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LOCAL
34t £
KHAMPIGNl
March 31 - April 6, 2016 • Page 4A
John Siegel calls them “happy
chairs.”
He purchases and paints
rocking chairs for children
and donates them to nonprofit
organizations around Georgia.
In DeKalb, the chairs have gone
to Our House, Scottdale Early
Learning Inc., and Coralwood
Center School.
“I started out doing them
with my grandchildren,” Siegel
said. “My partner and I have 21
grandchildren, so I did quite a few
chairs.
“What I do with each chair is
each chair has over 25 colors on it,
and lots of dots, and it’s just fun,”
he said.
Siegel said he has determined
that “no two [rockers] could be alike
because...there are 35 different
planes that I could change colors on
and 25 colors that I’m working with.”
Each chair also has “three
coats of paint and one coat of
polyurethane and probably 1,000
dots,” Siegel said.
“I enjoyed doing them so
much for my grandchildren that I
made the decision about 10 years
ago that I would start doing it for
charities,” Siegel said. “And if I got
a sale, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
Siegel said he recently finished
painting his 478th chair.
“I paint every day. I thoroughly
enjoy it. It gives me a great deal of
pleasure,” he said.
For chairs that go to a particular
child, Seigel puts that child’s name
on the chair. He signs all chairs as
“Granddaddy John,” puts a date on
them and puts what number rocker
that is for him.
“I’ve got a picture album that
I keep that has every rocker that
I’ve done in it and where it’s gone,
which is kind of fun to flip through,”
Siegel said.
Siegel said he paints and
donates the chairs because he
loves working with the colors.
“I enjoy doing something that I
know will put a smile on kids’ faces,”
he said. “I love the idea that these
chairs are going in places and to
kids that would not normally be
exposed to something fun like this.
“It’s extremely rewarding to
me,” Siegel said. “They make me
happy and hopefully they make the
children happy.”
John Siegel
Doraville to spend $400K on emergency pipe repairs
Doraville City Council approved moving forward with emergency pipe repairs along Lambeth Circle and McLave Drive for an
estimated cost of $400,000.
by R. Scott Belzer
sbelzer@dekalbchamp.com
The city of Doraville is set to
spend big on emergency pipe
maintenance in a residential
neighborhood.
Doraville officials agreed to
spend an estimated $422,310 on
maintenance work at Lambeth
Circle and McClave Drive following
a regularly scheduled biweekly city
council meeting held March 21. The
proposed area is located one block
east of Buford Highway and is listed
in the city’s resolution as suffering
from “structure failure.”
The resolution states the “failure
has caused large sinkholes” which
run the risk of “compromising the
integrity of several driveways and
threatening the foundation of [a]
home” along Lambeth Circle.
The matter was presented
to the Doraville City Council by
City Manager Shawn Gillen, who
explained the need came to his
attention during the course of other
work occurring in the area.
“We discovered a collapsing
pipe which has corroded away and
there’s been a lot of erosion,” Gillen
said. “There’s some sizeable and
dangerous sinkholes all along the
pipe.”
Costs adding up to $422,310,
which includes contingency,
include approximately $100,000 in
new piping, $22,200 in replacing
“unsuitable soils,” $24,750 on a
new driveway, and a combined
$19,000 on removing and replacing
various fences and walls. Another
$100,000 will be spent on grading
the area.
“On a project this large,
whenever we start digging in the
ground, and these are big pipes,
we’re going to run into something
we didn’t know of,” Gillen said.
“There may have to be a fence
that’s removed to make way for the
project, things like that.”
When asked by council member
Pam Fleming if the $422,310
included a listed 20 percent
contingency, Gillen assured her it
did.
Gillen said Doraville’s storm
water fund was approximately $3.5
million. He also asked the council
to consider how only $1 million has
been budgeted so far this year for
other projects.
“We’ve only worked our way
through about half of those and this
one would be in addition to that,”
Gillen said. “These are dollars we
need to spending, otherwise the
[Union for Public Domain] will get
concerned that we’re not fixing
our storm water system. There’s a
healthy fund balance there that we
do need to draw down on.”
Council member Dawn
O’Connor questioned Gillen as to
whether the city had enough money
to complete the proposed project in
addition to similar ones throughout
the city. This includes a Doraville
Waffle House location which is still
the subject of litigation.
“We will have plenty in reserve
to do the projects we have planned
and to do the storm water project at
Waffle House,” Gillen said. “I’m not
going to talk about that too much
in detail because it’s still under
litigation.”
Doraville city attorney Cecil
McLendon said there were some
“new developments” in the litigation
and it “would be best to have a
full discussion during executive
session.”
O’Connor also voiced concerns
about residents’ needs during the
course and eventual completion of
the project.
“We usually go and talk to
residents to get everything squared
away,” O’Connor said. “I’m thinking
maybe this year we’ll have better
luck than we have had in the past. I
saw some people complaining ‘You
said I was going to have a lawn and
now I don’t have a lawn,’ or ‘My
bush fell over and you didn’t fix it.’
I’m concerned that we make it clear
about what we’re going to replace.
They’re not going to get the sodded
lawn and picket fence.”
The Doraville City Council
unanimously approved the
emergency purchase. No
information regarding the project’s
start date was issued during the
March 21 meeting.