During last week’s Elberta Town Council work session, Mayor Jim Hamby again addressed an issue involving the dumping of dirt removed from town culverts that was delivered to his property.
Hamby told the council that some loads of leftover “trash” dirt were delivered to his residence off County Road 83 due to overfill issues at the town’s normal dumping site and a desire to cut down on unnecessary mileage for town equipment.
“It got delivered to my place because it was 1,000 feet from where we dug it out and I had space to put it,” Hamby said. “This was useless dirt - we just needed to put it somewhere.”
Hamby said someone had turned him in to the district attorney’s office and the state Ethics Commission for the dirt being dropped off at his place, even though he had made efforts to offer to pay for the dirt or give the dirt back to the town at previous council meetings.
Hamby enlisted the aid of two independent engineers to determine the value of the dirt dropped at his property, with both agreeing the value of the dirt was minimal at best, possibly $1 to $2 per yard tops.
Hamby said town public works employees wouldn’t even take the dirt back when dirt was needed.
“The town needed some more dirt to put on the shoulder of a road to help level the shoulder,” Hamby said. “They wouldn’t take the dirt back, they said they had better dirt to use.”
Hamby asked Public Works Director Johnny Crawford to assign a value to the dirt for Hamby to pay the town.
Upon the first request, Crawford said Hamby was delivered a max of 35 yards of dirt but assigned no value to the dirt. Hamby requested a proper invoice another two times before Crawford assigned the value of $1 per yard.
Hamby felt that amount was not enough, so he doubled the cost of the dirt and the amount of dirt delivered.
“I took Mr. Crawford’s estimate of the amount of dirt I received and doubled it,” Hamby said. “I assigned the maximum value of $2 per yard and I paid the town $140, which is four times the maximum value assigned by the public works director.”
Hamby included a copy of the check in the council’s work packets.
“Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll consider this ‘Dirtgate’ matter closed,” Hamby said.
