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QUICK FINDER Business 21A Education 19A Sports 22-23A Opinion 5A Classified 20A BROOKHAVEN CITY MANAGER SALES POPPING ALLEGED EX-MAYOR AT TIFFANY'S RETALIATED AGAINST HER POPCORN CAFE LOCAL, 10A BUSINESS, 21A FORMER NFL PLAYERS WORK WITH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS SPORTS, 23A The Official Legal Organ ofDeKalb County, GA. Serving East Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Clarkston, Decatur, Doraville, Dunwoody, Lithonia, Pine Lake, Tucker and Stone Mountain. \jjti lib Social/ thechampionnewspaper.com SECTION A: VOL. 24 NO. 52 TheChampion JUNE 25 - JULY 1, 2015 ist Place General excellence Award winner Georgia Press Association ‘Better Newspaper Contest’ 2007, 2009-2015 500 Doraville streamlines updates for Assembly by Ashley Oglesby ashley@dekalbchamp.com Doraville is taking care of busi ness. Doraville Mayor Donna Pitt man and other city officials hosted a town hall meeting on June 22 that brought more than three dozen con cerned guests into the city’s Civic Center. “We have a lot of exciting things going on in our city and the whole region. Were going to continue to have a lot of exciting things going on, and as we go along, we want to continue to keep the public in formed,” Pittman said. The Bleakly Group, a consulting firm working on Doraville’s redevel opment plan, presented information on the proposed Tax Allocation Dis trict (TAD). Vice President of The Integral Group Eric Pinckney and partner Dave Schmit updated officials and attendees on the Assembly develop ment project located on the former General Motors site. Audience members were asked to write down questions throughout the presentation to be answered by See Doraville on page 15A County division has 80 youth jobs available by Andrew Cauthen andrew@dekalbchamp. com DeKalb Workforce De velopment wants to give jobs to 80 youth, ages 14 to 24. “We work to put people back to work,” said Cheryl Stone, director ofDeKalb Workforce Development. “We work to connect busi nesses with a skilled work force, whether it’s through customized training for job seekers, on-the-job training or if.. .someone just needs to dust off their resume and package themselves a little bit differently.” Currently approximately 175 DeKalb youth are en rolled in the federally funded year-round program. In ad dition to summer jobs, the program provides academic remediation and leadership and entrepreneurship train ing. “We put young people in a position that they will be productive citizens,” Stone said. Seventy-five percent of the approximately $1.8 mil lion in annual funding is al located for the out-of-school youth participants—unem ployed high school gradu ates, school dropouts, or those with juvenile or crimi nal records. Twenty-percent of the funds are used to give youth jobs in the private or public sectors. Stone said the goal is to put 250 youth in jobs, and DeKalb Workforce is “ac tively recruiting.” To be eligible for the pro gram, youth must be from low-income families and have another “barrier” such as homelessness, basic skill deficiency, pregnant or par enting, a runaway, in foster care, or a school dropout. Ashton Stephens, 20, of Decatur began participat ing in the program when he was a sophomore at Destiny Academy of Excellence. Now he has a full-time job as a re ceptionist at DeKalb Work force Development “I’m the first line of con tact,” said Stephens, who has been working full-time since February. “I just hold that friendly atmosphere and try to keep it as comfortable as possible as you come in. “I pretty much know... about all the job opportu nities and services that we provide,” he added. “I [let] all of our customers and clients know about what’s going on.” When Stephens was a sophomore in high school, a DeKalb Workforce case worker had a recruitment session at Destiny Academy of Excellence. “I wasn’t supposed to be in the meeting,” Stephens said. “They called for all the seniors to stay in the cafete ria. . .and I just decided to stay in the cafeteria.” After the meeting, Ste phens talked with the case worker and signed up for the program. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do while I was in high school, so DeKalb Workforce is here to get me on the right path, just to help me out,” Stephens said. In the program, Stephens started working as a janitor at Destiny Academy, then at Miller Grove High School. During the summer after his junior year, he worked in the county’s property ap praisal office as an office as sistant, doing “a lot of filing and data entry,” Stephens said. The next summer, he See Workforce on page 15A Blaine Allen, a recent graduate of DeKalb Early College Academy, is enrolled in DeKalb Workforce Development’s youth program. Ashton Stephens, 20, landed a full-time job at DeKalb Workforce after working in the summer youth program. Photos by Andrew Cauthen 64 116 f CHAMPIONNEWSPAPER □CHAMPIONNEWS (f|CHAMPIONNEWSPAPER ©CHAMPNEWS