WARREN GRANT: Why can’t we make consolidation work?

It’s election time, folks, and you can expect anything to happen. Politicians have their associates scan areas for topics that will get people’s attention. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the politician means it or agrees with it, it’s just their way of getting you interested in them.

What’s good for Albany, isn’t necessarily good for the politicians. Case in point. This county and city are not really big enough to need two governments. There are no towns that I know of in Georgia that have consolidated into one governing body that have regretted it and gone back to vote to change.

The economics of going to one government usually can show an increase of expense in the first year due to the consolidation. That’s not always the case, though. There are a lot of advantages to going to one government, namely, stopping the finger-pointing. I mentioned consolidation to a commissioner, and I barely got the words out of my mouth when they said, “It won’t work.” I was led to know that in Albany and Dougherty County, it will not be considered.

There is a police chief, and a county police chief, and a sheriff’s department, which the latter is required by law. We have two attorneys and a chairman and mayor, a city manager, six commissioners in the county, six commissioners in the city. Whereas Augusta has a mayor and 10 commissioners, and Thomasville has a chairman and seven commissioners.

The Albany city commissioner’s salary varies from $66,000 to $103,000 depending on years of service, education, certificates, etc. The county commissioners’ salaries vary from $42,000 to $58,000.

By consolidation of the two, we would have one attorney, one mayor and (perhaps) 10 commissioners, one police department and a law-mandated sheriff’s office.

I think that a smoothly run consolidated city/county government cannot help but reduce duplicated costs. If you want to know where your representative sits on this subject, contact them and ask them why they answered the way they did. It’s your money, and if you don’t care how it’s spent, forget it. Me, I’m going to try to get some answers. If Columbus, Athens, Augusta and Thomasville can do it and make it work, why can’t we?