CARLTON FLETCHER: City, county governments’ ‘fuzzy math’ doesn’t add up

Your morals are exempting you from guilt and shame, Heaven knows you’re not to blame.

— Ray Stevens

I never was that great at math, but I really have trouble with the so-called “fuzzy math” like the Albany City Commission threw out during a special called meeting Tuesday. At that meeting, the commission gave a suspect group of “developers” $2 million of yours and my tax money so that they could buy a group of crumbling buildings on North Washington Street.

Here’s where the fuzzy math comes in. Tax records show that the property is valued at $665,000, and the city said it would take $550,000 for the developers to acquire clear title to the property.

Let’s see … add the five … carry one, … divide by the hypotenuse … Nope, no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot come up with a way that anyone needs $2 million to pay for a $550,000 property.

Oh, but wait, there’s more.

The developers told Albany officials at Tuesday’s meeting that they needn’t concern themselves about financing: The $3 million (!!!) they were getting from the Dougherty County Commission is in the bag. And with a prominent member of that board reportedly among the development group that is concocting this pie in the sky, I guess the 3 mil is a sure thing.

So, Albany and Dougherty County taxpayers, you are about to be stuck with a $5 million bill for property worth $550,000.

And, yeah, that might be worth a gamble if this were one of those rich enclaves with plenty of money to toss around. But this is Albany, Dougherty County, located in one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country, a community that has lost well on a third of its population in the last decade-plus.

It’s ironic that one of the people helping to pull the trigger on this possible boondoggle, Dougherty Commission Chairman Lorenzo Heard, this week took discussion (and a possible vote) on funds to make vital improvements at the county jail off the county’s budget, even though even the least informed person in the county knows that these repairs are not just needed, they are necessary.

Heard gave no reason for removing the discussion from the meeting agenda, but it will be interesting to see how quickly the $3 million for the downtown project makes its way onto the budget and how easily it will be approved.

Does downtown Albany need new development? Absolutely. The once thriving inner city is now a shell of its former self, and there have been any number of fits and starts toward development efforts, all of which have failed miserably.

Rather than putting together a commonsense development master plan to bring businesses to the district, officials encourage enthusiastic individuals with little experience – and even less capital – to open a store at one of the many vacant downtown locations. Encouraged by the promises of those officials, these would-be entrepreneurs get a loan from the city and county, spend what little money they have setting up their business, then close a few days or weeks later because they did not have enough money to run the business. The friends who told them they would support their business are suddenly nowhere to be found.

One would think that the million-dollar-plus loan that went to Pretoria Fields Brewery downtown would be a lesson for city and county officials. The brewery actually was successful in that it brought paying customers downtown. But when the brewery’s owner failed to pay back any of the loan money, the city now finds itself more than $2 million in the red and owners of a piece of property that is rife with the stench of failure.

Some have already said that the city – and, presumably, county – have opened a can of worms that will take an even bigger bite out of their faltering finances. The county raised the millage rate an unheard-of 3 mills recently to try and climb out of a hole it created by giving exorbitant raises to its employees, and the city reportedly will have to use more than $9 million of its rainy-day fund to make up for this coming fiscal year’s looming shortfall.

Even though their meetings are open, very few people bother to come and watch the city and county governments do business. Not too many folks can get off work at 10 and 8:30 a.m. to sit through these meetings. That’s most likely by design. Because if more people came to the meetings and observed how their tax dollars were being spent, there would probably be a lot more turnover in these boards that are supposedly elected to serve the citizens of the city and county.

Truth be told, that would not be such a bad thing.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].