More and more misdemeanor violators are being assigned to community service by Macon Municipal Court, and Judge Robert Faulkner put out a call last week for new places that might use the help.

The city Parks and Recreation Department, usually a heavy user of community service labor, wasn’t going to accept any more, he said via e-mail.

But the problem, according to Parks and Recreation Director Dale “Doc” Dougherty, isn’t with community service workers. It’s that paid city workers were using the extra manpower as a chance to slack off, he said.

“Community service workers should complement our workers. They should not replace our workers,” Dougherty said Friday.

Faulkner’s recent e-mail to city department heads and council members asked for ideas on nonprofit, nonpolitical organizations that could use unpaid help.

“Cemetery cleanups, neighborhood cleanups, painting and repairing road signs, picking up paper along the roadways, and sidewalk & parking lot cleanup are some of the ways we have used people in the past,” he wrote. “If we could get someone to monitor, we could use these people to clean every car in the city fleet. In these times of economic depression, surely somebody can use some free labor.”

Faulkner wrote that he was running short of places to assign people for two reasons. The court is dealing with “innumerable” unemployed or underemployed people, for one.

“When people have a big fine, they’re placed on probation,” Faulkner said. They can pay the fine in installments or work it off through community service, at the rate of $10 per hour, he told The Telegraph.

An “awful lot of people” opt for the latter, Faulkner said.

“The law says I cannot lock people up who cannot pay a fine,” he said. People are only jailed if they are assigned to community service and then do not perform, an outcome Faulkner said he deplores.

“We give them every chance in the world,” he said.

A driving-under-the-influence charge will net a minimum 40 hours community service, and driving without insurance 30 hours, plus a few more for court costs, Faulkner said.

“They’re all misdemeanors, because that’s all we handle,” he said.

Though he didn’t have exact numbers, Parks and Recreation has been the biggest recipient of community service workers, Faulkner said.

The other reason Faulkner put out his call is his impression that Dougherty isn’t going to take any more workers, at least until the city Recreation Department transfers to Bibb County control July 1.

Dougherty sent Faulkner a reply Friday morning, saying that more hands are always welcome -- just not at the city’s seven recreation centers for the next month.

“A couple of weeks ago I learned that several of our custodians spent more time on the Internet than (with) a mop,” Dougherty wrote.

Dougherty told The Telegraph he’s going to use the next month to ensure the recreation centers’ actual employees are working at capacity, and he will use that to judge how many community service workers to accept there.

“We should be doing more work because we have volunteers, not less work because we have volunteers,” he said.

More community service workers are still needed on city grounds crews, Dougherty said.

“We are doing a lot of sanding and painting at parks throughout the city, as well as a lot of work at Luther Williams Stadium,” he said.

When his department’s recreation function transfers to the county, Dougherty actually expects to use more community service. Some he’s received in the past have been skilled, outstanding workers, he said.

“I’ve hired people who’ve come to us through community service because they were such good workers,” Dougherty said.

Faulkner asked city officials to forward any ideas for new recipients of community service help to Delreti Woodford at Providence Community Corrections or to the court liaison, Macon police Sgt. Willie Gordon. Since then Faulkner has had a couple of requests for more information, but he referred those on to the probation office, he said.

Woodford, a senior probation officer, said that so far she hasn’t added any new locations to her list, but that list is already fairly long.

“We send people to … probably about 24, 25 locations,” she said.

To contact writer Jim Gaines, call 744-4489.