One Baldwin councilman said he believes the city is more than two years overdue on completing a downtown park, while a councilwoman said she is not yet committed to the project.
The park, to be located on Airport Road at the intersection of Willingham Avenue beside Stew & Que, will occupy land that formerly housed the former Baldwin City Hall, a storefront church, and businesses.
City officials discussed the project during Tuesday night’s work session.
“My only issue is we’ve had the money to complete this project for over two and a half years,” Councilman Jeff Parrish said. “And I warned you about this before, money when the project is not finished it just sits around and some other needs always keep coming up, and that’s what’s happened this time.”
Parrish said he can see no reason why city staff didn’t proceed with the project as planned.
“We promised the people of this town when they voted this is what we were going to do and we had the money to do it,” Parrish said. “I don’t know why it kept getting delayed. We had the money for the full project, for what it cost at that time, and we kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, to the point now we’ve used part of the money for something else. I have a big issue with that because this is something we said we were going to do for the betterment of the town.”
On the advice of Fletcher Holliday, president of Engineering Management Inc., Mayor Joe Elam suggested the council might put the project out for bids to help councilmembers determine how much of the project the city can afford. Holliday stressed once bids are received, value engineering can be used to scale back the project to fit the available budget if necessary.
Councilwoman Stephanie Almagno said she is not yet totally committed to completing the downtown park.
“I mean I understand that is here and something has happened, so it doesn’t degrade … but I feel like there’s something even more pressing on the other side of town,” Almagno said.
Almagno said she would like to see money put into the small city park on City Park Drive off Airport Road.
“I don’t know if it’s been cleaned up from the storm damage debris yet, but that tornado went through in April and here it is August and the kids in that area have not been able to use the park,” Almagno said. “We’re looking at three greenspaces right on this side of town, but we have an unusable park on the other side of town.”
City leaders said through Archway Partnership that formerly was in place in Habersham County, Baldwin leaders were able to gain designs for a soccer field and bathrooms at the City Park Drive facility, but again nothing has happened.
Lack of follow-through on projects has been a problem in the city for years, Parrish said.
“That’s another point where we don’t establish any goals, we don’t establish any timeline to get it done,” Parrish said. “That’s been our problem here in Baldwin for a long time is not having a vision and a goal. That’s been a problem for us as a council that we haven’t established those visions and goals and held staff accountable to a timeline to get those things done. Stuff just drags out.”
Parrish said in the past the city has had a habit of spending Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money on transitory things that wear out or become obsolete in only a few years, rather than using the tax proceeds for major projects as intended.
“Too much time, we spend money on stuff, and it’s gone,” Parrish said. “That’s my objection to spending SPLOST money on many of the things we spend it on, because when it’s expended on something that’s going to be gone in two, three, four, five years, the money is gone. I think SPLOST was originally designed for projects that were going to be capital improvements that were going to be here for years.”
Referring to the city’s comprehensive plan, Parrish said the Baldwin was supposed to have a recycling center years ago, but there was never any movement on city leaders’ parts to get it operational.
“It’s not always money,” Parrish said of deferred projects. “We had the money for the park. We just didn’t move forward with it and that comes to our leadership – us five or six right up here not insisting that stuff gets done – and that’s why I’d like to see this finished. A lot of money has already gone into it. We’re not talking about just a few thousand dollars. We’ve spent $200,000 or $300,000 already on the work that’s gone into it, so if we don’t finish it, we’re not saying very much about our commitment to do something better for the citizens.”
Parrish said using the site of the former downtown buildings for a park is a smarter use that building spec buildings that might never been occupied.
“We had to tear our buildings down,” Parrish said. “They were past repair, so that had to be done. This is a good interim use that be used by people for a long time, then if something better comes along, we haven’t extensively put millions of dollars into buildings we might never use. This is a good alternative. It would be something for the people of Baldwin, and I think we need to follow through with it.”
The city did complete a farmers’ market area on property on Airport Road across from the proposed downtown park, where the former city jail, a vacant lot and a former body shop were located.
Almagno said she liked the revised downtown park concept plan presented Tuesday by Holliday better than prevision versions.
“I’ve seen multiple designs and, as designs go, I like this better than the one that has the concrete down the middle,” Almagno said. “As it goes, I like the amount of greenspace that’s there, I like the walls.”
Elam said the city can put the project out for bid and fine tune the city’s affordability based on those bids.
“To keep in line with the ultimate goal was for the city, we’re still moving in that direction,” Holliday said.
The council will discuss the issue again at its meeting Monday night, Aug. 10.
