Lowndes County has agreed to help Columbus’ chronically understaffed public works department haul away hundreds of piles of brush that have accumulated along city roadsides.
Supervisors voted Monday to aid the effort, authorizing Road Manager Ronnie Burns to meet with city officials to hammer out specifics. The county will require no reimbursement from the city for equipment or employee time, but the board stipulated it was a short-term agreement and that only county employees could drive county vehicles used.
District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks, who proposed the partnership Monday, called it a “goodwill gesture” to the city showing the two entities can work together. He said the effort requires a “rifle” rather than a “shotgun” approach with the city making clear how it wants to attack the problem.
Board president Trip Hairston, who represents District 2, agreed.
“It will have to be defined by them exactly what they need and how we can help them,” Hairston said.
In an interview Tuesday with The Dispatch, Mayor Keith Gaskin said that’s not going to be a problem.
Earlier this month, Mark Alexander Jr., interim city chief operations officer, tagged more than 200 piles of yard debris the city had gotten behind on picking up. Gaskin said he and Alexander will meet with Burns this week to form an attack plan.
Starting as soon as Thursday, Gaskin said, public works employees will begin riding with county road workers in four county trucks removing that debris.
The agreement will only apply to things such as limbs, trees, bagged leaves and other “yard waste” the city is responsible for removing, Gaskin said.
“The goal is to get caught up,” he said. “Then public works can better manage it. This is really a game changer for us with this particular issue. I’m not sure we would have ever gotten caught up without the county being willing to help us.”
Shortly after Gaskin took office July 1, he said he began meeting with county leaders in hopes of repairing frayed relations between the two entities — a rift that peaked in the public square when the county split from the combined Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority in 2017 to form its own parks system and in arguments in 2018 over how to renew and distribute the tourism sales tax that resulted in it not being collected at all for a year. On Aug. 2, Gaskin appeared before the board to publicly request re-establishing a relationship of mutual cooperation.
Gaskin said he hopes this agreement will help produce more cooperation between the two entities moving forward.
“I’m a firm believer that the city and county are better off when they are working together,” Gaskin said. “Across the country, there are a lot of situations where city and county governments don’t work harmoniously, and I think when you see that, it’s because leaders forget who they are serving and maybe start taking things personally. That’s never a good recipe for the kind of support citizens depend on.
“We are going to keep communication lines open with the county … and be ready to reciprocate when we can,” he added.
At Monday’s supervisors’ meeting, Hairston echoed that spirit of cooperation and offered kind words for Gaskin’s young administration.
“I’m encouraged by the mayor,” he said. “He seems to have a fire in his gut and a willingness to get things done.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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