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AUGUSTA, Ga. () – As Augusta’s infrastructure receives a facelift with fresh landscaping, the city’s mayor is pushing for the establishment of a dedicated maintenance department to manage this increased workload effectively.
Mayor Garnett Johnson emphasized the importance of a focused effort to preserve the beauty of Augusta’s major gateways, downtown corridors, and right-of-ways. “It’s essential for us to maintain these areas consistently,” he stated.
The city is currently exploring different strategies, including forming a new vegetation department or enhancing the current system, to address this need effectively.
One innovative proposal includes the introduction of “strike teams” specifically designed to tackle critical areas requiring immediate attention.
“Our plan involves dividing the city into zones, assigning regular crews to each, while the strike team remains flexible to address urgent issues without interrupting scheduled tasks,” explained the City Administrator.
The administrator said the strike teams could tackle the areas that generating the most complaints.
“So, what we would do is actually identify the locations where we are having the most problems, the hot spots is what we are calling them, as we try to assign respective staff that would be able to address those areas,” said the administrator.
The city has a lot of hot spots during growing season so would a strike team to take them on make sense.
“I like the idea of a strike force but however I do like it under one centralized department,” said Mayor Johnson.
“How about instead of?”
“I don’t like the idea of instead of we’ve heard about strike teams, and it’s not been productive has not worked well in the past,” said Mayor Johnson.
By how Augusta will work on landscape maintenance in the future depends on how commissioners decide to strike.