Column
By Mike Buffington
Jefferson squanders recreation SPLOST funds
As if the citizens of Jefferson don’t already have enough stories of city mismanagement, here’s another example to ponder. Last spring, the Jefferson mayor and council, with little public discussion or debate, approved funding for city recreation director Ben Dillard to start a city-owned, low-power commercial radio station. The council approved the funds by diverting city recreation SPLOST tax dollars, money raised to build recreation facilities, to finance the scheme.
Dillard told the mayor and council that he could make the town $300,000 per year in profit by selling advertising on his commercial station, money he said could then be used to help fund the town’s recreation programs.
Alas, there are so many things wrong with that it’s difficult to know where to begin:
1. It’s a bad idea because governments should not be running a for-profit business. The function of government is to provide services for citizens that cannot be provided in the private sector. Should the town operate a restaurant? Or a bar? Or a car dealership? Of course not. Government shouldn’t be in any kind of private, for-profit business, period.
2. The radio deal is sucking time, money, energy and focus away from more pressing city needs (think traffic light and roads here.)
3. To finance the startup of a radio station, the mayor and council shoplifted city recreation SPLOST taxes. Through July, the town had already spent $76,000 to finance the radio station, which is more than the total amount of recreation SPLOST taxes actually collected January to June this year. And Dillard spent additional tax funds in August. When the citizens of Jefferson voted a few years ago to support the SPLOST tax for recreation, they envisioned ball fields and gyms, not a radio station. Indeed, Dillard and the city council have endangered all future city SPLOST votes with this inapt use of tax dollars. Citizens simply won’t trust Jefferson leaders the next time the mayor and council come begging for a SPLOST renewal.
4. Despite Dillard’s wild projections to the council, his radio scheme will not make a $300,000 per year profit for the city. Dillard told the mayor and council in April, “I’m telling you, we won’t lose money.” If the deal were really that good, Dillard would have invested his own money, quit the recreation director’s job, and earned $300,000 per year for himself.
5. The radio deal is nothing but a propaganda tool for the mayor and council. Dillard is their chief apologist. “The reason we say this (Jefferson) city council is the best ever is because it is!” said an enthusiastic Dillard a couple weeks ago. Dillard is a council PR hack, not a reporter.
6. On top of all this, Dillard’s low-power radio simply doesn’t work. You can’t hear it. A walkie-talkie has more power than the city’s radio. It’s not a real radio station licensed by the FCC; it’s a “pirate” station that skirts FCC rules and it doesn’t work. Dillard and the city council got hoodwinked by an out-of-town consultant on this deal.
7. On the other hand, Dillard should be glad people can’t hear him on the airwaves; if they could, most would think they lived in “Hooterville.” One minute he spouts that the city council should build a wall around Jefferson, the next minute he’s calling the athletes at Commerce High School a bunch of losers. In-between, he talks about himself. He’s a nice guy, but frankly, Dillard is dullsville. His reflection on the town would be embarrassing, if anyone could hear him.
8. Doesn’t Dillard have enough to do just being the city’s recreation director? Who’s running the city’s real recreation programs while he’s running around pretending to be Howard Stern or Larry Munson?
9. Perhaps the most insulting thing about Dillard’s radio scheme is that like most liberal bureaucrats, he claims he’s just “doing something for the children.” Baloney. Dillard’s hiding behind “the children.” In reality, he sold the mayor and council on yanking city tax money away from children to finance his own hobby radio. He defends that by saying it’s better to use your taxes for his radio station than to build playgrounds. “Playgrounds sit and rust,” he said. What’s rusty and creaking about this deal, however, isn’t playground equipment.
The city’s blatant misuse of recreation SPLOST taxes for this scheme is just another example of what happens when a dysfunctional mayor and council are asleep at the table. They didn’t ask questions and as a result, got snowed.
Jefferson is in a financial hole. The city is tightening spending in other departments.
But even as it does that, the mayor and council throw tax dollars away on a half-baked radio scheme.
Outrageous.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Agri-Cycle closure can’t come too soon
After several years of complaints by area residents, the state environmental protection division has ordered that the Agri-Cycle plant in Talmo be shut down.
It should be, but it won’t. Owners will no doubt appeal and drag out the process while they continue to dump what appears to be human waste into their water recycle system.
Despite repeated denials by the owners, the facility has indeed been accepting waste products for processing that were outside its permit, said the EPD. This apparently includes human waste.
The operation of the Agri-Cycle plant is an example of bad corporate citizenship. The firm simply doesn’t care about how it affects local citizens, the environment or the local watershed. It repeatedly violated EPD rules and mandates and misled the public about what it is really doing.
Firms like Agri-Cycle are why we have to have agencies such as the EPD. If all firms would do the right thing, there would be no need for such government oversight.
But as Agri-Cycle shows, some business owners simply don’t care. Some companies will flout the rules and even common sense.
But enforcement of the rules is mostly a toothless tiger. It may take months or years for the plant to be closed.
In the meantime, area residents should continue their fight against the odor coming from Agri-Cycle. Their protests won’t go unheard or unnoticed.
Nicholson made the right choice
Nicholson town leaders made the right choice when they declined to start a city police department. While some local towns have created police departments to run speed and traffic traps, that is not why police departments should exist.
Police departments should only be created when they can be useful in community policing and investigations. Small towns seldom have enough population to financially justify that expense, however. And as the numbers from other area towns show, having a police department is very, very expensive.
The day may come when Nicholson will need its own police agency to supplement the county sheriff’s office. But for now, it’s simply too expensive and would place a major financial drain on the town.
Column
By Chris Bridges
Wishing to have a gardener’s thumb
One of the things I always admired most about my paternal grandfather was his gardening skills.
Of course, he was a farmer by trade so I guess that automatically meant he was going to be able to work magic when it came to the ground. Back when I was a small child, Papa Lee was still in the business living on a vast plot of land which always seemed to come to life with crops of all kind.
I still have memories of the rows and rows of corn he grew and the multitude of watermelons that always seemed to outshine anything anyone else could manage. Papa Lee could grow sweet potatoes so big that he often would have his picture in his local newspaper for his green thumb. No doubt, when it came to farming, Papa Lee more than knew what he was doing.
During this time at my own home, we also had a rather nice garden even though we technically did not live on a farm like my grandparents did. I remember looking forward to the time each year when my father would plow up the patch of land in the back of our property for our new garden. Corn, tomatoes, squash, beans and the like were planted and harvested.
There was something about walking through a freshly plowed field of dirt that I still remember to this day. I remember helping, even if only in some small way, plant tomatoes and then watching them grow and produce the bright red produce which hung from its vine. I never liked to eat tomatoes (I still don’t) but there was something special about watching a tomato plant grow from infancy.
As the years passed, we began to scale back on the size of our garden at home. The size of the designated area began to grow smaller as other family commitments began to take more time than they did when my brother and I were younger. Eventually, the garden was shelved all together.
Today, the area where the garden once grew each year has simply become part of the yard at my parents’ home. A work building constructed by my father now sits in the middle of where tomatoes and squash used to add vibrant colors to the landscape.
Unfortunately, despite watching and observing my grandfather at the trade of gardening, I never really picked up enough on it myself to try one of my own. I only have a very limited amount of yard space at my home and, to be honest, the ground is really not suited for gardening.
It’s not that I haven’t thought about it through the years. Many times when I have been in the local hardware store I will notice the display with numerous packages of seeds and I once again think about the days when a simple thing like having a garden meant so much to a child.
I realize children today would never be captivated by something as simple as a garden, but for me, it was a part of my life which I honestly believe helped shape me into the person I am today. To have an appreciation for the little things in life is something we should all place a higher degree of emphasis on.
Perhaps one day if circumstances are different I can try to have a garden at my home. I’m not going to pretend to have an ounce of the gardening knowledge my grandfather had or even to the degree of what my father knew back when he had a “mini-garden” of his own. Still, I think it would be fun to try and see if I could make the tomato plants grow from their infant stage to the point where they produce multitudes of produce that I could give away to my neighbors. While I don’t eat tomato sandwiches, I do value what they mean.
Chris Bridges is a reporter for Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. He can be reached at chris@mainstreetnews.com.
