Winston Rec Center proved on its face why the city’s approach to crime prevention is a losing one.
During the city council meeting held on May 30, city officials announced what they are calling the C3 Initiative: a city-sponsored collaboration of local non-profits to bring new offerings to local neighborhood recreation centers.
The main focus of the initiative, according to city officials, is to use recreation centers as a means to reduce violent crime in troubled areas by offering alternative activities for at-risk members of the city’s youth.
Ironically, just hours after the city announced its plans, a widespread shootout occurred at the Shirley Winston Recreation Center — one of the city’s largest and well-known.
The Tuesday night shootout left at least one teenage victim wounded and several surrounding vehicles with their windows shot out. Vehicles fled the scene in all directions as the volley of gunfire erupted throughout the complex.
Pumping resources into a criminally-damaged population only results in the criminal destruction of those resources. It will not — nor has it ever, anywhere on earth — ever result in a decrease of criminal activity.
Why?
Because shiny new resources are simply new things for criminals to seize control of and destroy for their own purposes. Period. You can cancel Christmas around that fact. Take it to the bank. Bet your life on it. Insert another idiom here.
See: The past twenty-two years of counterinsurgency strategy around the world.
Until you physically remove a criminal element from their area of operation, nothing you do — nothing — will have any lasting or profound effect on decriminalizing that population; you will merely be giving the criminal element something new to destroy or seize control of for their own purposes as you continue to beat your head against the wall trying to combat them.
Explore the full story to see how new programs are just something for criminals to destroy until they are physically removed from society.
CITY TO CHARGE $10 PARKING FOR TRUMP EVENT; DIDN’T CHARGE FOR DEM CONVENTION
This story was originally published on June 1, 2023.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — The Columbus Consolidated Government recently announced that they will be charging a $10 parking fee for people attending the GOP event featuring President Donald J. Trump next weekend from June 9-10 at the downtown Convention & Trade Center.
The $10 fee will be required for any and all parking in all city-owned lots, garages, and parking decks throughout the downtown area where the event is to be held.
However, the city did not charge any fees whatsoever for attendees at last year’s democrat convention in August 2022.
The one-sided revenue requirement appears to be on a rather obvious political slant.
The request for the ‘GOP-Only’ parking fee was made by city manager Isaiah Hugley during the May 30 city council meeting. Hugley framed his request to city council as a “requirement for public safety,” suggesting that having to pay a $10 parking fee would somehow prevent ill-intended people from attending the event.
Explore the full story to see yet another example of how CCG openly discriminates against conservative politics.
UPDATE: CITY CANCELS NEW $10 PARKING FEE FOR TRUMP EVENT AFTER ‘RECONSIDERING’
This story was originally published on June 2, 2023.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — After initially voting to enforce a $10 parking fee in all city lots during the upcoming GOP event featuring President Donald J. Trump, the Columbus Consolidated Government has now decided to cancel the fee after ‘reconsidering’ the move.
The parking fee was originally voted on and approved during the May 30 council meeting at the request of city manager Isaiah Hugley.
No such fee was even considered during the democrat convention held last year on August 27, 2022.
Within hours of our original story published on the subject which exposed the obvious political discrimination by city officials, the city announced that the readily-apparent ‘GOP-Only Fee’ has been canceled.
Explore the full story to see how one city councilor described the situation in an email.
CCG WASTING CITY RESOURCES SO 24 PEOPLE CAN RIDE GOLF CARTS ACROSS VETERANS PKWY
This story was originally published on June 3, 2023.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — City officials are frivolously dedicating hundreds of hours of time and countless resources from several key city departments in an effort to allow 24 individual people to drive their golf carts across Veterans Parkway.
The effort is allegedly geared toward ‘connecting’ the downtown area with the expansive efforts that have taken place across the state highway.
Why the city believes having 24 individual local residents occasionally drive their golf carts across a state highway will somehow benefit the region remains unclear — and that’s probably because it clearly absolutely won’t. Not even a little bit.
For a greater context of how ridiculous the city’s level of misprioritization is:
More people have been shot to death in Columbus so far this year than the number of registered golf carts.
Explore the full story to see the laughable arguments officials made for the gain of a privileged few as the rest of the city crumbles around them in a murderous bloodbath.
THE WEEK AHEAD
The Georgia GOP Convention will take place at the downtown Convention & Trade Center from Friday, June 9, through Saturday, June 10. Though the event is organized at the party’s state-level organization, local details about the event will likely be posted on the Muscogee County Republican Party facebook page as the event draws closer.
Increased levels of traffic congestion can likely be expected throughout the coming week in anticipation of the event. When combined with the warmer weather and weekend timeframe, we can unfortunately expect a large increase in traffic accidents, speeding, and general roadway mischief to occur as a result.
With the city’s already-thin resources spread thin to cover the convention itself, the corresponding traffic situation will spread those resources even thinner.
As a result, we may experience a sharp increase in crime throughout the remainder of the city if local officials do not find ways to proactively increase the police presence in local neighborhoods.
Given the city’s atrocious track-record of practically never doing that, we leave you as the reader to draw your own conclusions.
A Look At Personal Safety
As the Columbus Police Department continues to unify under its new leadership model, violent crime is still likely to exist at higher levels than we would all like — even in what have previously been thought of as the “safer parts” of our city.
We at the Muckraker want to encourage our readers and their loved ones to remain hyper-vigilant as they go about their daily lives.
Based on lifetimes of experience and the combined professional careers of us at the Muckraker and our associates, here are what we consider to be the most important ways Columbusites can make themselves “hard targets” to avoid becoming a crime victim:
Back Our Blue
In closing, we at the Muckraker would like to thank the outstanding men and women of the Columbus Police Department who continue to shell out for the safety and well-being of our city each and every day, despite the abhorrent temporary conditions they are currently forced to work within.
“All police officers are entitled to outstanding leadership.”
Our city cannot thank you enough for what you do for us.
If you’re out and about throughout the week and see one of our city’s brave and valiant police officers, be sure to thank them. We’d bet it would mean an awful lot to them.
Residents are strongly encouraged to express their concerns and condolences for the brave men and women of the Columbus Police Department by emailing Mayor Skip Henderson directly at SkipHenderson@columbusga.org, while cc’ing their respective city council members on the email.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
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