Ben Goff and Steve Weinkle have been summoned to Camden Superior Court Thursday DECEMBER 7 at 9:30am to explain why our lawsuit against the County Commissioners should be allowed to proceed. In October (see earlier post here), we sued to force the Commissioners to enter into a contract with the Public Service Authority (PSA) that includes the transparency required under Georgia law. It’s a fact that we can’t force the County Commissioners to vote a certain way. However, without a properly executed, enforceable contract, Commissioners would have to stop sending the PSA more than half a million dollars a year.
Camden’s attorney has told the court we don’t have the right to an enforceable contract with the PSA, but we believe our right is explicit because what we ask for was written into the statutory law creating the PSA. So here we go again. Remember the spaceport?
But Parks are important.
Camden County could have the best parks in the region. Without direct access to a beach, great parks could become the magnet for families and retirees, elevating Camden above neighboring counties as a great place to live, and work, and to build companies.
Great Parks will attracting folks who value:
A Public Center for each of our Communities
Mental Health Boost From Close Contact With Nature
A Place for Physical Activity
A Place for Kids to Be Outside
Protect Natural Ecosystems
Our action is required because the PSA has failed to maintain our parks, playgrounds, and ball fields and Camden County let that happen. That’s not just our opinion. A PSA Board meeting heard from a Camden baseball travel team coach who complained this team could not play home games here because other teams refused to play on the PSA’s poor fields. We continue to find human poop behind park bathrooms that are padlocked. Commissioners heard directly from a resident who rented a pavilion only to find the refrigerator was unplugged and moldy and that the stove was missing.
The County Administrator swatted the same mosquitos and sand gnats as we did at a meeting he called at our park's pavilion that was missing lots of screening and ended at dark because the light bulbs were deader than doornails. The county’s best wilderness trail is blocked today behind signs saying, “Danger. Do Not Enter.”
Unincorporated Camden taxpayers sent more than $550,000 this year to the PSA. City taxpayers sent another million or so, but we simply could not discover what taxpayers are due for our money.
For instance, who made the decision to lock our park bathrooms? Who decided there would be NO swings at Harrietts Bluff Park? Who is responsible for replacing the park bench that was broken by a PSA mover at Mary B. Smart Park? Who decided that it is OK for some, but not all, Camden County parks to not have a single water fountain? Who decides that it is OK for a basketball or tennis court to be unusable for years and years? Who ordered, then rescinded the order, to bulldoze the former Par-3 Minigolf course and who has been responsible for it falling into ruin? After all, the same Commissioners we’re suing have money for perpetual lawsuits over their spaceport failure.
After 33 years of the PSA, shouldn’t we know who is responsible for what? Simple things like who is responsible for maintaining door closers at park pavilions is easily overlooked when millions are stolen under management’s keen eye. Keep in mind that a lot of the attention being thrown at our parks right now is to fix their years-long decline and ambiguities in existing, non-enforceable agreements. If it were not for COVID and the resulting free money from Washington, DC, it is pretty likely we’d still be waiting for the long overdue repairs and updates.
Multiple Georgia Open Records Act requests to the PSA and Camden County government never provided the enforceable contract listing the "mutual and reciprocal rights, duties, obligations, and performances.” Georgia law and the PSA founding legislation requires a contract “for the provision of services, or for the joint or separate use of facilities or equipment.“ And what, exactly, are those “services,” “facilities,” or “equipment”?
Instead of simply pursuing the required contract, at least three of our five commissioners have decided they’d rather fight us in court. Most taxpayers think that if we’re going to pay a lawyer to write a 20+ page response to our lawsuit for the required contract, he could have just written the contract.
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