Newspaper Page Text
4A Sunday, December 23, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
LOCALy POLITICS
US envoy to anti-IS coalition quits
over president’s Syria withdrawal
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to
the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has
resigned in protest over President Donald
Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops
from Syria, a U.S. official said, joining Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exo
dus of experienced national security figures.
Only 11 days ago, McGurk had said it would
be “reckless” to consider IS defeated and
therefore would be unwise to bring American
forces home. McGurk decided to speed up his
original plan to leave his post in mid-February.
Appointed to the post by President Barack
Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump, McGurk said in
his resignation letter that the militants were on the run,
but not yet defeated, and that the premature pullout of
American forces from Syria would create the conditions
that gave rise to IS. He also cited gains in accelerating the
campaign against IS, but that the work was not yet done.
His letter, submitted Friday to Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, was described to The Associated Press
on Saturday by an official familiar with its contents. The
official was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter
before the letter was released and spoke on condi
tion of anonymity.
In a tweet shortly after news of McGurk’s resig
nation broke, Trump again defended his decision
to pull all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from
Syria in the coming weeks.
“We were originally going to be there for three
months, and that was seven years ago — we never
left,” Trump tweeted. “When I became President,
ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated
and other local countries, including Turkey,
should be able to easily take care of whatever remains.
We’re coming home!”
Although the civil war in Syria has gone on since 2011,
the U.S. did not begin launching airstrikes against IS
until September 2014, and American troops did not go
into Syria until 2015.
McGurk
PORT
■ Continued from 1A
ECHOLS
■ Continued from 1A
was not hearing their concerns,
she wanted to do something
about the situation.
“I am the kind of person
when if I think something
needs to be done and no one
else will, I will,” she said. “It
was time to step up and put my
name out there.”
In 2017, the county was con
sidering moving ambulance
teams from fire stations in Dis
trict 3 to more densely popu
lated parts of South Hall. The
plan went public before a deci
sion was ever made, but when
community members criti
cized the proposal, the county
dropped the idea.
Echols said that controversy
was not the reason she decided
to run for a commissioner
position, but it did get her to
start paying more attention to
county government and how
those decisions affect resi
dents’ everyday lives.
“That was certainly one of
those situations where some
thing happened, the people
didn’t like what happened,
and the people didn’t feel like
they had a voice,” she said. “So
much outrage had to happen
before those people were lis
tened to.”
She said improving county
employee morale will be one
of her priorities as a com
missioner, although she has
seen improvement in recent
months. County employees
received 5 percent raises as
part of the budget for the cur
rent fiscal year, which began
July 1.
She was especially con
cerned about morale in the fire
department, she said.
“It was almost like Hall
County was a training ground.
We spent all this money train
ing all these employees and
as soon as they get all their
certifications, they were going
out to get other jobs with more
money,” she said.
District 3 is Hall’s largest and
most rural district. Echols said
she agrees with other officials’
predictions that Ga. 365 will
be a growth corridor for the
county in coming years, bring
ing change to her district.
“I grew up in Tadmore, right
off of Harmony Church Road.
I remember when it was noth
ing but farms out there, and the
area has changed,” she said."...
I feel like the East Hall area,
the 365 corridor, is kind of the
bull’s-eye for the next four to
eight years of where every
thing is going to be happening.”
She said that growth will
be welcomed by some and
challenged by others, but the
change needs to be sustainable.
“You have to make sure
before you allow a rezoning to
happen, or an industry to come
in, that the infrastructure is in
place to support that,” Echols
said. “Otherwise, you get in a
gridlock situation where you
have businesses attracting all
these cars in and the roads
can’t handle the people, or you
put a subdivision in and the
roads can’t handle the people.”
Infrastructure like sewer
and internet will also support
that growth, she said, noting
that her home behind Jaemor
Farms cannot get internet and
she would like to see increased
broadband access.
“We can’t have communi
ties thriving and schools thriv
ing and businesses thriving
if they don’t have access to
something as basic as inter
net or sewer or water,” she
said. “But I’m also very con
servative with spending, and
I know projects like that are
very expensive. It’s hard to
justify spending that amount
of money if only a few people
would benefit from it.”
Those projects could also
involve cooperation with
municipalities, as Lula is work
ing on an expansion to its sewer
lines that would bring service
down Ga. 365.
Working with municipalities
is another of Echols’ focuses.
“The ultimate goal for the
county or those municipalities
is to provide a better quality of
life and better services for the
citizens of those areas, whether
it be that the county provides
them or the cities provide
those,” she said.
Increasing taxes to fund
improvements would not be
her first idea, she said.
“I can’t say that I would
never vote to support a tax
increase because I don’t know
what is going to happen,” she
said. “But I do think that before
I ever voted to support a tax
increase, I would have done
everything I could have done to
make sure we didn’t have to do
that. That would be a last resort
option for me.”
Echols runs an educational
tours company and she and her
husband Drew have two chil
dren, 15-year-old Chloe and
10-year-old Cohen.
that additional traffic. ”
Katie Strickland, the DOT’S dis
trict spokeswoman, said only that
the Georgia Ports Authority and Hall
County “are leading the project and
GDOT will work collaboratively with
them as the project moves forward.”
Gainesville City Manager Bryan
Lackey said the city has approached
the Gainesville-Hall Metropolitan
Planning Organization, the Hall
area’s lead transportation planning
agency, about a traffic impact study
for the area including the inland port,
which is in unincorporated Hall.
“We see it more of a study of north
east Gainesville,” Lackey said. “The
study area will include Ga. 365 just
outside the city limits but will also
include Exit 24 (off Interstate 985),
Limestone Parkway and the effects
of Lanier Tech.”
Lanier Tech is opening a new cam
pus off Ga. 365 at Howard Road, south
of the inland port.
“The growth in this area of our
community will change the traffic
patterns significantly, and we need
to conduct this study to be ready to
address these challenges,” Lackey
said.
Tim Evans, vice president of eco
nomic development at the Greater
Hall Chamber of Commerce, said he
believes the inland port’s traffic could
be more localized.
“These facilities have a limit of
how far they can really reach,” he
said. “If you’re in Charlotte (N.C.) and
you want to send something to the
Port of Savannah, it makes no sense
to bring that container to Gainesville.
If you’re (on the west side of) Atlanta
and want to send a container to
Savannah by rail, you could do that at
the Austell (rail) yard. You don’t have
to come to Gainesville.
“So, I’m not sure this (inland port)
is going to be drawing traffic from 60
miles away, but we’ll see as it devel
ops,” Evans said.
“Part of the (Ports Authority’s)
location search (for the port) was to
be close to the industry concentra
tion that would be its customer base,”
Evans said.
And for Hall County, that includes
such area companies as Kubota
Manufacturing of America Corp.,
which makes zero-turn mowers, sub
compact tractors and utility vehicles,
and Germany-based car parts maker
ZF, Evans said.
Another major player is the long
standing poultry industry.
Savannah is the largest port in the
nation for broiler exports, said Mike
Giles of the Gainesville-based Geor
gia Poultry Federation President.
The Georgia Ports Authority “has
done an outstanding job over the
years of investing in infrastructure
which has improved the level of ser
vice for poultry shipments through
Savannah,” Georgia Poultry Federa
tion President Mike Giles said.
“This new inland rail yard is a con
tinuation of that type of investment in
the future connectivity between the
Georgia poultry industry and our cus
tomers worldwide. ”
Phil Sutton, Kubota vice president
of administration, said the company
“anticipates several levels of poten
tial cost savings with the new inland
port, including reduced costs for chas
sis and container fees and reduced
(free trade zone) administrative
fees.”
He added: “We expect a reduction
in lead times due to greater availabil
ity of empty containers and shorter
transit times to and from the inland
port.”
The inland port also has become
an issue in the potential for increased
railway traffic, especially in Flowery
Branch, where city officials are work
ing with Norfolk Southern to close the
Chattahoochee Street crossing.
Norfolk Southern is paying to put
in a signal known as a “lunar light”
that would help guide trains to at least
clear Lights Ferry Road, the most fre
quently used crossing downtown, and
stop at Chattahoochee as needed.
The new port “could increase train
traffic, so hopefully the lunar signal
will help to reduce the time the train
parks on all our crossings here in
town,” Flowery Branch City Manager
Bill Andrew said.
Otherwise, Iliya Copeland, head of
the Murray County Industrial Devel
opment Authority in Northwest Geor
gia, said the inland port in Hall could
be “a total game-changer” for the
community.
He has some expertise in that
area, as the Georgia Ports Authority
opened the Appalachian Regional
Port opened in August in Murray.
The Appalachian port, which
is near the Tennessee border, has
“been a very blessed asset to (our)
community,” he said. “This week,
we’re closing on our third (industrial)
project in the last three months... and
we’ve got a healthy pipeline in 2019.”
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