Regency Mall tale proves taxing for commission candidate

On the campaign trail in Augusta, the Joe Biden award goes to Bill Lockett , the big man running for the District 5 seat on the Augusta Commission.

At a candidate forum last week, Mr. Lockett, a member of the Richmond County Board of Assessors, said the board raised the taxable value on Regency Mall to force the owner to either sell it or develop it.

Though he took it all back after the alert Chronicle reporter Johnny Edwards questioned him and wrote about it on his blog, The City Core , the genie was out of the bottle.

It wasn't long before board Chairman Charles Smith e-mailed The Chronicle , saying board members had read Mr. Lockett's comments "with disbelief" and that "at no time" had the board even considered placing a value on the defunct mall or any other property with the intention of forcing an owner to sell or develop it.

So where do you suppose Mr. Lockett got the idea they had?

The same place Mr. Biden -- of gaffe-making renown -- got that three-letter word, j.o.b.s?

No. He said he read it in the newspaper.

SCHOOL BOARD COVER-UP: Baggy pants were on the agenda at a Richmond County Board of Education committee meeting last week.

Of course, they didn't call it that. They called it "Dress Code at Sporting Events."

The big question was whether it was legal to force nonstudents attending school sporting events to pull up their pants.

Board attorney Pete Fletcher said it was. All they had to do was post some "modesty signs," but the question was, who would enforce it?

To trustees Barbara Pulliam and Venus Cain , it was simple.

"Just say no," they said.

After all, Mrs. Pulliam said, restaurants do it all the time.

"They have signs out there saying you can't come in here without a shirt and shoes on," she said. "I mean, that's their policy. I think you can keep it legal and say, 'You can't show your underwear.' "

Male students' underwear isn't the only thing that needs to be covered up, according to trustee Billy Atkins . He said the things cheerleaders, band members and the color guard wear leave too little to the imagination.

"I'm a little embarrassed by some of the things these young ladies have on," he said.

So that might be the next crackdown in the never-ending cycle of the old folks trying to keep clothes on the young ones, though really, as they sang about Kansas City in the musical Oklahoma , "It's gone about as fur as it can go."

And now, it really has.

JUST SAY NO. NO IFS, ANDS OR BUTTS:

At school activities extra-curricular

Your inseam must always be perpendicular

No sagging, no bagging, no dragging the ground

While you hold up your pants and strut around.

School board members have had enough

They've banded together and gotten tough

Barbara and Venus said, "Just say no."

To droopy drawers wherever you go.

Pete said it would be legal to put up signs

Saying, "No sagging pants here, no bare behinds."

They voted unanimously, and soon you won't see

Kids with their pants' crotches below the knee

This rule is for all, no exceptions, no slack

Everyone will be checked.

None will slip through the crack.

AIMING TO PLEASE: The school board's human resources committee also discussed calendar options for 2010-11 and 2011-12. Teachers had been polled about whether they preferred starting the school year on Friday or Monday, and an overwhelming majority chose Monday, which seemed to be a surprise to everybody.

Someone asked Superintendent Dr. Dana Bedden which day he preferred, and he said any other year his opinion might be different, "but the way morale is right now, I want to give them what they want."

TEXTS AND SUBTEXTS: During the school board's finance committee meeting, Athletic Director George Bailey was called to the podium to answer questions about why some schools get more athletic equipment and uniforms than others.

Mr. Bailey said it was because the coaches at some schools ordered more equipment and uniforms than others. And some schools, he said, have booster clubs that buy most of the items the teams need, so they don't order much.

Trustee Frank Dolan said he didn't feel favoritism was being shown to any school, but he wanted to make certain it wasn't.

"I have had parents come to me and call me, more than I should have received, whatever the number is, whining and pointing fingers, 'We didn't get this. We didn't get that,' " he said. "I don't want to hear it anymore. I want to put this issue to rest."

Mr. Bailey said he doesn't place a single equipment order.

"It's placed by the schools," he said. "And because of that, I don't see how anyone can say I'm being unfair to a school."

Board President Marion Barnes said he just wanted to point out one thing about what Mr. Dolan and others had said because he knew the underlying suggestion was that Mr. Bailey was being unfair.

"I knew that," he said. "And I think all y'all know I knew that, and that's why I brought it up. But if you look at these sheets here and see what each school is spending, it's what they ordered. Not what Mr. Bailey ordered. So if it's any unfairness, they're doing it to themselves. I'm going to say this, and y'all get mad if you want to, but I think it's bad when we question a man's integrity, and we don't know what we're talking about."

A GOOD OLD JOE: The discussion about parents complaining put me in mind of a long ago next-door neighbor.

He'd been a school superintendent for many years in Alabama until he got burned out with parents calling all hours of the day and night to complain about any and everything.

He said if a child didn't get as many beans in his soup as some other kid, the parents would call to complain.

So he got fed up with it, went back to graduate school, became a professor of education and drank himself to death.

A MILLION HERE, A MILLION THERE ...: Last week, I was waiting for a reply from assistant city attorney Kenneth Bray about where I thought he might find information on how much business state Sen. J.B. Powell has done with the city's water consultant, CH2MHill, and its companion company Operations Management International since leaving the Augusta Commission at the end of 1999. As the commission's engineering committee chairman, Mr. Powell had pushed for OMI to get the multimillion-dollar contract to manage the city's wastewater treatment plant.

Mr. Bray had sent some information earlier, but I didn't think it included everything Mr. Powell's companies had been paid because the last time I checked in 2004, Mr. Powell had done $2.17 million in subcontract work for Stevenson & Palmer Engineering, which was working for OMI.

The totals Mr. Bray had from CH2MHill and/or OMI totaled only $1.9 million. So I amended my initial freedom of information letter to include the amounts the two companies and their subcontractors had paid to the Powell companies.

Mr. Bray responded, saying he was trying to get some of the information from city finance department archives, where I knew it was not. So I e-mailed him and asked him to call so we could discuss it.

He did not call last week, but this week he did, and now he's my new best friend. Not that I got any more information. CH2MHill and OMI said they do not track money the folks they hire pay to their subcontractors.

So I guess we'll never know exactly how much money Mr. Powell's companies were paid for subcontracting work on CH2MHill and OMI projects, other than what I've already mentioned. But I'll bet it was a lot.

FONT OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: Tom Wiedmeier , a former assistant director in the Augusta Utilities Department, is a finalist for the director's job, along with two Floridians.

Mr. Wiedmeier worked for the city during the droughts and tough times of the late 1990s when the system began falling apart and tanks were running out of water.

He did a good job under the worst circumstances imaginable, so think what he could do now after the system has had $400 million worth of repairs.

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228.