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PUBLISHER’S NOTES
DUKES UP, ATHENS!
Oconee County leaders bray that they’ll
eat our sales tax for lunch and wash it
down with our water while the 316/Epps
Bridge Parkway/Perimeter intersection
grows to rival Banks Crossing as a retail
magnet. Thank God for Oconee County!
The> can have the sales tax and the
grinding gridlock that pays it.
Instead of bemoaning the loss of a
super Wal-Mart to Oconee, we need
leaders who understand what we have
here in Athens-Clarke and will commit to
preserving and enhancing it. What we
have here is infinitely more valuable than
an automobile-driven, bicycle and pedes
trian-annihilating, concrete jungle of
chain behemoths.
Our leaders always appear to
be straining along in the mode
of trying to get more retail
and more industry for
Athens, regardless of what it
might be. Several years ago, our
government and our chamber of
commerce were out on the trail of the
new Mercedes plant that eventually went
to Alabama for more tax credits and free
land, etc. than we could offer. But nobody
here stopped to think or ask us, the citi
zens, whether we want to be suddenly
transformed to a company town for a
German SUV manufacturer.
Athens is a unique oasis in Georgia. We
exist because the Trustees plopped the
University of Georgia down in the middle
of a forest and the town grew up to nro-
vide rock and roll for the college kids.
Later, the governor snaked Interstate 85—
which follows U.S. 29 all the way down the
Eastern seaboard and should have come
through Athens—and diverted it to the
north of us so that it could run through his
hometown. Were it
not for that act of
statesmanship, the
J & J Flea Market
would be Banks
Crossing.
For that matter,
Home Depot ‘n
Lowe’s ‘n them are
where they are, not
because of
Oconee’s salu
brious climate or
Athens-Clarke’s
irate neighborhoods, but because 316 to
Atlanta hits the Athens perimeter pre
cisely on that spot, which happens to be
in Oconee County.
Athens-Clarke is a very small are?. We
simply can’t handle any more Super Wal-
Marts and keep the kind of quality of life
that makes people want to live here—and
we don’t have to. What we, especially our
leaders, need to do is to recognize what
we have here and work to enhance and
protect it.
We are, thank God, a town that still has
some chance of preserving the kind of
lifestyle that is increasingly rare and in
demand all over the country. It makes per
fectly good economic sense to put our
resources and our energy to work making
Athens-Clarke a better place to live and
work, and once and for all stop chasing
the automobile-driven, suburban sprawl
model. Those who think Oconee County is
paradise can live there, and they can fight
their increasingly traffic-choked roads to
and from Athens twice a day. If it gets to
the point where they’re starvirg us on
sales tax while living off the jobs in
Athens-Clarke, we can just slap a payroll
tax on then, to even things up.
Right now, though, we are very much in
danger of losing not only the super Wal-
Marts but our quality of life as well. Only
by protecting Athens as a livable urban
area can we survive. We’ve got to have
leaders who understand what that means
who understand how Athens must be dif
ferent from Oconee.
Stable neighborhoods safe from
infringement, bicycle paths, walk to work
and to entertainment, rails-to-trails—
these things may sound like some
kind of hippy pie in the sky to our
Mayor and our Commissioners, but
they are solid gold to the people
looking to escape suburbia,
the people who want a
sophisticated, user-friendly
urban environment. We’ve got
a sort of rudimentary urban
environment like that right
now, but it needs a lot of enhancement
to get us up there where we’re competi
tive against other “good living” locales.
Instead, we frequently seem to be going
backward. That's why the recent trestle
debacle is so alarming. It demonstrated
that nobody in our government under
stood what a usable treasure those tres
tles were. Nobody. And nobody seems to
understand what bike paths are for, either.
There’s plenty of good development to
be done, like the present retrofitting of the
old Coca Cola plant into an upscale village,
?.nd all the other in-town improvements in
that area. We’ve got entrepreneurs
building rental empires out of people's
desire to live in close to town. We’ve got
an incredibly thriving, happening concen
tration of restau
rants, bars and
music clubs that
gives our town a
tremendous eco
nomic boost and
lots of pizzazz.
We’ve got a univer
sity that hums with
activities open to
all.
Still, our tired
leadership on the
Commission allows
every new threat to this burgeoning town’s
life to kick up a controversy that tests the
citizens’ ability to turn up enough heat
and make the Commission come to its
senses.
A land use plan that would build in
some safeguards to our way of life lan
guishes while developers rush to turn
every available parcel into Oconee-like
sprawl. A greenbelt that would protect us
from sprawl slowly dwindles to nothing.
Setbacks that would protect our streams
are likewise whittled away.
Ten years ago, we had a City Council
that understood the importance of pro
tecting our urban environment. That una
nimity was watered down by unification.
We need to get back to a local government
that will protect Athens-Clarke. We need to
elect Commissioners who understand all
this, people like Carl Jordan and States
McCarter, for instance. Athens-Clarke is
not Oconee and should not be.
Pete McCommGns
editor@flagpole.com
Those who think
Oconee County is
paradise can live
there...
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AUGUST 2, 2000 FLAGPOLE B