Hobgood Defends Fire Services Plan, BOE Land Swap Deal

Editor’s note: the following letter was submitted by Canton Mayor Gene Hobgood.

While I do not routinely respond to letters to the editor, I think it appropriate to respond to Mr. (Clark) Yaggy’s letter (to the editor) dated April 28.

First let me say how much I appreciate any citizen who takes the time to contact me or members of the (City) Council with their concerns. I think it makes more sense to get the facts straight and answers from the council members before sending a letter to the editor with inaccuracies.

Mr. Yaggy asked for an explanation as to how the Council is “protecting and shepherding” taxpayer dollars when “they wasted something like half a million dollars hiring an architect...when the low bid was from a firm that has already designed existing county fire stations and thus doesn’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’.”

Fact: The low bid has never built a fire station for the county to my knowledge and did not indicate such in their proposal.

There is no direct evidence that the city has wasted any money by hiring an architect In lieu of accepting the low design-build bidder. Our request for proposals was for architectural fees not a bid for the cost and construction of the fire station. The only way to know the actual cost of the project is when the architect bids the project out to the lowest bidder.

The architectural firms only gave an estimate of the cost to build the station. Of all the estimates and design-build proposals presented to the council for their decision, five out of six firms estimated the cost to build the station at approximately $1 million, twice that of the low design-build bid.

When five out of six professional firms submit estimates so close together and yet one firm is about half their estimate, wouldn’t you feel uneasy about taking the low bid, especially since there were only two design-build bids and these two varied widely?

“They decided, at a cost of something like $1 million per year on into the future, to hire nine new fire personnel...when there was no previously expressed need for additional personnel, no agreed upon staffing plan, no particular request from the fire department other than every employer’s desire to always want additional staff.”

Fact: It is well documented that the city of Canton’s number of fire personnel is well below other cities in our county. Woodstock has almost twice the number of fire fighters than Canton with about the same population. Nine new firemen were approved by the Council in the city’s’ FY 2015 Budget to operate the new northwest Canton fire station.

When it was agreed that the county would operate the fire station and save the city some $750,000 per year, the Council decided to utilize the additional firemen to upgrade our current staffing of our two stations. Our fire service is improved because of that decision.

“And while they are at it, maybe this group can explain to downtown merchants why they felt it appropriate to chase the Board of Education out of town...in exchange for two uninhabitable buildings that the city now owns and has no clue what to do with.”

Fact: The city did not chase the Board of Education out of town. The city encouraged the BOE to stay downtown. And only when and if the BOE decided to relocate out of downtown was the city’s offer to swap land effective. Four acres downtown with two historical buildings are now under the control of the city.

One of the buildings — Building A — is in good shape for its age and could be occupied immediately. This building alone, along with perhaps .5 to .75 acres is worth at least twice what the city paid for the total acreage swapped for the buildings and four acres.

Not only was this transaction a great financial deal for the city, but the city can now control the planning and development of four important acres located on Main Street level in downtown. We have heard lots of complaints from merchants and citizens alike about the need for additional parking. Additional parking for our merchants is now available on the BOE site.

The city has been awarded a $104,000 grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission for downtown planning. This site will be a part of that planning process. The city has already had several developers express interest in the two buildings.

To say that the two buildings are uninhabitable and that the city chased the BOE out of downtown is just an exaggeration and misrepresentation of fact. I hope our editorial writer will continue to be interested and engaged in the protection of all our tax dollars. However, a more accurate editorial would be nice.

Gene Hobgood