A chaotic Monday morning meeting of a tri-county group of Pierce, Ware and Brantley County officials to discuss ideas for a proposed bypass around Waycross drew a crowd set not on observing but on demanding answers—sometimes in very loud voices.
Little progress was made and those whose homes and property might be impacted by the bypass left with few if any reassurances.
Scheduled for a 10 a.m. start, the seats for public audience members were already nearly full with many others filing into the area, lining up along walls or even taking seats on the floor.
Ware County Clerk Melinda Brooks paused her laying out copies of the agenda at the still empty seats of the officials scheduled to attend to address the already restless crowd: “The map which has been circulating is not set in stone. This is just a roundtable discussion, not a public hearing.”
It was a statement that would be echoed several times by several different officials. At different points over the next hour Ware County Manager James Shubert, Ware County Commission Chairman Elmer Thrift, Georgia House Representative for District 176 James Burchett and others all sought to clarify that this was a tri-county discussion to which the public was entitled to attend but for which there was no provision for public comment.
Some of the confusion seems to have stemmed from public comment forms from the last Ware County Commission meeting having been left on a table outside the entrance to the room. More than one member of the public had already filled out a public comment form, thinking they were meant for the Monday morning conference. Scheduled or not, public comment was going to happen.
After a few false starts, with those stuck in the hallway outside yelling that they could not hear and one gentleman loudly suggesting the meeting be moved to a courtroom downstairs, extra room was made in the council chambers as even more people piled into the confined space. A young man arrived with armfuls of “No bypass’ signs and passed them out to the crowd. One audience member murmured to themselves that the room was beyond its safe capacity and had become a fire hazard.
Nevertheless, the gathered officials pressed on. Ware commissioner Jon Tindall delivered the invocation and the room fairly vibrated to the sound of approximately 300 or more people saying the Pledge of Allegiance in unison. There unity ended. What followed can only be described as controlled chaos.
Originally meant as a chance for Pierce, Ware and Brantley officials to confer about the viability of a proposed bypass road around Waycross, and to consult with members of Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and state senators and state house representatives, the bulk of the meeting was spent engaging with and attempting to mollify a crowd that demanded to be heard, sometimes all at once.
At times, there was laughter and amusement, often toward the reluctance of some officials to wade into the verbal fray, but tempers ran more toward anger and confusion than they did jolliness. In response to the announcement that there would be no public comment, one member of the public angrily demanded, “Then why did you invite us?”
Some in the crowd accused Ware Chairman Thrift of looking to personally profit from the bypass project.
“Of course you aren’t against it,” one voice rang out, “You own an asphalt company!”
Explanations that the maps and images of the bypass currently circulating were just one of many were met with skepticism and calls to know just how many different bypass plans there were to choose from.
At one point, perhaps for lack of a gavel, the Ware County Manager pounded his open palm on the table and yelled for order.
Another time, he singled out one lady in the audience, saying, “If you interrupt me one more time, I’m going to ask you to leave. I’m tired of your mouth.”
One older resident of Pierce County reminded those present of the checkered history of cooperation with Ware, recalling a sewage treatment facility landing in the Hacklebarney community and disputes over trash pickup. He finished with, “If you got a problem in Ware County, you need to solve it in Ware County... We would like to help you any way we can, but stay out of Pierce.”
Another younger gentlemen opined, “There is no traffic in Midway where this bypass comes through. I don’t want to raise my kids on a four lane.”
Porter Johns of Ware County said, “They’ve been talking about a bypass since I moved here in ‘88. I ain’t seen it or an overpass yet.”
David Lowman, commissioner for Pierce County’s fourth district, said votes, not phone calls would make his decision for him. He would vote the way the taxpayers decided on the ballot. Commissioner Davison of Brantley County said, 'I'm more against it than anything. I've yet to hear anyone say they are for it,' which was met with applause.
State House Representatives Corbett, and Steven Meeks (R, Screven) and State Senator Russ Goodman (R, Cogdell) all expressed approval for putting a referendum to be voted upon by the public.
In the end, little actual exchange of ideas or fine tuning of plans for the proposed project occurred, but those gathered to witness the meeting, protest the bypass or both extracted various promises from elected officials of all three counties to support a ballot measure in the coming year that would place the decision on the bypass in the hands of the taxpayers.
