Habersham’s proposed Aquatic Center scoreboards remain unapproved in public record

Nearly two years after Habersham County commissioners considered adding four Electro-Mech baseball-field scoreboards at the Aquatic Center, the public meeting record still does not establish that the county approved, bought or installed them. At the Aug. 19, 2024 Board of Commissioners meeting, officials presented the proposed addition as part of a potential combined scoreboard arrangement, but the minutes do not record final action.

The question matters because the boards were proposed as capital equipment for county ballfields, with funding linked to the Parks and Recreation capital-improvement budget for fiscal year 2025. It also leaves residents unable to tell whether the county captured the roughly $25,000 in overall-project savings officials said could come from coordinating delivery and installation with another scoreboard job.

The proposal grew from an earlier scoreboard order for the Diamond Memorial project. Rather than pursue the Aquatic Center boards separately, county officials told commissioners that using the bid pricing already secured for Diamond Memorial and combining the work could reduce costs. That connection explains why the Aquatic Center addition came before the commission in August 2024, but the meeting materials stop at the discussion and do not show what followed.

County finance staff described the potential savings from treating the four Aquatic Center boards as part of the broader scoreboard work, while the commission was the body considering the proposed purchase. Electro-Mech was identified as the vendor whose bid pricing would be used. The record does not document a competing position from commissioners, a public dispute over the plan, or a final decision by the board.

What is documented is a proposal to add four scoreboards and an Aug. 19, 2024 commission discussion of the pricing and projected savings. What is not documented in the minutes is a motion, vote, authorization, purchase order, installation date or completed work. The materials also do not give a total price for the four boards, so both the final cost and whether the projected savings were realized remain unknown.

The next meaningful public development would be a commission minute recording final action, a purchase authorization or a later procurement record showing that the work moved forward. Until such a record appears, it remains undecided in the public record whether Habersham added the Aquatic Center scoreboards to the earlier project, whether Electro-Mech installed them, and what the county ultimately paid.