Engineering plan may cause stir

Expect controversy over a proposal to be discussed at Monday's Augusta Commission engineering services committee meeting to hire the city's water and wastewater consultants CH2MHill and two other firms to help Engineering Director Teresa Smith get some of the backlogged sales-tax projects rolling. The agenda item calls for the professional services agreement not to exceed $2.92 million.

With that much money, the city could hire 29 full-time employees and pay them $100,000 a year. Or give every current city employee a $1,000-a-year raise.

City employees, most of whom haven't had raises in four years and had to cut 6.9 percent from their budgets this year, are already in a state of near revolt over last week's approval of $128,000 in raises and new positions for information technology department employees. One of them called City Ink last week trying to find out how he could start a union.

"They treat us like garbage," he said. "The administrators are making top dollar. They don't care about us. We need a union. We need help."

Now think how they'll feel to see Ms. Smith's department shored up by almost $3 million, especially since her responsibilities, but not her pay, were cut drastically when commissioners divided the department into three divisions earlier this year.

Well, they did it for Utilities Director Max Hicks about five years ago during the city's water crisis, and we haven't had a water shortage since, says Mayor Pro Tem Marion Williams. Other commissioners just want to get the sales-tax projects moving. But other employees say hiring CH2MHill et al would be a tremendous waste of taxpayer money.

Richmond County Republican Party Chairman Dave Barbee said what he can't understand is why commissioners are talking about hiring a firm whose expertise is in water and wastewater and not in building roads.

CAMPAIGN CASUALTY: We have to wonder why former state Rep. George Brown qualified to run for the 22nd state Senate seat. Didn't he know it was bound to come out that he was ousted from the $75,000-a-year state job he helped create because of a variety of allegations, including choking a female subordinate?

It's all there in lurid detail in a file in the Georgia Attorney General's Office.

AS COLD AS MARBLE: We really couldn't expect it to be otherwise, but the atmosphere is more tense than ever on the third floor of the Marble Palace, where judges Duncan D. Wheale and William M. Fleming Jr. have their offices. The reason is that the judges' long-standing feud boiled over in the Metro Spirit recently, with Judge Wheale calling Judge Fleming "evil" and threatening to run against him in the 2006 election. Judge Fleming said Judge Wheale was mentally deranged or some such.

City Ink went over there last week to see for ourselves what was going on, but they weren't there, so we e-mailed a few questions for their consideration.

In response to one about whether Judge Fleming was speaking to him, Judge Wheale wrote, "He and I have not spoken to one another in three years. The battle between us will end if he will simply say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Judge Wheale believes Judge Fleming was behind a plot to have him indicted in 2003 because he criticized the juvenile justice system in Augusta. Judge Fleming said that was absurd. But he didn't respond to last week's e-mail.

One highly placed court official said you can bet your bottom dollar that Judge Wheale will run against Judge Fleming and Judge Fleming will retire.

Could we get a ruling on this, Judge Fleming?

HE COULD ALWAYS GET A JOB AS A STAND-UP COMIC: Augusta Administrator Fred Russell was in rare form last week preaching the virtues of the special purpose local option sales tax package to the Augusta-Richmond County Committee for Good Government. After a number of candidates stood and announced who they were and what they were running for, Mr. Russell announced he was running for City Administrator.

"They vote every time six commissioners get together," he joked.

After his recent decision to cut back garbage service to once a week to save fuel for emergency services such as fire trucks, Mr. Russell said he heard from a number of people who disagreed with him. Those names are now on a list, he joked.

"If they ever have a fire, we're not going to send a fire truck," he said. "We're going to send a garbage truck."

MAYBE NOT: Not every line from Mr. Russell went over well, however.

"Please never expect anything less than the best from your government," he declared, to a weak smattering of applause. Apparently, no one knew whether he was joking then, too.

A renowned reporter and distinguished journalist: "Life is like a vapor. It will soon vanish away," Commissioner Bobby Hankerson said at the beginning of Friday's memorial service for WGAC radio news reporter Greg Patin. "We never know the time or the hour. That is why it pays us to be as good and kind as Greg was all the time."

The flower-bedecked commission chambers were overflowing with Augusta and Columbia County officials and friends of the most unusual, kind and hardworking Mr. Patin, who was found dead Tuesday after he didn't check in at the station.

Speakers were the Rev. Hankerson, interim Mayor Willie Mays, WGAC News Director Mary Liz Nolan, talk show host Austin Rhodes, Columbia County Emergency Management Agency Director Pam Tucker, Columbia County School Board member Michael Sleeper and Fort Gordon Public Affairs Officer James Hudgins. Coni Sansom, co-general manager of Beasley Broadcasting in Augusta, sang Amazing Grace to many a tear.

A common theme was how surprised Mr. Patin would have been to know that so many people thought so highly of him. He never would have believed it, they said.

In his remarks, Mr. Mays said, "We live in reverse, as though life is so certain and death is uncertain, when we know in reality it is just the opposite." For that reason, he said, we never know what occasion will be our last with someone we care about.

The last time I saw Mr. Patin was the Friday before he died. We were waiting for commissioners to come out of their closed-door meetings where they were trying to put together a sales tax package. We talked a lot at meetings. Sometimes we interviewed each other. There was a sadness about him although he never spoke of his personal life, except to say he had had an unhappy childhood.

I loved his offbeat sense of humor. It was wonderful, really. I quoted him more than once in this column, always with his permission, but he always insisted I preface the quote with some flattering description of him, which I never did. He wanted to be that "distinguished journalist" or "renowned reporter." I can't remember exactly, but he was everything he ever said he wanted to be and more, and he didn't even know it.

City Ink thanks Staff Writer Tom Corwin for his contributions to this week's column.

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylvia.cooper@augustachronicle.com.