City charter set for return to prominence with new addition to Enigma council

By T.S. Carter

 

ENIGMA, Berrien County, Georgia – Private pilot Rick Maluda’s election to Enigma City Council Post 4 seat has set the stage for city government to far more closely follow the city charter and move to end the chaos of recent years.

 

The addition of Maluda gives the council three members who want the council and mayor to stick to the city charter and to follow the limits the city’s guiding document set on the mayor’s authority.

 

“I am very much that,” Maluda said of being a supporter of the city charter. He joins Councilman Ronald Harbin and Mayor Pro-Tem Doug Webb as advocates of doing as the charter says.

 

Webb, in an interview after Maluda’s 71-65 victory over Jimmy Bennett, said he “absolutely” thinks the city can begin lessening the strife – and at times hostility — that has marked the council and its relationship with Mayor Cecil Giddens, who has held the seat for 38 years.

 

“We’ve got the right people in here now,” Webb said, and voiced relief that the city charter is back in business.

 

“We’re going to follow the charter” and begin treating employees civilly and with appreciation, said Webb, who campaigned for Maluda to help restore a strong-council form of government as set by the charter.

 

Giddens hires and fires city employees without council consent. In recent years, he is said to have begun treating Enigma workers belligerently. Five of the city’s six employees have filed mistreatment grievances against Giddens.

 

Had Bennett won in the April 15 runoff against Maluda, the council could have found itself tied 2-to-2 in voting on motions. Giddens could break the deadlock with a vote.

 

In particular, this would have given Giddens power to decide who gets hired and fired – an authority he exercises now, but outside the city charter’s provisions.

 

In a post-election interview, Maluda emphasized he is not part of a voting block with Harbin and Webb. His interest, Maluda said, is to move the city forward with a return to the city charter, a blueprint detailing the powers of elected officials and rules for governing.

 

“I’m not teaming up with anyone,” he said.

 

“I am about trying to get the city to be run more efficiently,” added Maluda, a longtime airline transport pilot who flies aircraft with “fractured” ownership as with a condo time share.

 

“Get the city’s business done”, declared Maluda, expressing impatience with the trouble and strife that has marked the city government in recent years.

 

“We need to get the budgets back on track, and we need to be able to pass an audit,” the councilman-elect said.

 

He added, “We need to get everybody” to try to work together.

 

What he really wants to do, Maluda said, is to  “stop the jaw dropping” buzz that comes with the constant feuding.

 

Such a stop, he said in a hopeful way, could “make Enigma the town nobody has heard of.”