Buckhead reporter. (Sandy Springs, GA) 2007-current, March 02, 2020, Image 1

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Buckhead reporter., March 02, 2020, Image 1

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Newspaper Page Textreporternewspapers.net MARCH 2020 • VOL. 14 — NO. 3 Buckhead Reporter A Section Two ►A piano man in a department store P25 ►Donna Lefont helps keep film history alive P25 ►STAR students and teachers P33 COMMENTARY Local leaders react to Q& GDOT’s toll lanes plan pio AROUND TOWN The pirates who bring Mardi Gras to Buckhead m CENSUS It’s time again to get counted P20 -^United States* Census 2020 Reporter Extra Check out our podcasts at ReporterNewspapers.net The Buckhead Reporter is mail delivered to homes on selected carrier routes in ZIPs 30305,30327 and 30342 For information: delivery@reporternewspapers.net SL# liuxied VO ‘eojuoiAi aivd e6eisod sn SSMy03 aislysyd y3i/\ioisno ivisod Livable Buckhead plans green and grounded new home SEE STORY PAGE 15 - RETRACTABLE FABRIC CANOF’T, TYP. An architect’s illustration of the Tower Place courtyard where Livable Buckhead would make its new home. 250 police cameras were dead for months in contract blunder BYJOHNRUCH johnruch@reportemewspapers.net Around 250 surveillance cameras in the Atlanta Police Department’s vaunted “Oper ation Shield” crime-fighting network were dead for months starting last fall, with some still down in early February, after a mainte nance contract blunder. “They were all over the city... Certainly, some of them were in Buckhead,” said Dave Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Atlan ta Police Foundation, the private group that helps fund and manage Operation Shield, about the dead cameras. The problem was the city’s failure to pick up the maintenance duties and bills after initial, three-year con- Employer- paid housing idea gains traction, but discrimination is concern BYJOHNRUCH johnruch@reportemewspapers.net An age-old marketing tactic of offering rent discounts to employees of certain com panies could be boosted into corporate-sub sidized housing in a concept that is gaining political traction among Buckhead leaders. But such “preferred employer programs” may shut other people out of the housing market and were banned in Seattle as dis criminatory. The idea of super-sized preferred em ployer programs was raised last year in a housing affordability study commissioned by the Buckhead Community Improvement District and the nonprofit Livable Buckhead. The study looked at the affordability crunch and ways to preserve middle-income hous ing closer to Buckhead’s employment cen ters to cut down on commuter traffic. As the first concrete step from that study’s recom mendations, Livable Buckhead now seeks to study preferred employer programs and is awaiting word on a grant to conduct it. “We haven’t even started the conversa tions yet,” said Denise Starling, executive di rector of Livable Buckhead. It remains to be seen whether the concept is viable, she said. But the gist at this point is anything from a company covering an employee’s securi ty deposit to the “employer actually buying housing units and having them available to employees,” she said. Some local apartment complexes offer See 250 on page 22 See EMPLOYER on page 23 u TURN YOUR GOLD INTO GREEN (SEE PAGE 8)