WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — The city of Warner Robins approved their 2021 budget last week, with $500,000 set aside to fight blight in the city.
Warner Robins isn't an old city, but Mayor Randy Toms says they still have areas they struggle with.
"Areas that have gotten older and they're run down a little bit, that's mainly what we have," Toms said.
He says it's primarily the north side of town, near Watson Boulevard and Robins Air Force Base.
"Everything continues to grow south and as it continues to grow south, north of Watson is still our biggest area of struggle," Toms said. "We want the whole city to look good. I think that one of the big concerns overall has been, 'How do we look from the gates of Robins Air Force Base?'."
Toms says the fight against blight is nothing new. The city has already spent close to $3 million cleaning up some of these buildings.
"We've done an incredible job too over the last several years, at least in and around Watson Blvd, of using some financing that we had through community development block grants, that kind of stuff, to go in there and buy up some of that property and clean it up," he said.
Back in 2009, the city received nearly $630,000 to acquire and demolish properties along Ignico and Tabor drives from Georgia's Department of Community Affairs.
In 2018, the city brought in an outside agency, Mosaic Community Planning, to conduct a four month study to establish where the problem areas are and give recommendations to the city on how to clean them up.
"After so much neglect, there’s so much to do and so for us to clean up ... a piece of private property, we have to acquire that property and then actually go in there and do the cleanup," Toms said.
For the city to acquire the property to demolish or clean it up, they must go through a few steps:
- An initial inspection to look at the condition of the building, either voluntary by the owner or with an order from a judge
- Determine any code violations and estimate the cost of repairs versus the assessed value of the property
- Meet with owner to discuss their intent on repairs and give them an allotted time for completion
- If there is no response from the owner, then the city will proceed with a condemnation request through the City Attorney’s Office and Municipal Court
- The city must attend a court hearing and enforce the judges' ruling
Now, there are more funds in the budget and a newly formed Neighborhood Committee with councilmen Charlie Bibb, Larry Curtis, and Daron Lee.
"They've already put out some ideas on how they want to move into the future and there's some funding that was left in the budget for those purposes. I think that we need to make sure we use them wisely, use them where we can, and help people get things were they need to be," Toms said.
Toms also says the new North Houston Sports Complex is another large investment the city is making in the north side of town.
The $17 million project is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.