Things picked up in Augusta last week, not the least of which was news you'll be paying more property taxes this year if one of the 21,703 assessment increase notices comes to a mailbox near you this week. But then, you might be paying less if one of the 6,097 assessment decrease notices ends up in your mailbox. But that's not good either, is it? You might want to sell the place soon.

Anyway, if this keeps up, I don't see how City Administrator Fred Russell is going to be able to poor-mouth any more. With 6 percent growth countywide the past year, there ought to be enough money to buy class rings for every high school basketball team in the county, send all 10 commissioners to every elected officials' convention from here to Timbuktu and still cut the millage.

ONE FOR THE BOOKS: Then there was the standoff between the Historic Preservation Commission and library officials and their architects over the design of the new library.

The library folks and their architects like it. The preservation commission doesn't, or at least it didn't until it got to change a few things.

There are legitimate concerns on both sides. The architects were faced with the challenge of designing a massive, 90,000-square-foot building on the lot between Greene and Telfair streets that would be compatible with other buildings in downtown Augusta but not look like Tara or the Marble Palace.

So they tried to break it up and give it a modern look with masonry, bricks, marble and windows. And the library board is four years and several million dollars into the project with a $2 million state grant in jeopardy if the building isn't up and running by January 2010.

Nevertheless, when the design was unveiled for historic commission approval, members shook their heads and recessed the meeting for a few days before convening Tuesday afternoon across the street from the site.

The architects said they wanted to design a library for the future and make it warm and inviting, but board member Alan Venable said it looked severe and brutal, and the others didn't seem to think it looked historic enough to fit in with other downtown buildings.

One thing they did agree on was that the new federal building down the street was "insensitive" to the surrounding architecture, which was news to me. I thought the federal building was right pretty.

BOTH SIDES DECLARED VICTORY AND WENT HOME: So, after flexing their historic preservation muscle with a 4-2 vote not to approve the design, it must have dawned on somebody that they might be about to scuttle a $24 million project, even if they did think the candy factory they tore down to make room for the library looked better.

So when board Chairman Mark Lorah , Mr. Venable and Library Director Gary Swint and others met to arbitrate, they reached a compromise. They agreed to change the proposed clay-colored bricks to a darker red to match the bricks in buildings on down James Brown Boulevard toward Walton Way, which I think is kind of silly, seeing as how there aren't but a couple of those still standing.

Easy Rider: A new elevator is finally up and running at the Marble Palace, and after years of complaining about jerky, creaking, squeaking elevators, we're now complaining the new one is so quiet we can't tell whether it's moving.

LATE, CARELESS AND PHONY: Qualifying to run for public office this year ended Friday, and almost all the incumbents and others who had said they were going to qualify did, with two notable exceptions, the most notable being Willie Saunders , who showed up at the secretary of state's office to sign up to run for Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney five minutes after the deadline, giving incumbent Ashley Wright a free ride.

And Sheriff Ronnie Strength's would-be challenger, Jimmie Lee Sullivan , won't be because he waited until the 11th hour Friday to qualify but didn't have the proper documents certified.

One unexpected qualifier was John Butler, who signed up to run as a Republican in the majority-Democrat state Senate District 22. You remember him, I'm sure. He ran against Don Grantham for the Super District 10 seat on the Augusta Commission. If you give him the time of day, he'll go around telling everybody you support him. Just ask Commissioner Joe Bowles .

So now either incumbent Ed Tarver , Marion Williams or Mr. Butler will represent us in Atlanta. How can we lose?

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW: Hundreds of people came by the Old Government House on Friday to show their appreciation to Tax Commissioner Jerry Saul, who retired Thursday after 35 years. Among them were Mayor Deke Copenhaver , former Augusta Chronicle Editorial Page Editor Phil Kent , former cartoonist Clyde Wells , Harrell Tiller and others too numerous to mention.

Mr. Saul credits his first win as tax commissioner against Isabel Plunkett Dicks in 1976 to Mr. Tiller.

"I took a leave of absence from the tax assessors office without pay to run, and I was very depressed," he said. "Willie Watkins , the building inspector who was the courthouse sage, told me I was running against an empire and my chances of winning on a scale of one-to-10 was a three. Harrell called me up and told me to get out of bed and go to work."

"That's right," Mr. Tiller said. "It's hard to hit a moving target."

Mr. Saul said one of his best memories of the tax office was being able to eliminate long tag lines.

Another is how hard he worked to get elected and re-elected, and all it took to resign was five minutes to write a letter to the governor.

"I had mixed emotions about giving up my job," he said. "When I dropped that letter into the mailbox ..."

TOP BANANA: Chiquita Johnson , the general counsel of the city's legal department, continues to tick people off, including anybody who makes a request to inspect or copy public documents. Every request must go through her office, and she makes it as difficult and costly as possible to get the information.

But you can be sure Ms. Johnson is only carrying out the agenda of the mayor and commissioners, who more than anyone should be proponents of open government, just as she's carrying out the agenda of certain commissioners who complained about former city Attorney Stephen Shepard when she nitpicks the Shepard Plunkett Hamilton & Boudreaux legal bills. She goes over them with a fine-tooth comb and writes questions or comments on items and reduces the time they bill for if she thinks it shouldn't have taken that long. She reduced their March bill of $49,909 by $1,332. On one bill, she even wrote "double billing!" (She was wrong.) She writes "too vague" in the margins of many, possibly not realizing they're public documents and that detailed descriptions of the attorneys' work could lead to violating the attorney-client privilege.

You'd think she'd know that.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL? Congratulations to the Coliseum Authority! They hired Baird & Co. CPAs to get the civic center's finances in order and oversee the finance office for only $20,000 or so more a year than they paid the former finance director, about whom I shall say no more.

In recent meetings under the leadership of new Chairman Keith Brown , the board also approved motions by member Freddie Sanders to limit members to speak on any one subject twice and only for two minutes and to tighten up the agenda so unexpected subjects can't be brought up at the last minute, catching everybody off guard and igniting controversy.

Mr. Sanders is also trying to get the authority's budgets straightened out and legal. During last week's meeting he made this motion:

"I move that we ratify the phone poll in which we rescinded approval for the 2006-2007 budget as the 2007-2008 budget and approve the draft marked proposed budget for 2007-2008 as our 2007-2008 budget."

Got that?

Pretty soon, I won't have anything to write about but my cookbooks.

WHICH REMINDS ME: Milton Leathers e-mailed to say that several people sent him and his sister, Camilla , copies of City Ink in which I mentioned their mother, Mrs. Leon Milton Leathers .

"You might be glad to know that Sarah Pharr Erwin Leathers is alive and well, going on 94 this year," he wrote. "Laura Ann Segrest and Mary Neil DuBose are gone, though.

"Mother enjoyed your column. Thanks for remembering her. May I say that you have a very good memory -- as anyone who remembers Watson's Drugstore surely must have!"

Also, I made "Big Momma's Macaroni And Cheese" using the recipe Chris Gay's parents sent me. It had two 10 ounce sticks of Cracker Barrel sharp cheese, two cans of condensed milk, a stick of butter and three eggs, and now you can just call me Big Mama.

More cookbook stuff later. Out of time. Out of space.

City Ink thanks Staff Writer Sandy Hodson for her contribution to this week's column.