Newspaper Page Text
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2013
BARROW JOURNAL
PAGE 5A
Women in the workplace
Jekyll Island’s fate depends on the math
According to the Pew Research Center, mothers are the
sole or primary source of income for 40 percent of house
holds with children. The number has increased
from 11 percent since 1960.
This revelation, made possible by the last
Census, also unmasked the wide range of opin
ions that exists regarding a mother’s place pro
fessionally. While a vast majority adamantly
opposes the idea that women should return to
traditional roles, a majority also believes that
childrearing has suffered as a result of female
professionalism.
These opinions have aroused an array of
emotions concerning the state of gender equal
ity in America. Over the past few weeks, many
have expressed chagrin over the fact that stay-
at-home mothers abound while their profes
sional progress stands still, but female success
stories and positive opinion regarding working
women has moved forward in leaps and bounds since
the 1960s. No, the pinnacle of equality has not yet been
reached. Women still earn only 80 percent of what men
make. However, the U.S. continues to progress.
Sixty-one percent of two-parent families have a mother
whose education is similar to the father’s. Twenty-three
percent of such families have a mother who is better
educated than the father, while just 16 percent contain the
opposite. Additionally, 63 percent of survey participants
believe that a woman can earn more than her husband
without detriment to the marriage.
Some would say to take these statistics with a grain of
salt, reminding us that 63 percent of the women who act
as primary providers are single mothers who must work,
while just 37 percent are married and have
higher income than their husbands. Still, it is
important to consider that employment among
married mothers has increased from 37 per
cent in 1968 to 65 percent in 2011.
Ultimately, each story reporting change in
public opinion or workplace involvement is
not necessarily a telltale sign of impending
victory or doom for women workers. Fairness
can be measured in options. To get a good idea
of where the United States stands on gender
equality, we cannot simply count how many
women are on the job at any given time. We
must account for a woman’s ability to choose
an occupation outside the home if it so suits
her. The options presented to women are more
vast and varying than ever before. A woman’s
workplace doesn’t have to be her home, but it can be. A
woman who dreams of life as a homemaker is allowed to
live her dream with the same freedom as a woman who
pursues happiness as a lawyer, brain surgeon, engineer or
warrior princess. Equality is found in equal opportunity to
doggedly advance along the path you select. In facilitat
ing that, our nation is not perfect, but it is unmistakably
advancing.
Gina Borg is a 2009 Apalachee High School graduate
and a recent graduate of the University of Georgia. Send
comments about this column to gborg228@gmail.com.
Letter to the Editor
Animal Control staff is doing a great job
Dear Editor:
Your column in the June 5 issue (“Animal Control has
history of problems’’ is not fact-based.
You take facts given to your newspaper to gain sup
port for change and embellish them with supposition
and harsh accusations. Your words work to hinder future
cooperation and make pending improvements seem like
an attack.
I would be one of the first to say that Barrow County
Animal Control needs improvements. I could name first
hand many obstacles standing in the way of that shelter
being all that it could and should be. Having visited and
assisted at BCAC every week over the last few months
and having worked many hours over just the last four
days, I am qualified to speak about what is and is not
going on there.
For you to take legitimate concerns about changes
needing to be made and use it to attack the people work
ing there is inexcusable.
Unless you have worked along side them or witnessed
how much they do in one day without ever sitting down,
you should not be allowed to assume how they feel or
why they are there.
The employees there could not possibly be there just
for a paycheck.
They are overworked and underpaid. What they need,
more than criticism is support and funding. Barrow
County Animal Control has been working since 2008
with half their previous budget and half their previous
staff. They are drowning. Each one left in the building
walks into work and jumps immediately into whatever
tasks need to be done, and they don’t let up until forced
to do so by the clock.
The fact that their kennels are full is evidence that
they ultimately care about the animals. How much easier
would their daily tasks be if they euthanized every animal
after the mandatory 5-day hold?
Report all you want about bad conditions. Label things
that need changing. Get people to support this forgotten
branch of our community. Rally for increased budget and
more staff members, and, yes, even encourage the powers
that be to hire more experienced people when possible.
But do NOT claim to know what these people do and do
not care about.
Sincerely,
Tamela Boyd
School is out, vacations have started, and
visitors from across the country are driving
to one of the state’s great coastal attractions,
Jekyll Island.
What will they see when they arrive? A
barrier island where the marshes, dunes,
beaches and sea turtle nesting areas that
evoke Jekyll’s natural beauty are properly
protected? Or will they encounter a beach
front jammed full of junky development like
Panama City or Myrtle Beach?
There is an interesting debate over which
of those scenarios will play out for Jekyll
Island — a debate that heavily involves basic
math and common sense.
The Jekyll Island Authority, which over
sees the management of
the state-owned island,
appointed a citizens task
force as part of the process
of revising their master
plan for future develop
ment.
A 1971 state law speci
fies that developed acre
age can comprise "not
more than 35 percent of
the land area of Jekyll
Island which lies above
water at mean high tide.”
The authority has con
tended that Jekyll covers
5,543 acres of land and
is 32 percent developed,
which would leave 166 acres legally avail
able for new development and construction.
The task force, however, determined the
island’s area to be just 3,817 acres because
a large swath of marshlands cannot be
built upon and should not be included in
the calculation. They concluded that 38.6
percent of the island —136 acres above the
35 percent threshold — has already been
developed.
That was obviously not what the authority
staff wanted to hear. It asked the attorney
general’s office to rule that the task force
recommendations did not comply with the
state law establishing the 35 percent limit.
Attorney General Sam Olens to date has not
issued a response.
“It is important to set the limit so that the
Jekyll Island Authority can move forward
with a long-term plan — so that we know
the parcels we’re intending to redevelop are
in concert with that plan,” said Eric Garvey,
the authority spokesman.
Environmentalists and conservation
groups have sided with the task force conclu
sion that Jekyll Island has already exceeded
its limit for development. It’s a safe bet that
one or more of those organizations will sue
the authority if it tries to expand the number
of acres to be developed.
"We’d prefer to stay out of court, but
a lawsuit is one of the options we would
consider,” said Stephanie Stuckey Benfield,
a former state legislator who is executive
director of the environmental law firm
GreenLaw.
Even if you accept the premise that
38.6 percent of Jekyll is already devel
oped, no one is demanding that the author
ity terminate any current developments.
Environmentalists note that there are numer
ous parcels of property, such as vacant hotel
sites, that are already classified as developed
and could be used for redevelopment.
“There hasn’t been any encroachment
into undeveloped land since that law was
enacted (in 1971),” Garvey said. “We’re
working within the existing footprint as
far as parcels of developed property are
concerned.”
The state law is clear in how far
development of Jekyll can go: 35 percent
of the land that makes up the island.
Where the law is not specific is in how
you define what constitutes “land” and
whether coastal marshes should be fig
ured into property area calculations.
In a situation like this, you would
normally try to determine what the leg
islative intent was when the law was
enacted.
That’s not so easy to do when you are
dealing with measures that were debated and
adopted more than 40 years ago.
Ogden Doremus, the former legislator
who was instrumental in the passage of the
coastal marshlands protection act from that
era, died several years ago.
Mike Egan, an Atlanta attorney and a
retired Republican lawmaker, was one of the
legislators involved in drafting the law that
limits Jekyll Island development and is still
around to talk about it.
"I thought we made it clear in the act, but I
guess that we did not,” Egan told Associated
Press reporter Russ Bynum. “I just think that
land is dry land, not marsh.”
What Egan is saying seems to be a matter
of common sense and simple logic. Perhaps
the attorney general will come to that same
conclusion — but he has been reluctant to
say anything so far.
Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia
Report, an internet news service at gareport.
com that reports on government and politics
in Georgia. He can be reached at tcraw-
ford @ gareport. com.
tom
crawford
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