Politics & Government

UPDATE: City Refuses to Release Info Regarding Cost Estimates for Demolition of Flood-Damaged Homes

Austell mayor and city council discuss a document containing information about contractors who could be chosen to demolish the 19 flood-damaged homes, but city officials refuse to release it

Update on Aug. 3: After a public records request of Austell City Attorney Scott Kimbrough, Patch was able to obtain the document in question.

 

The City of Austell is almost ready to demolish the 19 severely flood-damaged homes it acquired as part of the Hazardous Mitigation Grant Program.

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Sixteen contractors submitted proposals for asbestos abatement and/or demolition of the homes by the city’s deadline of July 22.

Each city council member, along with Mayor Joe Jerkins and City Attorney Scott Kimbrough, was presented with a city staff-created document of all the contractors and their preliminary estimated costs of the abatement and/or demolition “for observation,” Bowens said at the open public city council meeting.

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Bowens discussed and answered questions about the document in open session, but referred to the highlighted companies without naming them.

The document was not included in the public handouts for the meeting and both Bowens and Jerkins refused to release the document when Patch requested it Monday night.

The highlighted portions of the document indicated contractors whom the department found to be capable of executing the project(s), Bowens said at the open public city council meeting. However, the 19 houses may be split among contractors.

Bowens and Jerkins said because the document contained preliminary estimates of how much the projects would cost the city and thusly the city taxpayers, they would not release it to public.

Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, stated, "There is no exception to the open records act for drafts of works in progress. How taxpayer money is used is a matter of keen interest to taxpayers, and any estimates of proposed monies to be spent are subject to release under the open records act."

However, Jerkins did release a spreadsheet with the companies’ early estimates, without the highlighting, which is attached to this article.

The early estimates provided by the contractors for asbestos abatement range from $260 per home (which is an incomplete estimate) for one contractor to $9,380 (which is a complete estimate) per home for another.

Because of the large differences in price, Bowens said he and members of his department have begun one-on-one discussions with some of the contractors who submitted proposals to learn how they arrived at their cost estimates for abatement and/or demolition.

“Most of the houses that qualify for this were flooded in 2005,” Bowens said during the city council meeting.

Because of this, many of the homes were remodeled and will likely have little asbestos found, Bowens explained.

The department cannot give a final cost of the projects until the company or companies awarded the contract test homes, send results to the city and then give their pricing to remove that amount of asbestos, Bowens told the city council members and Austell citizens in attendance.

In other news,

  • City Hall will close at 4:45 p.m., starting in October, to allow employees to close out their registers and leave at 5 p.m.
  •  the city will look into a citizen’s concern that the company paid by the city to collect recycling, for which Austell residents pay a fee, has not been doing so consistently, especially in parts of town near Line Street.


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