Walthourville’s new mayor and council held their first work session Jan. 17, and the tone was decidedly different from the raucousness of recent meetings where the previous council and mayor spent nearly all of 2023 trying to pass that year’s budget.
Mayor Sarah B. Hayes held the nearly three-hour meeting in City Hall’s boardroom, where newly-elected council members Mitchell Boston, Robert Dodd, and Patrick Underwood joined returning council members Bridgette Kelly and Luciria Lovette to tackle the monumental job of fixing the city’s finances.
Hayes also asked the council to support her nomination of Kelly as mayor pro tempore at the next council meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 22.
The mayor assigned each council member a particular area to handle. Underwood is charged with creating a Youth Council; Kelly will find grants to fatten the city’s coffers; Dodd will leverage his expertise in emergency management to improve city preparedness; Lovette will keep a close eye on parks and recreation, with the help of much-needed SPLOST funds; and Boston will take on public works, which includes the city’s biggest moneymaker, its water system.
The council dove right into combing through the city’s budget, questioning why a new bank account had been opened on December 29 and asking who had three city credit cards and where those cards were. Lovette continued her push for a forensic audit. Boston replied that he “can’t wrap my mind around” the $25,000 a forensic audit would cost “when we still owe Georgia Power.”
“If we’re going to be a governing body, we’ve got to set the example,” Dodd said. “How do we expect the residents to pay our bills when we’re not paying our bills?”
Kelly read off each line item, explaining what it was for. Council members questioned various expenses. For example, the city spends a lot of money with the uniform company Cintas, Kelly said, because Sanitation and the Fire Department handle a lot of hazardous materials. That means uniforms have to be to be cleaned and replaced frequently.
Dodd floated the idea of contracting out garbage and fire services as a cost-saving measure. If city services were contracted out, he said, it’s likely that the company would keep most of the employees. Bidding out sanitation could get rid of the expenses tied to running and maintaining garbage trucks and related equipment, he said.
Boston said the city should get outside bids for managing solid waste, including ESG (which handles Hinesville’s public works department, as managed by Gary Gilliard, who also is a county commissioner).
Walthourville’s fire department, under Fire Chief Nicolas Maxwell, has taken pride in its rapid professionalization and equipment upgrades. Council members questioned why the department needed two ATVs, which Dodd said might be difficult to justify, given the city’s small size.
Underwood defended the idea that the police department needs 10 vehicles, even though it does not have 10 police officers, as well as Maxwell’s city vehicle. Lovette pointed out that the city is only
“Each officer has their own vehicle,” Lovette said.
Underwood asked, “What’s wrong with that?”
“We can’t afford it right now,” Kelly replied. “We’re leasing four vehicles. Four police vehicles. We pay Enterprise probably seven grand a month.”
That’s $84,000 a year.
“So what do we do about the officers that don’t have a car?” Underwood asked.
“We don’t have ten officers working at a time,” Kelly said.
Hayes said that, while she was still a council member, she had asked the police chief why officers couldn’t park their personal cars at the station and hand off patrol vehicles from shift to shift. “And the statement was made that—well, there was some other stuff said.”
Lovette added, “The comment was made that it would take too much time, they’re wasting time, when they could be responding to calls, if we leave a [personal] car in the parking lot, and for them to come to the city, get a police car, and then go to a call. That’s taking too much time.”
“I don’t think the fire chief needs a vehicle,” she said. “We don’t need but one utility vehicle but I see two in the parking lot….And we got two ATVs? Why do we need two ATVs?”
Kelly said she stopped by Yamaha of Savannah and that they had gotten a $46,000 check from the city. Lovette said the council had not authorized that check.
Much of the discussion centered on whether or not to pay off several late bills, and whether to do that with a certificate of deposit the city holds or by taking out a loan to get over the hump until a proposed millage rate would go into effect. Boston urged the mayor and council to use some of the city’s certificate of deposit to pay off its debts, because it is the city’s main liquid asset. Hayes and others resisted that suggestion, saying the city needed to hang onto that CD in case of an emergency.
“I had a public official come to me and say, ‘I need to talk to you about annexing.’ I said, ‘You talking about Walthourville, it’s gonna be a short conversation. That ain’t happening.'”
Walthourville Mayor Sarah B. Hayes
The city’s leaders were keenly aware of how unpopular the millage rate proposal has been. However, that option would expedite the city’s financial recovery. They also made it clear that they know people will be unhappy but that they do not want a repeat of last year’s protracted budget and millage rate debacle. Instead, they said they wanted to set a proposed millage rate quickly and hold three public hearings as soon as possible, starting this month. They also want to deal with the 2024 budget as quickly as possible. The city has until December 31 of each year to pass that year’s budget.
Another suggestion was to impose a city fee, as opposed to a millage rate, because the city would not have to hold public hearings to assess a fee.
Whatever the city does to bring in more money, Boston said, should spring from a “transparent” formula.
Hayes said she had spoken with Commissioner Gary Gilliard, and that he had assured her the Board of Commissioners is very interested in helping out Walthourville. Among other things, she said, that includes help with securing federal community development grants.
The city has not reached an agreement with the county to supply fire protection to unincorporated county areas. For years, the county has paid Walthourville $16,000 each year for those services. The city voted last year to increase that amount to $50,000, which County Administrator Joey Brown rejected. Brown told The Current that the county can cover the unincorporated area near Walthourville once the new fire station on that side of the county is open.
Other topics included the cost of several vehicles the city has been leasing from Enterprise (Hayes said the city already had gotten rid of one vehicle), whether to continue to engage the services of the city’s accountant (who Kelly and Lovette felt had not done enough to justify the expense) and City Attorney Luke Moses (who came under fire for speaking more than former Mayor Larry Baker), and slimming down the travel budget for training events (which are especially expensive in Athens, Hayes said).
The council was not in favor of retaining the services of a grant writer who, according to Kelly, had not done enough to bring in money to the city.
Hayes also said she had spoken with the city’s magistrate judge, Robert Pirkle, who had missed two court dates over many years’ tenure. Hayes said she had asked him about a backup judge, and that Pirkle had been reluctant to hand over the courtroom to anyone else. Court takes place on the third Thursday of each month.
The council also said it wanted the city’s website to be updated with current information. Dodd pointed out that the city’s website has a Code RED page: “We don’t have Code RED,” he said. As of press time Thursday, the site included contact information for the current mayor and council, but still showed the Code RED page.
Normally, the city clerk or another staffer livestreams meetings to the city’s Facebook page. Because the clerk was absent, The Current recorded the meeting for public viewing:
Hayes, who had told The Current during her run for office, “I don’t like mess,” maintained a cordial atmosphere.
Addressing an apparent communication breakdown about the Jan. 8 inaugural, which Dodd and Lovette did not attend, Hayes said she had paid for the event at the Liberty County Performing Arts Center out of her own pocket because she is twice retired and her children are grown, and because other venues in town were too small: “Not everybody wants to do something in a church basement or a church multipurpose room. I wanted everyone to be comfortable.” She said the idea was to create an all-ages venue where constituents of all ages could sit down and talk with their newly-elected officials.
“What I wanted was for us to have a good showing and to be comfortable and to breathe after all of this financial stuff,” she said. “It was not to insult anybody. It was not to leave anybody out….What I do is to be inclusive. It’s not to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
Hayes also repeatedly emphasized the need for civility and professionalism among the members, especially during public meetings, and urged members to keep their disagreements “private.”
The board agreed to convene half an hour before the next council meeting to prepare for the meeting itself, and collected each other’s preferred cell phone numbers (some on city phones, some on personal phones, all subject to the Georgia Open Records Act).
On December 21, Hayes, Lovette, and Kelly, along with then-Councilman Charlie Anderson, Jr, by phone, had gone over the proposed 2024 budget with the city’s accountant. At that time, Hayes, Anderson, and Kelly voted to pass $2,761,281 in General Fund revenue to cover a projected $2,703,640 in expenses. The Water Fund was expected to bring in and to spend $2,186,568. Lovette voted against passing the budget.
That budget was projected to put the city $58,468 in the black.
However, as part of the 2023 budget, the council adopted a fire fee of $25.42 per household at the accountant’s suggestion. Some citizens had complained about the fire fee, saying it would pose a financial hardship to residents on fixed income. Walthourville expects to bring in $770,195 in charges for fire protection services. It also expects more revenue from refuse collection: $488,572, up from last year’s projection of $315,572.
By law, fire fund money can only be used for the Fire Department. That’s why the council is pushing for a millage rate, which would go into the city’s General Fund and could be used for other things like paying bills or hiring staff.
Hayes said that a lot of misinformation has been going around about Walthourville being annexed into some other jurisdiction.
“It was even said that someone was going to talk to a state representative and get our charter taken away, and we were going to be annexed — I’m telling you — we were going to be annexed into Hinesville,” she told the council. “I had a public official come to me and say, ‘I need to talk to you about annexing.’ I said, ‘You talking about Walthourville, it’s gonna be a short conversation. That ain’t happening.’ When I talked to [Commissioner] Gilyard yesterday, he said he had heard something about annexing. I said, ‘Well, let me stop you right there. When it comes to Walthourville, that’s not happening.’ And I know y’all feel the same way.”
