City Government
Maysville, Georgia

William Austin resigned as mayor of Maysville, Ga., because the job was "just such a headache."

Andrew Stickland, elected councilman on write-in vote, said he didn't want the office.

Boundary between Banks and Jackson Counties splits Maysville's city hall, once a bank building.

Main Street is quiet in mid-afternoon.  Business picks up when commuters get home from work.

Maysville really isn't big enough to have so many problems, but is has them nevertheless.  The town is situated on the Jackson-Banks county line, and while it is quaint to have a county line running through city hall, even that can be a problem.

"The county line runs along the railroad and then kind of leaves off the railroad uptown and goes right through city hall," William Austin, Maysville's resigned mayor, said.  "If there's somebody cutting up in Banks County and you call the Banks County sheriff, they come across the railroad.  If they cut up in Jackson County, you call the Jackson County sheriff and they go across the railroad."

Austin quit as mayor in September, but it looked as if he might never get to leave office. A dispute arose about the special election to be held in November to choose his successor, and he thought he might be stuck with the office for some time.  "It's the only job I ever had that I couldn't quit," Austin said.

Maysville is in northeast Georgia seven miles from Commerce.  It was incorporated in 1879.  For years its chief industry was a mop plant.  "This gave employment to many men and women and gave them a chance to earn Social Security," says a short history of the town in the 1971 Maysville Autumn Leaf Festival catalog.

That is nice, but also a problem in a way.  The mop factory is gone, but the Social Security recipients are not, and when the Farmers Home Administration got onto the town to raise its water rates to help pay off a federal loan for Maysville's sewer system, Mayor Austin was adamant against any increase.

"This town is made up of old people, retired people," he said.  "We have 70 widow women out of 553 population.  I would say about 85 percent of the people living in this town are retired.  Our water bill is $6 minimum.  These ladies that live by theirself, they'll draw a $42-a-month check and then they have to pay $6.  I just can't have the heart to raise the bill."

The widows' plight is only indirectly a problem of city government, however, and if William Austin had to name one thing above all others that led him to resign, it would be the problem of law and order in Maysville.

"People hollered at us all the time about the police," Austin said.  "Just all the time.  You couldn't keep a police up here.  They want one 24 hours a day, but you can't hardly afford one at night.  You couldn't get a police to work.

"We had an old wore-out '66 Chevrolet.  People would just come up here and lay drags and run, and the police couldn't catch them and he'd get disgusted and ready to quit.  If he's not got anything to do the job with, he can't do the job."

So the Austin administration purchased a new police car although the town treasury could scarcely stand the expense.  The $2,485 vehicle--"they gave us rock-bottom price"--did not solve the police problem.  In the 19 months between Austin's inauguration and resignation as mayor, Maysville had five different men on its one-man police force.

"Most of them they don't want to work by theirself and I don't blame them," Austin said.  "There's so much going on.  Now, a police is supposed to have a high school education and 116 hours of training. It's hard to get them.

"I did hire a man that had the training and the education.  He worked one night and two hours.  Moved all the way down here from Pine Mountain, Ga.  When he quit, I tried to get him to tell me what happened.  All the information he give me was he said, 'They's a difference in being brave and being a fool.'  That's all he would say."

The regular police shift was from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., but last fall when funds got low, the town could afford to pay its one officer only for weekend duty.  He quit in mid-November.  Mayor Austin didn't advertise immediately for a new man, because there was no money to hire one.  There wasn't even money to pay for the ads.

Sometimes when Maysville was without a policeman or when it had one and he was off duty, people would call Mayor Austin and report alleged mischief of misdeeds.  "I would get in the car myself and go to town and put a stop to it," he said, "and then everybody gets mad at me for doing it.  Says it's not my place to do it.  Looks like people just set around and wait for something to happen.  No matter what it is, they want to see something happen.  Then complain if you don't arrest anybody, and complain if you do."

On one occasion when Austin tried to break up a noisy gathering of youths in city park, the situation almost got out of hand and Austin was severely criticized by some townspeople.  To him, the reaction to the incident was further evidence of a sort of double standard: People want law and order, but they don't want the authorities to get personal about it.

"Somebody gets caught speeding or DUI in Maysville, it's a crying shame," Austin said, "but if they get caught down there in Commerce or somewhere, they don't say anything about it.  They pay their fines and go on.  But they just don't seem to think it should work that way in Maysville."

Law enforcement seems to be a self-defeating proposition in Maysville.  Because the town is almost broke so much of the time, revenue from fines is important to the police budget.  The mayor conducts court, but the number of cases fluctuates considerably.

"Each time you changed police, you'd have a good many cases," Austin said.  "Then they would learn he was going to catch them and they'd slow down and sometime you wouldn't have one case.  When you don't have no cases to try and no money coming in is when your pot's getting low.  You about give out of money to pay the police."

One cause of Maysville's financial troubles is a payment of $1,195 due every month on the sewer system, biggest public improvement since it got a town well and water mains in 1948.  The Farmers Home Administration loaned Maysville around $300,000 in 1968, to be paid back at the rate of $1,195 a month for 40 years.

The $2 minimum for water was raised to $6 a month to help pay off the loan.  Some people's blood pressure went up more than that, because they'd somehow go the idea that the sewer system wasn't going to cost them anything.  Some refused to pay their water bills, and when Austin became mayor in 1970, he found a few accounts as much as $100 in arrears.

The town itself was in arrears on its loan payments by approximately $5,000, and it kept getting further behind.  Ad valorem taxes, business licenses, state aid and municipal court fines are the main sources of revenue besides water.  All put together, they still leave the town in a hole.

Installation of sewers left the streets in bad shape, and Austin begged and begged and begged and finally got two miles of street paving out of the State Highway Department before Jim Gillis was ousted as director.  Then people complained that the new pavement was too narrow.  "I told them you take what you can get when you beg," Austin said.

According to Austin, he had no sooner taken office as mayor than the FHA descended on Maysville in force to try to make the council raise water rates to an $11 monthly minimum in order to keep up with the payments on the sewer loan.

"There's 13 come one night, from Atlanta, Washington and a little bit of everywhere, I guess," Austin said.  "They thought they...(rest of story missing).

Page last updated 10/31/2006

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