V24|NO21
ERICJOHNSON
New Shoreline
Riverkeeper to convince commission her plan is right
Augusta, like most cities, is a city of plans. Sometimes these plans don’t fit together as seamlessly as the community would like. That is why Commissioner Marion Williams and some other members of the Augusta Commission asked Savannah Riverkeeper Tonya Bonitatibus to come back before them with proof that her plan to take 14 acres of riverfront property and turn it into an eco-friendly recreation area and headquarters doesn’t upset anything already laid out in $400,000 master plan unveiled by Augusta Tomorrow back in 2009. “I guess what they want is that the plan that was put forth is implemented the proper way,” Bonitatibus says. “One of the things I heard repeatedly from Marion Williams was that this was a good plan, but it has to go along with the other plan, and it’s absolutely a part of that. I made sure of that when I drew the plans.” Still, something about her presentation to the Finance Committee on May 13 left some commissioners uneasy.
16 METROSPIRITAUGUSTA’S INDEPENDENT VOICE SINCE 1989
“I think I failed a little bit with that presentation, because I went in thinking everyone knew what was going on,” she says. “That was my fault.” Bonitatibus started this process under the last commission, when she bid $1,000 for the former Traffic and Engineering property during the city’s surplus property auction. That land once housed the old shop and had become a kind of car parts landfill. Even before she committed that money to the project, which was far lower than the highest bidder, she and an army of volunteers had been actively cleaning up the area for the last six years, removing some 200 tons of trash. Which is one of the reasons why the delay has her the slightest bit edgy. “One of the things I didn’t say was, ‘This isn’t a plan — this is actual. This has been going on for six years,’” she says. “We’ve gotten to the point now where I’m scared if we clean it up any more it’s going to be ripped out from underneath me.” She says she thinks it’s important to make a distinction between a plan and something that’s already put into motion. “I don’t know if that’s the best way to look at it, but that’s the way I look at life,” she says. “I’m not waiting 20 years to look and see what maybe we can do in the
future. No — we’re just going to start working and make this place better.” Camille Price, executive director of Augusta Tomorrow, has always maintained that the master plan is an organic document that is a suggestion of potential rather than a blueprint of fact. Not everything in the original master plan is exactly as it appeared on the first map. Though she applauds the commission’s desire to protect the area, she says she’s not used to having people — commissioners included — put all that much thought into what, for many, is an overlooked and forgotten area of Augusta. And while some may worry that her revitalization ideas might limit river access to the area’s minority population, Bonitatibus says that couldn’t be further from the truth. “These guys are fishing amongst the trash right now, and we’re trying to make it to where they can still use the river, but in a clean and safe way,” she says. Bonitatibus is scheduled to be back before the Finance Committee on May 27. If the committee likes what it hears, her plan will be forwarded to the full commission on June 4.
23MAY2013