District 1 Commissioner Mitchell Smith is stepping down at the end of 2018, not having sought reelection to the Dade County Commission in this year's election. Before he leaves, though, Smith made it clear at Thursday night's regular November commission meeting, he's still got a few things to say.
Smith warmed up by taking a whack at the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority. During his monthly committee report and address to the public, Smith said that of the 95 monthly commission meetings since he began serving eight years ago, he's missed four, two due to funerals, two because of health. "During that same 95 monthly meetings, our Northwest Georgia JDA, which we've paid $195,000 to, has only been at four meetings," he said.
JDA is a regional economic development coalition whose stated mission is to recruit industry, increase wealth and improve quality of life in Dade and the three other counties at the northwest tip of Georgia. But what, asked Smith, has JDA done for Dade lately? Even when it does send a representative to the commission, it has never been able to report which if any businesses have showed interest in Dade County nor even how many Dade-related hits it gets on its website, said Smith.
Smith pointed out that other local institutions that receive funding from the county--the library, chamber of commerce and extension service--show regularly up at commission meetings to report what they are doing with it. "If you sort of look at that, they're way ahead," said Smith. "They're here, they're grateful, which in my opinion another bunch of people ain't."
County Clerk Don Townsend, though he was not at the Nov. 1 meeting, later confirmed that Dade pays JDA $24,950 a year. Presumably Smith's $175K figure was based on an eight-year accumulation of that amount. JDA has offices in Rock Spring and is headed by State Sen. Jeff Mullis.
Dade pays close to the same amount--$24,500--to its own local economic development arm, the Dade Industrial Development Authority (IDA). That amount represents its contribution toward the salary and benefits of IDA's executive director, William Back. The Trenton City Commission and IDA itself pay the other two-thirds of Back's upkeep.
Besides the $24.5K to Back and $25K to JDA, Dade also pays on the Ec. Dev. front $64,585 and $175,497.50 a year
in debt service on two different bond series it issued in 2013 to expand the county industrial park. Townsend said the 15-year repayment period is roughly halfway finished at this point,
Next:
But back to Mitchell Smith, who had not quite finished his contentious swan song. Later in the meeting, he dived into round 2, this time with an opponent closer at hand: County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley.
Rumley has been attacked at multiple recent meetings on his advocacy for building a reservoir on Lookout Creek. At the Nov. 1 meeting, Smith aligned himself squarely with the anti-reservoir faction.
"I want to make a motion at this time that we instruct the county attorney to inform Mr. Jack Sells that we are abandoning the purchase of the said property," said Smith.
Though it later emerged that a reservoir on Lookout Creek had been proposed as early as 2005 by the local water company's 20-year strategic plan, the idea of damming the creek and building a lake in Dade was introduced to an astonished public without preamble at the county commission's June 2017 meeting. Rumley said then that a 60-odd-acre tract belonging to Jack Sells and coveted by the water company had lately come on the market. With little discussion and no dissent, the commission at that point approved $50,000 toward the $500,000 price tag of the land to option it for a year.
Since then, the board of directors for the Dade Water Authority, or so-called water board, got $450,000 in loan money approved from a state finance agency to cover the balance of the half million should Rumley not be able to find sufficient grants to pay for the land. He has not been. Lately, he has hinted that Sells may come down on his selling price and that private donors may step forward with their own funds.
Meanwhile, the water board, which Rumley also chairs, has taken to discussing the reservoir project only behind closed doors in executive sessions from which the press and public are excluded. And also meanwhile, Rumley extended the option with Jack Sells to Dec. 28 of this year, with payment of $25,000 in grant money toward a $150,000 fee stated in the extension language.
It was with this extension that Mitchell Smith took exception. "The whole commission did not vote did not agree to this option, to accept the option or to extend," he pointed out. Rumley had extended it unilaterally, said Smith. Furthermore, he had not done so until a good couple of weeks after the original extension expired.
"What are you proposing, Mitchell?" asked District 2 Commissioner Scottie Pittman, who is also stepping down at the end of the year, in his case because he lost his reelection bid.
"To just forget it," said Smith, "because that option was put in without this committee's approval."
Pittman ascertained that the $150,000 amount mentioned in the extension language would not in fact raise the final price of the parcel, and Rumley and County Attorney Robin Rogers reiterated that only $75,000 had been paid thus far.
District 3 Commissioner Robert Goff argued that the commission had authorized Rumley and the county attorney to work on the deal, so that there was nothing dicey about the option extension, and as for the option becoming effective a couple of weeks before it had been signed, attorney Rogers said: "It is not that unusual."
The attorney further said the reservoir issue was not on the meeting agenda which had been made available to the public and press; and though he said the commissioners could choose to amend the agenda to include it, and then vote, he advised them not to. "We may want to do that another time when it actually formally appears on the agenda," said Rogers.
Rumley asked if the other commissioners wanted to amend the agenda and got a strong no from Goff and no big yeses from anyone but Smith. Thus the issue must wait until the commission's Dec. 6 meeting. District 2 Commissioner-elect Phillip Hartline, who will replace Scottie Pittman in January, sought and received reassurance that no closing on the land would take place before the December meeting.
Thus the matter must rest until December--when, Mitchell Smith seemed to hint, his closing remarks might have a Part 2.
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