Work can resume at the new EMS station in West Jackson following action by Superior Court Judge David Motes Monday morning to dismiss a temporary restraining order that halted the project on Nov. 20.
Four county citizens, Albon Gilbert, Jerry Tate, James Lyle and Doug Waters, filed the lawsuit to stop the project, claiming the county has not lived up to the terms agreed to in the 2010 SPLOST, which is funding the EMS station. The suit says that the county hasn’t appointed committees and filed annual reports, as required.
But Motes ruled that these issues are “not sufficient reasons to maintain the restraining order.” He added that the project has been “on the table” for several years. County officials reported that $430,000 has already been spent to construct the EMS station on the site.
“There is a lot of money at stake here,” county attorney Julius Hulsey said at the hearing on Monday. “A substantial amount of money has been put into this project. We are asking the judge to dismiss the temporary restraining order.”
Hulsey added that the costs to the county “far outweigh any damages to the plaintiffs.”
“It would not be fair to the taxpayers to continue this restraining order,” he said.
Another hearing will be set to argue the other issues raised in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, David Jones, was not present Monday morning but Motes decided to proceed anyway, noting that Jones had only contacted the court 10 minutes before the hearing was to start to state that he is sick.
“I’ve received nothing in writing from Mr. Jones,” the judge said.
Commissioner Tom Crow, the incoming board of commissioners chairman who helped the four citizens facilitate the lawsuit, asked if he could speak on behalf of the plaintiffs, but he was not allowed to do so.
“You are not one of the plaintiffs,” Judge Motes said. “You are one of the defendants. You are represented by counsel.”
More than 30 county and city officials, public service workers and citizens attended the court hearing. All five members of the board of commissioners — chairman Hunter Bicknell, Chas Hardy, Dwain Smith, Bruce Yates and Crow, were there.
While the EMS location has been the center of the controversy, the lawsuit only deals with technicalities of how the project was handled. According to the terms of the 2010 SPLOST, the county was supposed to create a 10-member Citizens Review Committee and a five-member Joint Technical Committee to oversee the SPLOST funds. But the county never created those two groups, according to the lawsuit.
In addition, each year the county is supposed to publish in the local newspaper an accounting of its SPLOST projects’ status. The lawsuit alleges that the county has not published any SPLOST status reports from 2005-2011.
