Editor’s note: This is the second story in a series examining the Macon-Bibb County Community Enhancement Authority’s impact on the historic Pleasant Hill neighborhood. The authority was created by legislation introduced by State Rep. James Beverly, D-Macon, in 2012 with the sole mission of eliminating poverty in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
A decade ago, Rep. James Beverly called for more oversight for hundreds of local authorities created across the state that operate largely out of the public eye.
Now, a local authority he created can’t say how it spent some $5.4 million in taxpayer money intended to rebuild Pleasant Hill, a historically Black neighborhood that was split in two when the state built Interstate 75 through it.
The Macon Newsroom, with support from The Macon Melody, obtained records of state reimbursements showing the Macon-Bibb County Community Enhancement Authority spent hundreds of thousands for work on properties the authority doesn’t own.
A 1,500 square foot, two-story house at 1783 First Ave. is perhaps the most glaring example of how an authority with no oversight, inexperienced leadership and dismal financial management had stifled efforts to make life better for Pleasant Hill residents.
State and local records show some $180,000 of that money was spent to build a house, not for the authority, but for a separate nonprofit entity Beverly created in 2019 called Mosaic Development Inc.
No records show Mosaic transferred ownership of the property and the house to the Macon-Bibb County Community Enhancement Authority (CEA), the organization for which the house was supposed to have been built.
Public money, private property
CEA has never undergone a financial audit and the authority’s inability to explain how it spent local, state and federal tax dollars led Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller to cut ties with the organization earlier this year.
The county had been paying CEA to manage two parks and the Booker T. Washington Center, which houses nonprofits. It also paid CEA to operate the Little Richard House as a neighborhood resource center.
Asked for detailed spending records, CEA leaders instead provided a Macon Newsroom reporter with vague profit and loss statements.
To draw down federal tax dollars, the authority had to request reimbursements from the Georgia Department of Transportation for the homes it had contractors build.
In addition to the $183,500 GDOT spent on a house for Mosaic, those records show the state paid Kunj Construction more than $20,000 for work on 240 Moughon St., a vacant lot owned by a private company called Mya’s Elite Realty Group.
However, GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale said the state decided to build the home on a different piece of property nearby, one actually owned by the CEA.
“After clearing occurred it was determined that the lot was not sufficient for the structure planned,” Dale said of the $20,000 paid to the CEA for work at 240 Moughon St. “The structure was moved to the lot next door.”
Archive images show no work was completed at 240 Moughon St., other than clearing overgrown vegetation. There’s no record showing CEA ever owned the property.
Operating in obscurity
Beverly, an optician originally from Baltimore, was first elected to the General Assembly in 2011. He spearheaded the legislation creating CEA during his first legislative session. Not long after the authority entered into the multimillion dollar contract with GDOT in 2016, he served as its board chairman and its executive director, earning $65,000 a year.
The authority has skirted accountability and scrutiny with its ambiguous identity as a local authority created by state legislators. The Georgia Department of Accounts and Audits said CEA is a state authority. The Georgia Attorney General’s Office and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs both said it is a local authority.
“I figured since the state created it, it was a state authority,” former Macon-Bibb County Mayor Robert Reichert said, adding that he did not know who was responsible for its oversight.
The authority is not mentioned in the county’s annual comprehensive financial reports. However, those reports mention other local authorities which provided financial audits including three local development authorities.
In 2019, Beverly hired Tedra Huston to replace him as executive director of CEA and created Mosaic Development Inc., a nonprofit, and made Huston a board member.
With Huston at the helm of both entities, the CEA board approved a contract with Mosaic in 2020 in which Mosaic would take possession of all the authority’s properties and manage them for a 90% cut of the rental income, with the remaining 10% going to CEA.
Bibb County Magistrate Court records show Huston’s financial history includes catalog of garnishments, evictions, bankruptcies and civil complaints dating back years before Beverly hired Huston to be the executive director of the CEA.
Late last March, the CEA was served with two separate wage garnishments for Huston totaling $12,500. The CEA did not respond to either notice so, as her employer, it became responsible for paying Huston’s debt in full.
Court records show CEA chairperson Bruce Riggins signed a check for $4,500. The CEA still owes more than $8,100 related to another unanswered notice of garnishment.
In the months before Huston resigned in November, notes from meetings show the board questioned her about bounced checks and refused to approve financial reports.
Past and future
Longtime residents of Pleasant Hill are worried about the neighborhood’s future as much as they are about preserving its rich past.
The neighborhood’s history began in the 1870s. The area, and its many hills, was overlooked by white home builders who instead constructed homes on flatter land in Vineville and on College Street.
In 1986, Pleasant Hill was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Its significance as one of the most historic and culturally rich urban, Black neighborhoods stands out as “one of the most intact Black districts in the state,” according to the application for registry listing.
“It was a neighborhood where, from early on, many residents were property owners and builders of their own homes,” according to the application submitted to the registry nearly four decades ago by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “Doctors, dentists, educators, attorneys, businessmen, ministers, mail carriers, grocers, builders, many other self-employed.”
Several neighborhood leaders whose families have lived in Pleasant Hill for generations say a united front is a challenge because neighbors are not as tightly knit as they once were.
Pleasant Hill residents knew and trusted each other before the neighborhood was split in two with the construction of Interstate 75, according to historical records and interviews with dozens of residents.
Now, 60 years after the asphalt chasm cut through its hills, longtime residents can’t say who’s living next door. Many homes are vacant. Census records show a little more than 1,700 residents live there and 93% of them are Black.
Despite the long-term financial hardships spurred by the I-75 construction, Pleasant Hill remains a hot-bed for outside investors. A firewall of limited liability companies, partnerships, nonprofits and corporations obscures the ownership of hundreds of properties in the half-square mile neighborhood where 63% of residents live in poverty. Mosaic owns more than 20 properties in the neighborhood.
Updating the neighborhood’s listing on the National Historic Registry is still an outstanding promise GDOT agreed to in the Pleasant Hill Mitigation plan.
A not-so-‘open kimono’
Establishing the timeline of Beverly’s involvement with CEA and Mosaic is a challenge.
In early July, shortly after the publication of the first story in this series, Beverly agreed to meet for an interview with The Macon Newsroom because, “This is all stuff that needs to be talked about, right?”
In the first article, published last month, it was reported the CEA cannot account for how it spent tax dollars and cannot afford a financial audit. CEA chairperson Bruce Riggins told The Macon Newsroom that some of the money “might have been misplaced” and used to “keep other stuff going.”
The article followed several tumultuous months for the authority during which it lost its contracts it had with the county to manage the Booker T. Washington Community Center, operate the Little Richard House and maintain two neighborhood parks.
“It’s all a matter of public trust,” Beverly told The Macon Newsroom by phone recently while visiting his mother in Maryland. “I’ll be open kimono with you.”
At the final hour, and for the third time in months, Beverly called off the interview.
In an email after the most recent cancellation, Beverly said he left CEA in 2018, shortly after the first seven homes were hauled from the east to west side of I-75. But notes from meetings show Beverly continued leading authority board meetings well into 2019.
In an earlier phone call, Beverly claimed Mosaic was not his company but said he founded and worked for it as a consultant.
State filings for Mosaic show the nonprofit’s leadership changed officially last month.
Kim Romaine, Beverly’s legislative assistant, replaced Miriam Turner, an optician and Beverly’s business partner, as CEO. Former state Rep. Mary Robichaux replaced Erion Smith as CFO. Lawyer Mark Watson replaced recent Macon Water Authority candidate Marshall Talley as secretary.
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email [email protected].
