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ATLANTA — The City of Atlanta’s plan to invest $750 million in the city’s infrastructure and economy is falling behind, according to a recent audit.
The money will be approved by voters in 2022 and will go to more than 200 projects over five years.
The plan approved by the City Council calls for the first “batch” of 94 projects to be “activated” in 2023.
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A total of three projects were in the construction phase.
“Activating a project is basically assigning a project manager to punch some numbers and keys on a computer and see if there’s money there,” City Councilman Dustin Hillis said. said.
The city Department of Transportation heard an analysis of the audit at its Jan. 17 meeting. The audit revealed that many projects scheduled to start in 2023 have not been started.
On January 22, members of Congress received an update on the status of the 2023 project.
While these numbers showed improvement, they found that 19 of ATL DOT’s 56 projects have not yet started and only 12 have made it past the “activation” stage.
By comparison, all 31 of the Parks and Recreation Department’s projects were past the activation stage.
“We are talking about replacing the sidewalk that already exists and already has the right-of-way, but that project is not going anywhere,” Councilman Hillis said.
The audit noted that project manager salaries were not competitive and the city was unable to hire enough people to start the project on time.
“You can’t compete with the civilian labor market by paying people a pittance,” Hillis said.
An ATL DOT spokesperson said in a statement that the audit represents a snapshot of its infrastructure program.
“Of the 94 projects included in Batch 1, 85 (90%) have now started for delivery,” the spokesperson said.
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These figures also include projects from other departments. But it’s still higher than data provided to city councilors a few days ago.
channel 2 action news I asked where the recently “activated” projects were progressing, and whether all projects had project managers as of January 25th, but did not receive an answer.
The full text of the proposed plan can be found starting on page 55.
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