CARLTON FLETCHER: Are infrastructure upgrades too late?

If you dance to the music, don’t you know you’ve got to pay to the piper?

— Chairmen of the Board

When the state Legislature allowed governing bodies to use special-purpose local-option sales tax collections for items other than roadways, sidewalks and bridges, it opened a Pandora’s box of often misguided opportunities that a lot of suddenly flush cities and counties found impossible to resist.

That’s when things like an arch — that has blue lights symbolic of the river’s flow! — offices that put luxury above functionality, and supplying niche, at best, groups with the right political connections funding that allowed them to expand scopes that were already beyond their principals’ ability to manage.

Meanwhile, in cities like Albany, time continued to wear away ancient infrastructure whose capacity to perform had long since surpassed any reasonable expectations. That Public Works crews were able to keep faltering sewer, water and lighting systems operating using McGuyver-like tricks of the trade — a paper clip here, a foil gum wrapper there, patching all around … the proverbial wing and a prayer — spoke well of their capabilities.

But even as they staved off emergency after emergency, these miracle workers knew that, eventually, their miracles would run out.

Yet, even as they explained, year after year after year, that upgrades were not just desirous but necessary, elected officials — concerned more with appeasing their “base” and getting re-elected — kept putting allocations off … just one more year.

Unfortunately, in Albany, the instant gratification passed on to special interest groups and staff who wanted the latest bells and whistles in their facilities is now coming home to roost. A pair of sewer breaches that sent raw waste into the Flint River last week is a wake-up call that was delivered many years and a few SPLOSTs too late.

Phil Roberson, who now is assistant city manager and long was the city’s director of Public Works, probably started to annoy some of the elected officials when he came before them and, patiently … painstakingly, described the growing need to upgrade a sewer system that, in places, is more than a century old. Roberson and his capable staff had done patch job after patch job, trying to squeeze a little more life out of the system while he all but pleaded for upgrades.

But, as current City Manager Sharon Subadan has noted, the part of the city that’s unseen — the underground stuff — is not sexy when it comes to political promises, so officials kept delivering arches and new buildings with all the latest gadgets and special-interest capital.

Subadan and the current City Commission, certainly at Roberson’s urging but more likely with constituents suddenly aware that the “hidden” part of their city was starting to betray them in ways that were obvious above-ground, have begun the process of overhauling the city’s sewer system. They have a $15 million-plus tax-anticipation loan to work with and have sent work to upgrade the sewer system out for bids. It will take a couple of months to get all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, but work should begin soon.

One has to wonder, though, with the latest group of sewage leaks into the already endangered Flint and with the monsoon season having settled into the region with no immediate sign of letting up, if perhaps city officials heeded Roberson and others’ calls too late. Public Works has performed miracles in parts of the city’s systems that were in immediate need of repair, but one can only speculate what crews are going to find once they start a complete overhaul.

Subadan made the right call when she coaxed the City Commission to apply for the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority loan that allows for work to start sooner than if the city waited for SPLOST collections to trickle in. What she, Roberson and other city leaders will now do as they wait for work to begin is hope — and probably pray — that the failure of elected officials to act in a timely manner doesn’t end up with a price tag that will make that $15 million loan look like pocket change.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.