Newspaper Page Text
VOLL -NUMBER 79
County employees are elbow to elbow
Commissioners
plan for more
office space
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff Writer
The pounding that has reverbe
rated inside the Forsyth County
Courthouse recently isn’t the sound of
justice being hammered out with a
particular vehemence. Instead, it’s
evidence of office expansion, and it’s
a sound county officials would like to
hear more of.
Work began last week to divide the
current meeting chamber used by
county commissioners into four of
fices and a conference room, helping
to alleviate some of the overcrowding
problems experienced in other county
buildings. But that work only touches
the tip of the iceberg.
“Our personnel keeps expanding
and we’ve got to have space for the
people, but we haven’t got any room.
We’ve run out,” said county adminis
trator Ralph Roberts. “Maybe this
will help us move people around so
they’re not stepping on each other,
but at one point in time, the county
will have to do something.”
The new offices in the courthouse
are one remedy county commission
ers plan to apply to the lack of space
malady. The county marshal, a per
sonnel director and a purchasing
agent the county plans to hire, and
possibly the superintendant of the
water department will be housed in
the new offices, according to Com
missioner James Harrington.
County commissioners will perma
nently move their meeting to the
second floor grand jury room begin
ning Oct. 12.
But more ambitious plans are in the
offering.
“We’re planning to build a building
on the old (Kelly Mill Road) landfill
site and move the county barn and
maybe a couple of offices down
there,” Harrington said.
Preliminary drawings are com
plete, and commissioners have al
ready directed Roberts to begin
taking bids on the project, Harrington
added. Site preparation could begin
“possibly before the end of the year,”
he said.
The first phase of the project would
move the county garage from its
Experts seeing more dysfuncts
By Lindsey Kelly
Staff writer
One has only to read the headlines
or watch the evening news to come
away with the feeling that nowadays,
addiction is the norm.
What is happening?
“Our culture is more addicted than
it’s ever been before,” said Becky
White, a certified counselor in Atlan
ta. “We want a quick fix. We don’t
want to feel the hurt, feel the pain.”
Patti Barrett, a certified counselor
with the Mental Health Department in
Forsyth County, agreed, saying soci
ety these days seems to be intent on
operating in an emotionally neutral
gear.
“There is such rigidness, such a de
sire for perfection. There’s is no level
of acceptance, particularly about
feelings. Natural feelings of sadness
and anger are not acceptable. You’re
taught by society that you’re inade
quate if you’re angry.”
Another local counselor suggested
such problems may be exacerbated
by religion, particularly fundamen
talist religion.
“I see a lot of people from homes
where extreme fundamentalism is
practiced,” said Suzanne Green, a li
censed clinical social worker who di
rects the Buford Mental Health Cen
ter. “Their religion reinforced their
inadequacy, their denial and their
guilt.”
The family unit has apparently be
come a microcosm of the larger social
problem of addiction. There is a grow
ing trend among counselors and men
tal health professionals to recognize
and treat members of what has come
to be called a “dysfunctional family.”
The term describes a household
wherein at least one parent is emo
tionally unavailable to a child. That
unavailability can be for a variety of
reasons, be it drug or alcohol abuse,
workaholism, divorce, long-term
mental or physical illness, or death.
“It is a quality issue, not quantity,”
Barrett said. “Even if the parent is in
the home all the time, but is so dis
tracted that he or she cannot pay at
tention to the child, then that child’s
emotional needs are still not being
met.”
|ow Americans fell in love with theCorvett^^C
brsyth Count yNews
*>us.. Mm
■■■■■
current location on Ga. 20 to the Kelly
Mill Road site.
“We anticipate making enough
money out of the property (on Ga. 20)
to build the new building, except for a
few thousand dollars,” Harrington
said.
Commissioners are also mulling
over the idea of constructing additio
nal office space on Maple Street
where the county extension service
building, the local library and the
homemakers’ building now stand,
according to Harrington.
“We’re starting to talk about build
ing offices where those three build
ings are,” he said. “We’d like to build
a nice, three-story facility with one
floor for the library and the others for
county offices. But that’s a year or
t\
Barrett said many of the people she
counsels who grew up in a dysfunc
tional home find it difficult to believe
that the emotional crises they are
struggling with in their adult lives can
have their root in the emotionally un
satisfying relationship they had with
one or both of their parents. But this
denial is in fact one of the very symp
toms of the disease.
What a child learns from a parent or
parents’ emotional absenteeism is
that his or her feelings do not count.
Thus those childhood feelings of hurt
and anger are habitually suppressed.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1987—CUMMING, GA. 30130 32 PAGES 4 SECTIONS
Pat Kilmark, county extension director, piles paperwork in available space
two away, maybe even three.”
One avenue commissioners won’t
be exploring any time soon is moving
county offices into vacant space in
buildings around the courthouse
square.
“Eventually.* shen they tear every
thing down we fijly have the opportu
nity td'Sevelop some office space, but
we have no plans for it now,” said the
county administrator.
Resident input is also against locat
ing county offices outside a central
ized building, according to a survey
conducted by the Citizens’ Advisory
Board, a group assisting in the devel
opment of a master plan for the
county.
“Citizens are concerned about not
being able to find, say, planning and
often to the point that that child, as an
adult, may be completely unaware of
their existence. Yet until those feel
ings are dealt with, those emotional
traumas from the past are always
there, continually infecting the pre
sent. The pain of the past, in essence,
becomes an addiction.
One of the ways those past hurts
tend to resurface for people from dys
functional homes is in the relation
ships they form in their adult lives.
“I tell the women patients that I see
that unless they have made it with
Mommy and Daddy, unless they have
zoning if they moved a block from the
courthouse,” said Ann Gibson, coor
dinator of the survey.
Although the most cramped condi
tions are experienced by the library
and the county jail, all county build
ings are filled to or abo# normal
operating capacity, according to the
advisory board’s July survey.
New buildings occupied since No
vember by the health department and
the Department of Family and Chil
dren Services are already operating
“with no extra space at all,” said
Gibson. Older buildings like the local
library nd the extension service
building which houses the investiga
tions division of the sheriff’s depart
ment are bursting at the seams, she
added.
a totally healthy relationship with
them, then they’re never going to
make it with a man,” White said.
White specilizes in dealing with pa
tients from alcoholic families and
with “women who love too much,” a
phrase coined from the popular book
by the same title for and about women
caught in a pattern of destructive re
lationships. The book reinforces how
such patterns are learned during
childhood.
White said children growing up in
See. HELP, 2A
Staff Photo Molly Read
Librarian Jean Potts said she
would like to add new books without
having to take current ones off the
shelves in the building that has
housed the library since 1966.
Other departments have doubled in
f staff size since occupying their cur
rent offices, and more space is
needed.
“You could look at it like a family,”
said extension service agent Pat Kil
mark who works out of a 31-year-old
building on Maple Street. “If you
start off with a two-person family and
you have a couple of children in 10-15
years, you’ll have all the space de
mands that come with those extra
members of the family. If you look at
it that way, you can see first hand our
growing pains.”
Bridge restoration
to cost county $31,000
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff Writer
Restoration of Pool’s Mill
Bridge should start immediately,
say Forsyth County commission
ers who accepted a bid Monday
night to rebuild the covered
bridge to its original condition.
In a called meeting, commis
sioners heard two unsealed bids
for the project. A unanimous de
cision awarded the county con
tract to Robert S. Cantrell, who
offered to restore the bridge that
collapsed into Settendown Creek
Aug. 9 for $25,000 plus an esti
mated $6,000 in materials.
“We,re all committed to build
ing the bridge back,” commis
sion chairman Leroy Hubbard
said to the nodded assent of the
other commissioners. “It’d be
nice to get the job done before the
weather turns rough.”
6-12 combination
not ideal, but works
By Lindsey Kelly
Staff Writer
A tentative plan by the For
syth County Board of Education
to combine grades 6-12 into one
school may create mixed feelings
among some parents, but school
administrators at the state and
county levels say it is neither an
unprecedented nor an unworka
ble plan.
It’s not the optimum, but the
optimum is not what many of us
have,” said Marlin Smith, direc
tor of facilities and transporta
tion for the state Board of
Education.
Smith said combination facili
ties are common in many coun
ties throughout the state that, like
Forsyth County, experienced se-
TV movie
on marches
is planned
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff Writer
The civil rights marches in For
syth County that gained national at
tention in January will return to the
small screen, this time n the form of a
made-for-TV movie, according to the
Rev. Hosea Williams and a
spokesperson for a New York produc
tion company.
CBS has purchased rights to the
movei, which will be a joint produc
tion by Highgate Pictures and Robir
die Pictures of New York, according
to a spokesperson for the studios who
refused to be identified.
The movie will chronicle the Jan
uary Brotherhood Marches and
events preceding them, with an em
phasis on the march organizers and
participants, Williams said. Chuck
Blackburn and Dean and Ammy Car
ter are under contract, as is Wil
luams, to be protrayed in the movie,
said the source in executive producer
Roberta Becker’s office.
Becker was not available for com
ment last week.
“We’ve gone through all the con
tracts,” the spokesperson for Robir
die Pictures. “At this stage, the
initial story has been written, and it
has gone to the network and been
accepted. From there, the screenplay
is being written.”
Researchers were in Atlanta and
Forsyth County Aug. 9-13 to gather
background material and interview
march participants, the spokesper
son said.
No filming schedule has been set
for tye project, which has been in the
works since Bekker conceived the
idea in early winter, the source in her
office said. CBS accepted the story
idea sometime in the winter, the
source said.
Williams, who said he has signed
son as chief adviser of the area, said
he anticipates filming to begin in 1988
and the movie to be aired in 1989.
The three-hour movie will be shown
as a Hallmark Hall of Fame feature
with the sponsorhip of Mobil Oil Co.,
according to Williams, who elped
organize the second civil rights dem-
See MARCH, 2A
‘As much of the original
material as we’re plan
ning to use, I believe we’ll
be able to keep the bridge
on the National Register. I
hope we can; it would be a
shame if we couldn’t.’
David Gilbert, commissioner
Cantrell’s contract carried
with it the promise to start work
immediately, according to
county administrator Ralph Rob
erts. Commissioners directed
Roberts to find out what final
touches county crews needed to
complete before work could egin,
then dispatch county workers to
complete the tasks Tuesday
See, COMMISSION, 3A
rious overcrowding in their origi
nal facilities but lacked enough
student population to build sepa
rate new facilities.
“It’s an educationally sound
organizational system,” he said.
Smith emphasized, however,
that a strong administration and
the maintenance of separate pro
grams for each age group are
keys to the “soundness” of‘the
system.
The Forsyth County board ten
tatively adopted last Wednesday
a facilities plan that would turn
South Forsyth into a middle .
school/high school by 990, hous
ing grades 6-12; build additions at
Big Creek and Chestatee elemen
tary schools by 1988 and restruc-
See, SCHOOL, 3A
35 CENTS