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OPINION
April 21 - 27, 2016 » Page 7A
New government center may be tough to sell
At the southeast
intersection of Memorial
Drive and Kensington Road,
DeKalb County government
owns acres of prime real
estate.
It is across Memorial
Drive from the Kensington
MARTA Station. East of
the property is the DeKalb
County Juvenile Court. It’s
also near the proposed site
of the failed Atlanta United
professional soccer training
facility.
It is here that some
DeKalb officials, particularly
interim CEO Lee May,
want to build a new county
government center.
The concept is for an
eight-story, 300,000-square-
foot building that would cost
an estimated $90 million to
construct.
May introduced the
&
Andrew Couthen
andrew@dekalbchamp.com
Managing Editor
@AndrewdnampNews
idea in his 2015 State of
the County address when
he espoused the idea of
redeveloping Memorial
Drive into “Downtown
DeKalb.”
“The catalyst for this
whole transformation will
be the creation of a new
government center at the
heart of Memorial Drive,”
May said in 2015. “With
access to the interstate,
MARTA rail station and
the hundreds of acres
of publicly owned land,
this area is ripe for
development.”
There has been more
talk about this government
center, and Downtown
DeKalb, in recent weeks.
On April 12, the county’s
board of commissioners
unanimously voted to sell
the county’s Clark Harrison
government office building
located at 330 West Ponce
de Leon Avenue in Decatur.
Commissioners also voted
to hold on to $12 million
from the sale to put toward
a new government center.
A week later, the
county’s Special Local
Option Sales Tax (SPLOST)
Citizen Advisory Committee
discussed the county
proposal of using some
of the proceeds from
proposed penny sales tax
to supplement the cost of
the government center’s
construction.
The idea of a new
central government center
is a good one. It would
reduce the county’s office
space by 300,000 square
feet and set the county up
to be more efficient with its
time and better stewards
of taxpayers’ money. It is
a building that should be
constructed as soon as
possible and it could spur
economic development
along Memorial Drive.
The proposal to use
SPLOST funds to pay for
the government center
could be problematic for
the center’s construction
because the idea may be
tough to sell to taxpayers.
Taxpayers are often
resistant about approving
tax increases—even
1 percent taxes. Many
taxpayers probably will
want to focus new taxes on
capital improvements closer
to their hearts—the paving
of roads, construction of fire
stations and maybe a park
or two. A government office
building that many will rarely
visit probably won’t be a top
priority for taxpayers.
So county leaders have
their work cut out for them
to get voters to not only
approve the tax, but to want
to pay for the government
center. Otherwise leaders
should begin thinking about
Plan B for the funding the
Downtown DeKalb center.
Toddlers kill more people in the U.S. than terrorists do
This week, in my country,
considered by some of its more
embarrassing denizens to be the
“greatest country in the world” an
outspoken Florida “gun rights”
advocate left a loaded .45 caliber
handgun in the back seat of
her car and was promptly shot
and wounded by her 4-year-old
child. Truly a pinnacle of human
potential, much like the invention
of paper in second-century BC
China, or Aristotle holding forth
in the Lyceum, or whoever first
pointed out that Florida looks like
America’s penis.
What do you say about the
outspoken Florida “gun rights”
advocate who left a loaded .45
caliber handgun in the back seat
of her car and was promptly shot
and wounded by her 4-year-old
child?
I take no pleasure in violence
and pain. I’m not happy that Jamie
Gilt, 31—who has built a thriving
web presence on the argument that
guns are not only perfectly safe
around kids, but necessary for their
protection—left a loaded handgun
in reach of her 4-year-old son, who
then picked it up, aimed it at his
mother, and pulled the trigger.
I find zero delight in the thought
of Gilt’s toddler’s almost certain
panic and horror in that moment,
nor the guilt he may well carry
for the rest of his life (guilt that
only his mother deserves). I’m
sure being shot in the back really
hurts—even more so when it
comes with a side of nationwide
liberal schadenfreude.
But I have no interest in
letting Gilt off the hook. Her
child could just as easily have
shot himself, or a passerby, or
someone else’s child. With just
a few tweaks of location and
circumstance, he could have shot
my child. Someone else still could,
accidentally or with intention—it’s
a possibility you have to consider
in a country with so many guns
and so few laws regulating them.
That’s the macabre truth of
parenting in 21st-century America.
I grew up with the same
persistent, low-grade fear of gun
violence as any American—my
middle school was once locked
down because of a shooting at
the high school up the street,
and I was a junior at that same
high school when we watched
the Columbine massacre unfold
on TV—but my family didn’t have
guns, and we lived in a liberal city
so most of my friends’ parents
didn’t either. Guns were scary, but
for the most part they felt far away.
Growing up here myself didn’t
prepare me for how distinctly,
viscerally frightening it would be to
raise children in a gun-obsessed
nation. My stepdaughters go to
school in a borderline-rural suburb,
whereas I was educated in central
Seattle. They already know of at
least one friend-of-a-friend who
was killed in a school shooting.
Many of their friends’ parents
are gun owners. Not only that,
but, over the past few decades,
the National Rifle Association
has been aggressively and
successfully rolling back firearm
restrictions, making gun ownership
as quick and easy for anyone’s
irresponsible, drunk cousin as their
meticulous, gun-safety-trained
dad. When we send our kids to
friends’ houses for sleepovers,
it sometimes feels like a leap of
faith.
In the United States in 2015,
more people were shot and killed
by toddlers than by terrorist.
In 2013, the New York Times
reported on children shot by
other children: “Children shot
accidentally -usually by other
children—are collateral casualties
of the accessibility of guns in
America, their deaths all the more
devastating for being eminently
preventable.”
And I’m supposed to believe
that frightened Syrian refugees—
or whomever becomes the next
rightwing scapegoat du jour—are
the real threat to my children? I’m
supposed to be afraid of sharks?
Heavy metal music? Violent
video games? Horse meat in my
hamburger patties? Teenagers
pouring vodka up their butts
States with more guns have
more gun deaths. Keeping a gun
in your house increases your
chances of accidental death by
shooting, but does not make you
safer. A woman’s chance of being
murdered by an abusive partner
increases fivefold if the partner
has access to a gun. “Good
guys with guns” are a fantasy.
How much longer will we keep
participating in this great collective
lie that deadly weapons keep us
safe?
The accidental shooting of
Jamie Gilt is the object lesson
that my absurd nation deserves.
When even supposed gun safety
experts cannot keep themselves
safe from their own toddlers, we
should take that as an unequivocal
reminder that guns are inherently
dangerous. They are exploding
projectile machines designed
specifically for killing. And that’s
not bleeding-heart hyperbole—
it’s the explicit reason why many
people are drawn to them.
Cowboy games. Vigilante justice.
Power.
America does not get to
claim some hypercivilised global
high ground when we foster—
legislatively and culturally—a
system in which incidents such
as Gilt’s are not just possible, but
inevitable.
Lindy West is a Seattle-based
writer, editor and performer whose
work focuses on pop culture,
social justice, humour and body
image. She’s currently a culture
writer for GQ Magazine and
GQ.com, as well as the founder
and editor of I Believe You—It’s
Not Your Fault, an advice blog for
teens.