Albany City Commission OKs transportation site testing

ALBANY — In an interview summarizing her first six months on the job as Albany’s city manager, Sharon Subadan told The Albany Herald she would push the Albany City Commission to move forward with projects whose funding had already been secured but for whatever reason were languishing.

Tuesday morning, Subadan brought the poster project for procrastination to the board — the so-called “multimodal” site — in an effort to move that 18-years-and-counting project off the drawing board and under construction.

After a brief discussion, commissioners approved $53,146 in funding for archaeological testing at the 300 W. Oglethorpe Blvd. site of what Subadan is now calling the “transportation project.” Ward VI Commissioner Tommie Postell cast the lone vote against the funding at the special called meeting.

Responding to Postell’s complaint that “we keep pouring thousands and thousands of dollars into a project that might fail,” the city manager said, “In order to utilize state and federal funds on this project, we have to follow the process in place. If we don’t, we could lose access to those funds.”

Subadan said up to 80 percent of the cost for purchasing the West Oglethorpe site and for building the transportation project would come from state and federal sources.

“If we don’t move forward with this project, we may lose funding that’s available to us,” she said. “GDOT is concerned that it’s taken us so long to get this project started.”

City Transportation Director David Hamilton, responding to a question from Postell, told the board the city had already lost $6 million in allocated federal funding due to the city’s continued indecision concerning the project. Hamilton said the latest testing is in response to findings from a $211,000 environmental assessment completed last year.

“There are concerns, because of the history associated with that site, that there may be artifacts from the civil rights movement and the African-American community,” Hamilton told commissioners. “The archaeological testing will determine if there are artifacts, and our mitigation plan will include recovery and storage of the artifacts if any are discovered.

“This project will hopefully interject growth in the Harlem district, so this latest step is important to the process. After it is completed, we still have property acquisition and design phases. That’s why I am recommending funding this testing.”

When Postell noted that the city is paying for testing on a site it does not own, Subadan said state and federal funds cannot be used on the project until the property is cleared. “We can’t put the cart before the horse,” she said.

“With this project, sometimes you can’t put the horse before the cart,” Postell replied.

Subadan said once the project is cleared, it will provide a number of construction jobs and “put millions of dollars into the community’s economy.”

Following the called meeting, the board held an executive session to discuss personnel matters, reportedly concerning Albany Police Department Chief Michael Persley’s decision to alleviate the two deputy chief positions in the department, ending the tenure of the two men who up to now have held those positions: Nathaniel Clark and Mark Scott.