About The champion newspaper. (Decatur, GA) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 2, 2015)
The Champion, Thursday, April 2 - 8, 2015 LOCAL Page 11A The Champion’s John Hewitt and DeKalb County Sheriff Jeff Jennifer Campbell with donations Mann with food collected by Sheriff’s office staff. Photo by from Sauers Communications Travis Hudgons Statewide food drive nets more than 11 tons Thanks to the support of readers, employees, DeKalb Sheriff’s Office, Junior League of DeKalb and Sauers Com munications, The Champion placed second in overall dona tions in Georgia Press Asso ciations President’s Challenge Food Drive. With a total equivalent of 3,261 pounds, The Champion, was beaten only by The Press- Sentinel in Jesup and is the only newspaper in metro Atlanta area that participated in the campaign. “We are excited to do something that helps people with the most basic of needs here as well as around Georgia,” said publisher Carolyn Glenn. “Helping our communities is what brought so many of us into the newspaper business, and this is just one more way in which we can show we care about life in DeKalb County.” The Champion has donated the food to DeKalb-based Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. The challenge was the idea of GPA President Eric Denty, publisher of The Press-Sentinel in Jesup and The Telfair Enter prise in McRae. “I don’t have to tell you that local newspapers are the lifeblood of their com munities,” Denty said. More than 11 tons of food were collected statewide. Brookhaven’s police plans for HOST funds by Carla Parker carla@dekalbchamp.com The Brookhaven Police Department will receive $17,580 for equipment to protect themselves from protestors. The funding came from the city’s non-allocated 2014 Homestead Option Sales Tax (HOST) funds. On March 24, the Brookhaven city council approved vari ous improvement projects throughout the city to be funded from $3.4 million in non-allocated 2014 HOST funds. HOST funds are gener ated from 1 percent of the 7 percent sales tax collected by DeKalb County, and are di vided among the county and the cities within it. Eighty percent of the HOST funds are distributed as property tax credits to homeowners and 20 percent may be used for capital projects. During a March 23 spe cial called work session, City Manager Marie Garrett told the city council that the city received $3.4 million in ad ditional funding from the county. “The reason why there are additional funds—that we were not expecting—is because of the digest in crease and how that was represented in the formula from DeKalb County,” Gar rett said. “We expected something, and we did re ceive what we were expect ing, but we received more, which we weren’t [expect ing]” The purpose of the work session was to focus on three departments—Public Safety, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation—to take a look at the “pressing, instructional improvements” the departments needed. The Public Safety de partment received a total of $186,769 for equipment, au tomatic defibrillators for pa trol cars, call boxes in parks, patrol rifles, crowd control equipment and more. “With the rise in pro tests and the things that we’ve seen in and around our area, [we realized that] one of the things that we do not have is the necessary equipment to protect our of ficer, should we have some thing like that roll over into our city,” Major Brandon Gurley told the city council. There have been protests and rallies in Atlanta and DeKalb County due to the number of police shootings involving unarmed Black men. On March 9, 27-year- old Anthony Hill of Cham- blee was shot to death by DeKalb County Police Of ficer Robert Olsen. Hill was naked and unarmed when he was shot. Brookhaven police have partnered with DeKalb County Police Department for assistance in the event a protest breaks out in the city. The department requested 15 shields and 30 sets of hel mets with masks, batons and gas masks. The department also re quested 25 additional patrol rifles for $35,800. The police HOST budget also includes three digital cameras for $555 and four digital voice recorders worth $160. Public Works received $2,047,900 in HOST funds for paving, sidewalks, mas ter plans for individual parks, bike/pedestrian trail plan, North Fork Peachtree Greenway Master Plan, various corridor studies, and rapid beacon crosswalks. Parks and Recreations received $1,210 million for pool repairs, tennis court resurfacing, Ashford Park playground, Briarwood Park Bridge, Murphy Candler Park stadium repairs and batting pavilion, and Black burn Park restrooms.
