Albany City Commission swears in incumbents from Nov. 7 election

ALBANY — Familiar faces took the oath of office for Albany’s city commission Monday night.

Mayor Bo Dorough, Ward I Commissioner Jon Howard, Ward IV Commissioner Chad Warbington and Ward VI Commissioner Demetrius Young were sworn into the city commission.

Warbington was declared the 2024 mayor pro tem.

Friends, family and community leaders filled the auditorium in the downtown Government Center to watch the ceremony.

All four of the city officials are incumbents who served at least one term prior. Howard first took office in 1994, making him the longest-serving commissioner in Albany’s history and one of the longest-serving in the state.

Morehouse School of Medicine program coordinator Barbara Turner presented Howard with a plaque to honor 25 years of work and community leadership “on behalf of the equity and advocacy and on behalf of teen pregnancy prevention and violence prevention” in Albany.

“Mr. Howard has been working with us, and it took just a call because the students of this county have been very important to him and how he hopes this county will become a safer and more productive area,” Turner said during the presentation. “We’re grateful for all you’ve done for us.”

Howard had a lot to say during commissioners’ closing statements at the end of the meeting, going well over the allotted time while everyone listened to the long-serving commissioner’s message.

“There are some issues that are indoctrinated into this community,” he said to the crowd.

Albany’s Nov. 7 elections saw low voter turnout. Of about 45,000 registered voters, only about 8,000 went to the polls in November, Howard said. Of 7,146 registered voters in Ward I, only 1,116 voted.

“That is a disgrace, and we should be ashamed of ourselves,” he said. “If we do not eradicate apathy in this community, I’m concerned.”

Howard brought up concerns surrounding education locally on attendance rates, reading proficiency, and high school seniors graduating on-time.

There have been 321 homicides from 1994 to December 2023, he said. Emphasizing the importance of education among young people will combat this, he said.

“An uneducated society is a dangerous society,” Howard said.

The commissioner’s ward is majority black and on the east side of the Flint River. Eighty percent of the households in east Albany are not worth $100,000 and most of the houses are rental properties, Howard said.

“It can change and it will change, but it’s up to us,” he said.

The commissioner said he wants to see the Albany commission united. He doesn’t want to view his goals as his platform but rather “our platform.”

“It takes three (other) votes (to pass legislation),” Howard said.

Warbington spoke to the audience of his commitment to giving his resources and time to serve Albany and its citizens.

“We’ve overcome a lot in the last four years, and I don’t want us to forget that,” Young said to the crowd.

When he and the other leaders were sworn in in 2020, they did not know what they would face in just a few months with the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

We have a community that struggles, which is one of the reasons COVID hit the community so hard, the ward VI commissioner said.

“We lost a lot, but we’ve also learned a lot, and we all came together to get through,” Young said. “The work is still not done, so please let us not forget where our situation was in 2020.”

We are last in a lot of the indicators healthwise and socioeconomicwise, and we had to rebuild our community, he said.

“We have to find a way to reach out to the least of those,” Young said. “It’s a heavy lift, but we have to understand that if you are going to lift something heavy, you have to catch it from the bottom. You can’t just worry about the top.”

That’s what the commissioner has been doing for the last four years, he said, and it’s what he plans to continue doing.

Dorough serves all of the city — even those who did not show up to the polls, he said.

“We are about to witness the transformation of our city,” Dorough said to the audience.

He emphasized successes that came out of his term as mayor, like renovating Driskell Park in east Albany and allocating $22 million to other projects that will improve recreational opportunities in the city.

The city is on track to complete 80% separation of its storm and sanitary water systems by June 2025. This was done with minimal rate increases, he said.

The mayor said he is also committed to downtown revitalization projects like renovating the Hotel Gordon into a boutique hotel.

“This will bring more than 120 tourists a day within one block of the (Flint) RiverQuarium, the Flint Restaurant and Pretoria Fields Brewery and will be a catalyst for future development,” he said.

Dorough promised to “stand up for what’s right, even if he stands alone.”

Staff Photo: Lucille Lannigan

Staff Photo: Lucille Lannigan