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The Champion, Thursday, January 7-13, 2016
LOCAL
Page10A
Stadium renamed for William “Buck” Godfrey
Panthersville Stadium was officially
renamed Sept. 19 the William Buck
Godfrey Stadium after football coach
William Buck Godfrey. The DeKalb
County Board of Education voted April
1 to rename the stadium.
Family, friends, former players,
coaches and colleagues of Godfrey
gathered near the scoreboard to cel
ebrate the Hall of Fame coach and this
new honor.
During his 30 years at Southwest
DeKalb, he won 273 games (the most
wins of a football coach in DeKalb),
won the 1995 Class AAAA Georgia
High School Association state cham
pionship, 13 region titles, and helped
hundreds of players earn scholarships
to college. Godfrey never had a losing
record at Southwest DeKalb and missed
the postseason just three times.
Godfrey has received many honors,
including induction in the 2010 At
lanta Sports Hall of Fame class and in
the 2014 class of the Georgia Athletic
Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
SEPTEMBER
DOWN
^TIME-0
Ellis spending 18 months behind bars
Convicted DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis was
handed a five-year sentence with 18 months to serve.
Ellis, accused of strong-arming county vendors to con
tribute to his re-election campaign, was sentenced for at
tempting to commit theft by extortion, and three counts of
perjury. The sentences run concurrently.
During the July 8 sentencing hearing, Superior Court
Judge Courtney Johnson said she took into consideration
the service of Ellis, but said she did not believe he had ac
cepted responsibility for his actions.
“You chose to serve your own interests,” Johnson said.
“Somewhere along the way, your intentions became more
focused on your own personal interests rather than those of
the citizens of this county.”
In his recommendation, DeKalb County District At
torney Robert James said that while “the state believes in
mercy.. .we also believe in accountability.”
“Mr. Ellis has done a bad thing and Mr. Ellis has to be
punished,” James said. “It had to be done for justice to be
served in this case,” James said.
In his statement to the judge, Ellis again denied profit
ing from his fundraising efforts.
Ellis said, “All of the money raised in our campaign was
used to pay legitimate campaign expenses. None of it went
into my pocket.”
Ellis, who remains suspended from office while his ap
peal makes its way through the courts, said that while he
contacted government vendors as part of his fundraising
efforts, he never once believed he was committing a crime
or that his actions would be interpreted that way.
“I do however sincerely apologize to the citizens and
regret if any of my actions cast this county in a bad light.
That was never my intention,” Ellis said.
Sanitation division streamlines trash pickup
A countywide pilot program was launched
in more than 170,000 households in unincorpo
rated DeKalb and the cities of Brookhaven, Dun-
woody and Lithonia to ease traffic and stream
line waste collection in DeKalb.
The county sanitation department experi
mented with single-stream collection of recy-
clables and reducing pickup service for all waste
to once per week. This was in contrast to the sys
tem where garbage was collected twice per week
and recycling and yard waste collected another
day.
Once-a-week collection of garbage, recycla
ble materials and yard trimmings for all single
family residential customers within the divisions
service area began on July 6.
The new collection model aims to reduce the
cost of trash pick-up services while maintaining
the county’s sanitation fees at $265 a year, the
same rate it’s been since 2006.
DeKalb County Sanitation officially
launched the “Rolling Forward to One” one-
day-a-week sanitation collection service change
public awareness campaign on May 28.
Since then, Public Information Officer Pau
line Andrea said the division hosted more than
100 community forums to “educate the public on
the program and also to receive their feedback
and hear their concerns, including the launch
of their website, door hangers and a one-month
run of a public service announcement that
played more than 7,000 times at all the theaters
in DeKalb County.
As a part of the Rolling Forward to One
initiative approach to recycling and solid waste
management, each DeKalb County resident was
issued a green 65-gallon garbage roll cart by the
end of August.
The sanitation division’s former collection
methods required collectors to pick up, on aver
age, two 32-gallon containers or bags of garbage
each day from 1,000 residential households.
With the new program residents were given the
option of downsizing to 35- or 45-gallon gar
bage rolls carts at no extra charge or switch to
a 95-gallon garbage roll cart for a one-time $15
upgrade fee.
See Year on Page 11A