Neighborhood leader says county should honor contract for Little Richard’s former home

The childhood home of Little Richard Penniman in Macon’s Pleasant Hill neighborhood was in major disrepair before being relocated and refurbished by a state agency last year.

The plan is for the house to open as a resource center — a place where the history of the predominately black neighborhood can be told and services like job placement would be offered. But for the past several months, Macon-Bibb County has not paid any money toward a $96,000 contract with the Macon-Bibb Community Enhancement Authority to operate the center.

Instead, only $10,000 was budgeted for the facility by the County Commission as officials debate how much responsibility the county has in helping fund it.

That “breach of contract” means the county is not upholding its end of the bargain, said Peter Givens, president of the nonprofit Pleasant Hill Neighborhood Improvement Group.

The Pleasant Hill Resource Center is one of the key pieces of a multi-million-dollar mitigation plan tied to the major Interstate-16 and Interstate-75 expansion.

The Macon-Bibb Community Enhancement Authority has worked closely with the neighborhood organization on the mitigation work. Pleasant Hill residents developed the plans for what the resource center would offer, Givens said.

It’s time for the county to honor its commitment, he said.

“Nobody but us knows how to run it because nobody else knows what a resource house is,” Givens said. “People get awfully picky when black folks start moving forward. No one had any idea with this mitigation plan that we would have the things done that we have done.”

He later added, ““There’s going to be a fight If we don’t get the money. We are not going to sit back and just allow this to happen.”

Givens says that once the resource center opens it’ll become an important cog in the community by allowing people to learn about the rich history of Pleasant Hill.

“There’s a need for people in the community to know this.” he said. “It fosters pride in the community and makes the younger folks realize that there are things they need to do in order to live up to that.”

Contract agreement

The ambiguity of the agreement over the resource center has led to some confusion about what should be the county’s role of maintaining it.

The Georgia Department of Transportation is paying for Pleasant Hill’s mitigation work, which includes money for capital improvements to create the resource center in the former home of the architect of rock ‘n’ roll.

Macon-Bibb County is then required to maintain it but there are no other details on what that entails.

Commissioner Virgil Watkins said the mitigation agreement requires the county to meet the standards of what the Pleasant Hill organization wants for the resource center.

“Nobody, — GDOT, the federal department of transportation — wants to find out what happens when the Pleasant Hill (group) doesn’t sign the mitigation checklist,” he said this week.

However, some officials have countered that the county could use in-kind services, or there may be other ways to fund the center.

“We just don’t have the $96,000. That’s why we didn’t put it in the budget,” Commissioner Valerie Wynn said at a county commission meeting this week. “We can do it a different way. You say it can’t be done with volunteers. Yes, it can be done with volunteers. It can be done with private money and community money.”

This summer, Commissioner Mallory Jones questioned why state Rep. James Beverly was receiving a salary for his role as CEO of the community enhancement authority..

Jones remarks may have played a role for some commission members to be in favor of slashing the budget for the resource center.

Those comments led to other officials making accusations of racism against Jones for targeting a local black leader doing work in a poor, black neighborhood.

Beverly has said the $96,000 for the center would be spent to staff the facility, on a management fee as well as purchase furniture and pay the bills. But with only $10,000, the enhancement authority would back out of the contract with Macon-Bibb.

“If you honor what you said on paper then we would reconsider it,” Beverly said at Tuesday’s commission meeting. “We would reconsider and let the community decide what a resource center is. I don’t think you should nickel or dime.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 1:22 PM.