In Columbus Mayor Keith Gaskin’s nearly two years in office, one of his greatest disappointments is how the city is spending its American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Gaskin told members of the Columbus Exchange Club Thursday at Lion Hills Center that he wanted the city and county to combine the respective ARPA funds, totalling about $20 million, to address the flooding problems both face. The money, he said, would likely have been doubled with a match from the state.
“When you are in a role like this and you feel like there is once-in-a-lifetime money coming down to deal with some of these long term issues, and you can’t do it, it is disheartening at times,” Gaskin said. “… But when you’ve got money that, if you put it in watersheds and flooding, (and it) is going to be matched one to one, is that hard? I think if you can double your money, focusing on an area that is a major issue in your city and everybody knows it. Help me, I don’t quite understand why we couldn’t get everybody behind that.”
Both the city and county spread money over several initiatives, including smaller watershed projects and employee premium pay.
A portion of the funds were also given to local nonprofits, something with which Gaskin said he didn’t agree.
“It’s very easy to get behind and promote something that people can see the results of right away or to hand off a big check to a nonprofit,” Gaskin said. “Well, the definition of a nonprofit is they are usually created to help out local, state and federal governments where there’s not public funds. They are raising money for private individuals. I’m not sure we should be handing off big checks to nonprofits. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support nonprofits that are helping things within the city.”
He said Columbus has a “perception issue” and it is important to develop initiatives to address some of the key elements of the problems Columbus faces, such as crime and recidivism.
Among these he named promoting early childhood education, improving public safety, promoting economic development in the city, cleaning up blighted properties and developing crime prevention and reentry programs.
“You cannot take your mind off of what I think are the most important things for moving a city forward,” he said. “… There are some areas we know we have to continue to focus on.”
The ‘little man in California’
A project that Gaskin holds as a victory of his administration is the agreement that has been reached to pave the road beside Chick-fil-A.
The council on Tuesday approved paving its portion of the road for $20,250. The most badly damaged portion of the road is owned by Magnolia Place Cooper LLC, which also owns the adjacent shopping center that contains Old Navy and PetSmart. Ted Cooper, who lives in California and owns Magnolia Place, has agreed to pay $27,750 to pave his portion of the road.
Gaskin indicated to the Exchange Club, though, that negotiations with Cooper had not gone smoothly. He took particular issue with Cooper telling The Dispatch in late March that he had not heard from the city until recently about the problem.
“The little man in California did not tell the truth to the paper when he said he had not heard from the city in a while,” Gaskin said, noting the process started shortly after he took office. “He had heard from us on a regular basis. He had heard from us until he got to the point that he wouldn’t answer our phone calls. The local Chick-fil-A people were catching a lot of grief because people thought it was their road.”
He said Chick-fil-A’s corporate folks were trying to contact Cooper to no avail.
“I even gave the little man in California credit for filling the holes up around Christmas time, (but) that was Chick-fil-A,” Gaskin said.
“They weren’t even supposed to do it. They just went out one night and did it. We have his attention now, I think, because I told him the next step was putting his phone number right out here by these holes. We finally got that taken care of.”
Cooper declined to comment Thursday when reached by The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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