Dawson musician ‘Bubba’ Hall fights lone battle against city

DAWSON — This small community just west of Albany has seen a recent surge of growth as businesses — some nationally known chains, some mom-and-pop establishments — have settled here to take advantage of its location along the bustling U.S. 82 corridor that runs east through Georgia from Columbus to the Atlantic Coast.

As much as local officials tout the growth in Dawson, though, they are equally burdened by a rash of illegal activity at the highest levels of local government. When a city’s mayor is shot and later found guilty of sex charges, when other top management-level officials are tossed out of office for similarly serious charges, and when local citizens claim — many quietly for fear of retribution — that they are being singled out for harassment by local officials whose livelihood comes from taxpayer contributions, there’s no question that corruption runs deep in the underbelly of this typically quiet community.

With all the high-level misdeeds — many that have made their way from the quiet whispers in social and private settings to the watchful eye of the mainstream media — running rampant in this community of 4,292, Robert E.S. “Bubba” Hall’s comparably insignificant “harassment” by city officials who want him to keep his grass cut and his property orderly in a manner similar to others in his Orndorff Drive neighborhood might seem more tempest-in-a-teapot by comparison.

But Hall, a retired businessman who now spends his days in mostly solitude, writing songs and stories taken from his intriguing life, says he’s become the target of a conspiracy that runs through his family to the seats of power in the city government.

“At precisely 11:18 a.m. this morning (June 21), the city of Dawson Code Enforcement truck rode by my house, slowed down directly in front of my home, and the individual who was driving the vehicle … very obviously and intently was surveying my yard,” Hall wrote in a recent email to The Albany Herald. “Although I did not know the individual personally, I do know this: With municipal budgets in all rural south Georgia communities strained, NO CITY EMPLOYEE is going to work for free on the weekend unless they are some type of emergency personnel.

“And the city of Dawson Code Enforcement, I am most certain, does not fall into that category. This ties directly to my assertion that there is an individual or group of individuals somewhere connected politically or by employment with the city of Dawson who are targeting me prejudicially and unfairly and who are directly connected to my sister.”

Hall will not talk on the record about family issues that lead him to believe he is being targeted by friends or acquaintances of his sister, but he does note that Barbara Jean “Babs” Hall has allegedly helped a city official with drug-related issues in his family.

“(City officials) turned this into so much more than it should have been,” Hall said of what he calls harassment by city officials. “They first came out here and left a note on my door … no call, no Code Enforcement or other official knock on the door. Then they sent a Code Enforcement officer out here, Ruth Lewis, who treated me with respect, just talked with me about upkeep on the property. I know Miss Ruth, and as we talked, she told me she’d been warned to take a police officer with her because I was ‘crazy, dangerous, desperate with nothing to lose.'”

Lewis, who worked in law enforcement and Code Enforcement in southwest Georgia for 25 years, confirms Hall’s statement.

“What you have going on in Dawson is some of that ‘good ole boy’ network,” she said. “They are only concerned with the law as it applies to certain people in the community. I’d write a ticket for an infraction in (one of the community’s wealthier neighborhoods), and they would get rid of it, tell me my job involved other, less-affluent parts of the community. An elderly black woman wanted an old, abandoned house near her property taken down, and they ignored her. But when someone in one of the nicer neighborhoods wanted a building taken down, Boyd Brothers (Construction Co.) came in the next day and tore it down.

“Bubba Hall’s grass was high, but I knew he was going through some issues at the time, a sick parent and other things. I went out to talk with him, even though I was told he was ‘crazy’ and ‘dangerous,’ and he was very cool. He’d always done what he’d been asked to do.”

Hall said he grew so tired of the constant “harassment” from city officials, including a visit to his home by the then head of Code Enforcement, a Dawson Police Department officer and then City Manager Tracy Hester, a visit that was surreptitiously recorded by Hall.

“I decided if they were going to harass me about grass and where I stacked firewood on my property, I would go after them,” Hall said. “I had folks at EPD (Environmental Protection Division) look into a leak in the ditch in front of my property and decided I’d bring suit against the city for the potential danger from that leak.”

Hall called officials with connections to EPD, and a subsequent study of the water leak that runs on city property was conducted. The report, conducted by David Abgot, concluded: “I called Mr. Hall (the complainant) to schedule a site visit. I invited John Batz with the city of Dawson to join for the visit. We determined the leak was on the city’s line, and John informed me the city planned to replace the main line on that section of the street next week (Sept. 11-15) if time allowed. They just approved the budget to make the repair. I took a chlorine sample, which resulted at 0.16 ppm, which is below the recommended 0.20 ppm minimum in the distribution system. John Batz thinks it was due to leaching from galvanized piping and from the leak. He is going to have Jon Bergozza, the operator for the city of Dawson, take a Bacti sample and adjust and check the chlorine at the site of the compliant.”

A follow-up investigation conducted by EPD’s Helen Lunsford, noted: “Following up on this complaint, I spoke with the drinking water system operator, Jon Bergozza, and he informed me he is not responsible for the distribution system. He referred me to Mike Sinquefield of the city of Dawson. I then spoke with Mr. Sinquefield and he confirmed the main line on Orndorff Drive is an old 2-inch main line and that it had been repaired several times and it keeps breaking. The city of Dawson has a grant to replace old water lines and fire hydrants. The city is working with Carter & Sloope Consulting Engineers on this project. Mr. Sinquefield did not have any dates for when this work would commence or be completed.

“I returned to 445 Orndorff Drive, SW, in Dawson to take chlorine residual and pressure readings from a spigot in the backyard of the complainant’s residence. The pressure reading was 65 psi. The Minimum Standards for Public Water Systems states in Section 12.2.1f. that the normal working pressure in the distribution system should be approximately 60 to 80 psi and shall not be less than 35 psi. For the first sample taken for chlorine residual, the reading was 0.14 ppm. The spigot was then flushed for less that 3 minutes and a second sample taken. The chlorine residual for this sample was 0.46 ppm which is within the recommended range, 0.2 to 4.0 ppm, for chlorine residuals.”

Hall said he hired Albany attorney Phil Cannon to represent him in a suit against the city. Cannon did not return calls seeking comment.

Cherysh Green-Caldwell, who filled Hester’s former seat as Dawson’s city manager in February, responded to Hall’s complaint against the city with an email that said, “Thank you for reaching out and for taking the time to express your concerns. I want to acknowledge receipt of your message and the seriousness of the issues you’ve raised. I understand the concerns outlined in your email and recognize that you have included the City Attorney in your correspondence. I appreciate your stated intent to resolve this matter constructively and without conflict.

“Given the engagement of our legal counsel in this process, all future formal correspondence will be provided as guided by our legal team. Please know that your message has been received and noted, and we will continue to handle this matter through appropriate channels.”

Contacted by The Albany Herald, Green-Caldwell said she didn’t want to discuss too deeply what could potentially become a legal matter.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to say too much, because there’s a lot of correspondence going back and forth in this matter,” the city manager said. “As I noted in my email to Mr. Hall, since this is a possible legal issue, we will let our attorney handle this matter. But I will say that we are very interested in working this out collaboratively with Mr. Hall.”

Albany attorney Tommy Coleman is Dawson’s city attorney.

“This has been ongoing now for several years, and, frankly, I haven’t heard a lot about it in the last couple of years,” Coleman said. “I know Mr. Hall has claimed that there are potential health problems associated with the leak and that EPD has filed a report on the matter. We’ll look into it to try and get this resolved.

Hall is well-known in the Southeast as a singer/songwriter, a career he showed no interest in until he was in his 30s. He graduated from Terrell Academy, starring as an outside linebacker on the school’s football team and earning high grades after “blistering the SAT.” Weighing scholarship offers from Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, he chose to play ball for Pat Dye at Auburn University.

Hall’s stay at Auburn was short-lived. He got little playing time as a running back behind the likes of Bo Jackson and Brent Fullwood, and his world was rocked by the knowledge that his mother was a closet alcoholic. When he told Dye he was going to quit the football team, the Auburn head coach called Erk Russell at Georgia Southern and told the legendary coach he had a player who would fit in well with Russell’s program.

“That’s always been one of those things I regretted, not taking the opportunity to play for Erk Russell,” Hall said.

Hall did go back to college, spending a couple of years at Albany Junior College (now part of Albany State University) before trying football again at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus. After two games, he quit for good. Hall said a compelling confrontation with his usually reserved father led him to “switch gears.”

He worked in the trucking industry and even advanced to running the D.E. Short Trucking Co., making more money than he’d ever hoped to earn. But he “blew up my marriage” and got an “amicable divorce” before flying out to Colorado Springs to visit a friend. There, he bought a guitar — even though he’d never played one before — and somehow convinced himself to participate in an open mic night at a local coffee shop.

He moved to Colorado for a period, writing songs as “words started coming at me from everywhere,” and by fits and starts “started playing music for a living.”

When Hall’s dad died in 2002, he moved back to his homeplace in Dawson to help his mother with the family’s Hall Bagging Co. business, but he continued playing music. Eventually, he would — often with friends like Albany musician Evan Barber and with the help of like-minded musical patrons — set up singer/songwriter nights at clubs in Montgomery, Ala., Auburn and Americus. Filmmaker Josh Carples approached him at what became a monthly “Joe Thomas Guitar Pull” — so named in honor of his friend and supporter who’d died in a car crash — and approached him with the idea of doing a documentary that would become “Commit to the Song: The Movie.”

“I told Josh that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, and when he asked me why, I said because I didn’t think of it first,” Hall said.

As he’s slipped into his mostly sedentary, loner existence, Hall said he’s “too broke to do very much.” (He emphasizes his statement by showing balances in his bank accounts that verify his comment.) But he says he’s not going to just give in to his sister and city officials who apparently want to run him out of his home.

“The harassment is not every day, but it has happened enough it keeps me ‘looking over my shoulder’ so to speak,” he said. “And to always be wondering is a torturous existence. This has been going on for close to five years now. It’s frustrating. I sent an email to four city officials last Friday to which I have yet to receive a reply or response of any kind.

“I happened to talk to both neighbors who border me today, and they both vehemently denied ever filing any type of complaint with the city against me. Also today, a neighbor who wishes not to be named told me that one year ago they killed a huge rattlesnake in the road in front of my home that had crawled out of the swampland bog in my front yard caused by the city’s leaking waterline and was heading across the street away from my house.”

There are those who say Hall’s Quixotic efforts can be placed in the “much ado about nothing” file. But the late-blooming troubadour says that he’s ready to battle family, foes and, yes, city hall, to correct injustices he says are worth fighting for.

And, even as he hunkered down for whatever that fight might be, Coleman called to notify The Herald that the city of Dawson is “getting quotes right now to have the water line fixed.” Of course, he notes, “City officials told me that as far back as 2023.”