What's a Swabra?

Why the missing PSA contract matters.

We mean besides figuring out who allows our park facilities to deteriorate while awaiting once-in-a-Covid-moon funding grants from Washington? And who has made the decision that park bathrooms should be locked almost all the time? And why don’t we have working water fountains at most parks? And why do we have some BASEball fields without ‘BASES.’

Here’s another mystery of the PSA (besides who got the millions that were stolen):

Who is Swabra, Inc.? “Swabra” is an Arabic word meaning ‘patience’ and is often a girl’s name.* This is a weird PSA question until you learn that Sweetwater Park in St Marys is owned by Swabra, Inc. This one?

Not likely, but our county property website shows the owner of Sweetwater Park on Point Peter Road is Swabra, Inc. Deeper inspection of records from 1959 shows that Swabra, Inc. was a corporation formed in the nineteen fifties and was Administratively Dissolved by the Georgia Secretary of State around 1988. But it is now 2023 and our county records still show Sabra, Inc. as the current owner of the 12-acre Sweetwater Creek Park with its mailing address the same as the PSA Rec Center.

(PS: Over 60 years ago, Swabra, Inc was formed by a group calling themselves the Sweetwater Branch Recreation Association. Made sense back then, but despite what county property records say, the corporation has been defunct for 35 years!)

But not in Camden County property records!

*Swabra Da Brown is a Facebook poster from somewhere.

This is just another example of why our county and city's elected officials should stop fighting us when we demand they fulfill the Georgia Legislature’s requirement that they operate the PSA under a CONTRACTURAL AGREEMENT meeting Georgia contract law. In their own words, the agreement will include “the mutual and reciprocal rights, duties, obligations, and performances for each” and must include which properties are included in the contract.

Maybe they'll even correct their property ownership records. Short of a legally binding contractual agreement meeting state law, we don’t even know who owns our parks.