About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (May 31, 2000)
MAYOR DOC RORIDGE PUBLISHER'S NOTES NOT JUST A PERSONALITY CLASH Mayor Doc Eldridge has told Athens-. Clarke County Manager A1 Crace that he wilt not recommend his re-appointment. This is not merely a disagreement between two strong-minded men over who will run the government. Eldridge’s action has the apparent backing of the Commission, where most of the members fee! left out of the loop on important actions taken by the Manager. Crace’s appointment of a permanent head for the Department of Human and Economic Development (HED) was the last straw that Illustrates why the Mayor and the Commissioners now appear headed toward replacing Crace. HED was in a mess, with charges of cor ruption and investigations by federal agen cies, when Crace appointed Julie Brunner as interim head. Ms. Brunner, who is white, by a)! accounts was instrumental in bringing organization and legitimacy to the depart ment. Meanwhile the Manager's office was conducting a search to pick the permanent head of the department. Eldridge, as he recounted in the memo he sent Crace notifying him that he would not recommend him for re-appointment, had repeatedly told Crace that the HED position should be filled by an African-American. Eldridge had stated that same conviction while campaigning for Mayor and after his election. Eldridge says that a promise was made to the black community a decade ago during the unification vote that HED would be headed by an African-American. The Manager has the authority to appoint department heads. The Manager, In turn, is appointed by the Commission (on the Mayor's recommendation) and can be removed at any time by a majority vote of the Commission. There is no requirement that the Manager honor the Maycit!* prefer ence In naming a department head. In this case, the Manager made the deci sion to appoint as permanent head the woman who had done such a good job as interim director. He announced her appoint ment at his Friday department heads meeting; he then met with the Mayor for an hour or so, and the two parted. Not until he heard it on the street did the Mayor realize that the Manager had appointed Ms. Brunner, leaving the Mayor out on a political limb with no warning at all. The Mayor says that this scenario is not isolated. The Manager and his staff, for instance, resist removing from the planning maps an easement for a four-lane road taking Lumpkin Street through the old Station prop erty and Pulaski Heights to connect with the perimeter. They decline to kill the road although the Mayor and Commission don’t want it and the Council on Aging is preparing to build a building in the path of the expressway. The Mayor and Commission must field the telephone calls from angry Council on Aging supporters and Pulaski Heights residents and try to explain why the government says it Is going to do something the' Mayor and Commission don't want. Athens Regional Medical Center’s new expansion plans became public last spring and revealed the intention to demolish homes along King Avenue to make way for a large rainwater retention pond. In the midst of the public outcry over this proposed destruction of an intown neighborhood, the Mayor and Commission learned that the retention pond was put into the plan not by the hospital but by Manager Crace, thus implicating the Mayor and Commission in a controversy they thought was purely a hos pital matter for which they had no responsi bility. Crace is, in the estimation of former Mayor Gwen O’Looney, “the best Manager in Georgia, probably in the Southeast,” and the present Mayor and Commission wouldn’t argue too much with that assessment. But those I have talked to, with the exception of Commissioner Barrow, are tired of learning about politically sensitive decisions after they are made and the telephone is ringing. Al Crace is a fine man whose prodigious energies extend beyond his job to the civic and religious life of his community. Typically, he is not talking about this situation. It may be that his sense of professionalism demands that he make the very best deci sion and let the politicians worry about the political fallout. It may be part of his job description that at some jxrlnt those profes sional decisions create too much heat and he has to move on. He may feel that if he has to explain every decision to 10 Commissioners and a Mayor that he won’t have time to do his job, Mayor Eldridge, unlike Manager Crace, is not likely to get out ahead of the Commission, to take an action without being pretty sure of Commission support. As mat ters stand now, the Mayor intends not to rec ommend the Manager for re-appointment, and he has the support of the Commission. Ironically, the one thing that might give Crace a reprieve would be (or the Commission to agree to the Overview Commission’s recommendation to give the Mayor the power to hire and fire the Manager. With that power in his pocket, Eldridge would lie in a position to give Cr&ce another chance, instead of being limited to recommending or not recommending the Manager to another two-year term of office. How that would affect our government In the future, with a different mayor and manager Involved, would remain to be seen. 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