Ealum delivers legislative summary at Albany town hall meeting

ALBANY — State Rep. Darrel Ealum of Albany says the General Assembly is poised to approve $1 billion in revenue to improve Georgia roads and bridges, and the funding will make a positive difference in Albany and Dougherty County.

Speaking Saurday at Ward I City Commissioner Jon Howard’s monthly town hall meeting at the East Side Community Center, Ealum, who represents District 151, delivered an overview House Bill 170, which he says passed the House Transportation Committee with near unanimous support.

Ealum said the funding is necessary to bolster, replace or widen aging highways and bridges in anticipation of the import/export traffic arriving in Georgia due to widening of the Panama Canal and deepening of the port in Savannah. The new construction and trade opportunities could be a monetary bonanza for the state, Ealum said.

“We might be dredging the river (in Savannah) deeper,” Ealum said, “but if we don’t have the roads and transportation structure to carry the freight inland, if won’t do us much good. Right now we don’t have the transportation system we need from Savannah into Macon and then from Macon to Atlanta.”

According to Ealum, an earlier version of the bill would have taken revenue streams received at local levels for school systems, city and county governments and “refocused” them at the state level — for an estimated loss of $2.2 million locally. But Ealum said the current version of the bill has been reworked so that local entities are “made whole” again.

Ealum said Georgia Department of Transportation officials indicate more than 1,600 bridge structures need replacement over the next 20 years, and to maintain that pace, 89 structures should be replaced each year.

In a separate bill, Ealum said the Albany community stands to benefit from a $20 million funding of a multi-purpose fine arts building for Albany State University and improvements at Darton State College. The building now used by the university was heavily damaged by the 1994 flood and is in dire need of replacement, Ealum said.

“From day one of my campaign my No. 1 concern was the fine arts funding,” Ealum said. “I went to the Chamber of Commerce, the city and county commission and other groups and asked them what they thought. They all agreed that (the fine arts building) would be the most important thing we could get out of the general Assembly this year — something that would mean the most for Albany and southwest Georgia.”

Ealum described the potential economic impact of a $20 million project as “huge” for Albany and Dougherty County, and said he was hopeful that a good part of the construction contracting could be done on a local level.

According to Ealum, District 12 State Sen. Freddie Powell Sims deserves a large part of the credit for the ASU funding bill.

Also in the area of education, Ealum said a bill passed out of committee which would allow former high school students who met all general education requirements but failed to pass one or more necessary graduation tests to petition local school boards to receive their high school diplomas.