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On Hold
This Call May Be Monitored
The ACC government's franchise agreement
with Charter Communications will expire in
December, and the county has received 1200
public comments about the cable company. Five
per cent of the company's local revenues go to the
Last week, county staffers protested that it
will take them nine months to come up with a
"mass grading" ordinance—intended to dis
courage developers from flattening large areas—
but some kind of interim ordinance may be devel
oped sooner. Planning Director Brad Griffin came
*o last week's meeting of the legislative review
committee—composed of half the ACC
Commissioners—bringing charts to demonstrate
how far ahead his senior staffers are booked by
other demands.
Assistant County Manager Bobby Snipes was
there, too, attempting to defend planning staffers
and also the public works department from addi
tional demands by the commissioners, pointing
out that a mass grading ordinance would need to
be considered in detail as to its effects and how
county departments would enforce it
Both Griffin and Transportation and Public
Works Department Director David dark had reser
vations about a new ordinance. "Are we getting
into almost regulating the design of peoples'
single-famity structures?" wondered Griffin,
explaining how difficult it can be to tell home-
owners they can't cut down tree buffers at the
edge of their lots.
While it might be possible to limit grading to
the immediate area where a home is to be built,
Griffin said, you'd be "almost mandating that
everybody needs to live on a wooded lot" But
Commissioner Carl Jordan said a mass-grading
ordinance would apply only to developers, and not
to individual lot owners.
Clark said, "We're getting a lot of soil erosion
problems on the same sites that have mass
grading," and said more such problems are
coming. The proposed Riverwatch development
(on Macon Highway at Timothy Road) and others
will be mass-graded. "It's a lot cheaper" for a
developer to mass-grade, rather than to consider
the topography and drainage of each individual
lot, Clark said. If an ordinance is implemented,
"...it's going to increase construction costs
pretty significantly, I would think."
At present. Clark said, county soil-disturbance
permits are issued to applicants 'for whatever
purposes they see fit" It might be possible to
change that without involving too much addi
tional staff work, the department heads agreed,
under close questioning by Commissioner Carl
Jordan. The five commissioners then voted
without dissent to ask staffers for a proposal that
would limit soH-disturbance permits to grading for
roads and utilities only—and not allow individual
lots to be graded until a final subdivision plan has
been approved.
John Huie
John Huie lives in the woods, where his habitat
has not yet been flattened.
Mass Grading
Can It Be Controlled?
county, in return for being allowed to string wires
along the public roads. That amounts to over $1
million a year, according to Sandi Turner, of the
ACC Publfo Information Office. Turner's office plans
to negotiate a contract renewal with the cable
company, and accepted public comments for two
months earlier this year.
Many of the comments were favorable, Turner
told a committee of commissioners last week. But
other citizens said Charter charges too much,
although that is outside of the county's authority
to negotiate—and many were unhappy with
Charter's responses to phone calls for customer
service.
Turner said the company is required to answer
calls within 30 seconds, but that requirement
"lacks teeth' because they may then put the cus
tomer on hold. Another concern is providing cable
service to areas where homes aren't close
together, like some areas around Nowhere Road.
As for competition. Turner said, "There is no such
thing as an exclusive franchise agreement' Cable
companies, though, have a 'gentlemen's agree
ment" not to compete with each other, and
Athens is a relatively small market No other com
panies have applied for a franchise here.
Overall Turner said, "We think they're a
good company to do business with.'
Although she is looking for common s®
ground with a local advocate of pubUc
access cable programming, Turner said,
'...it's unlikely that a public access
channel would work in this agreement'
Public access channels allow citizens or
groups to produce and air their own pro
grams on cable.
"It is so much more complicated than
I expected,' Turner told commissioners. A
pubUc access channel would involve free-
speech issues like those that threaten to
complicate the count/s regulation of
sidewalk signs. In some places, public
access channels have been used to air
hate speech and borderline pornography.
Turner told Flagpole. Where they are suc
cessful, she said, such channels are usu
ally run through non-profit corporations
that are set up to manage them, but
"that's expensive."
According to the website of Austin
Community Television (which provides facil
ities and training for community groups to
produce their own programs in that Texas city),
public access has operated there for 31 years. The
facility says it produces over 5500 original pro
grams a year. Atlanta and Roswell, Georgia, also
have public access cable channels.
John Huie
John Huie lives beyond the reach of cable.
Trees ¥ Dirt
Urban Areas Tough
Several Community Tree Council members
headed to Atlanta recently to talk dirt The topic
of the Georgia Urban Forest Council (GUFC)
meeting was 'Brown Makes Green,' as landscape
architect James Urban discussed soil and trees.
His message was straightforward: Give a tree
the best chance to thrive by knowing the dirt and
the drainage. Also, learn the history of a site;
what has been there in the past? Then plan for
how the tree will grow in the future; is there a
strategy for where the roots will grow and spread?
The first turn is always exciting in the Twilight Criterium.
Urban reminded the audience that soil is a
precious resource. It provides sustenance for
plants and animals. Living organisms are abun
dant within healthy soils and important to the
roots of trees.
Urban suggested examining soil in a forest.
'Pick up two handfuls of dirt from under the dry
leaves. You know, the kind you just drool over to
have in your garden. There are more organisms in
your two hands than all the people living on
Earth.' He urged everyone to smell it to learn the
odor of healthy soiL
Construction equipment can compact the soil around trees and lull them.
A dirty little secret about healthy soil is that
it's fragile. Unfortunately, dirt gets no respect
from builders and developers. It's easier for them
to just scrape it, grade it and get it out of the
way.
Protecting the soil in urban settings is tough,
he said. One of the most damaging actions to soil
is to compact it Yet little thought is given to
construction vehicles which roll around construc
tion sites leaving highly compacted areas where
trees cannot easily grow.
Urban said contractors must be required to
stay out of certain areas so that all the soil in a
development is not compacted. Just as vehicles
are supposed to avoid the areas around trees in
order to protect their root systems, areas of soil
must similarly be protected so that when trees are
planted, their roots have a chance to grow weU.
In places where vehicles must travel putting
down loads of wood chips helps reduce the soil
compaction to some extent Some builders strip
off the topsoil stockpile it and later return it to
the area. "Its not the same soil as before it was
disturbed,' Urban said. "It's now degraded.'
He described the abundance of day soil in this
part of Georgia and how easy it is to compress wet
clay soiL Farmers don't go out into their fields
when its wet in order not to damage their soiL
However, construction work continues whether the
soil is wet or not
Urban criticized the overuse of chemicals. "The
world is obsessed with soil chemicals. Some think
they can just dump chemicals on [the soil] to
solve problems. But that's not a smart way to deal
with soil chemistry.'
Newly-planted trees need a good compost
layer around them, he said, because the natural
breakdown of this organic matter provides the
roots with the necessary elements and nutrients
without requiring a load of man-made chemicals.
However, knowing the soil's pH is
important even in basic gardening. It's
easy to add lime to make soil more basic,
but ifs harder to make soil more acidic for
an extended length of time. Urban recom
mended knowing the pH of the soil before
choosing a tree. 'Force yourself to pick
trees which are most suited to the pH of
the soiL This is the most limiting factor
after drainage. If you get it right with the
organic matter, the drainage and the pH
then you are probably home-free.'
Finally, there may be more places for
urban trees if we work to change the
amount of paved area relative to the
amount of planted area. Urban suggested
that those involved in urban planting
should tighten up the paving and drasti
cally increase the planting areas.
He recommended reading The Soul of
Soil by Joe Smillie, Grace Gershuny and
Joseph Smillie; and Urban Soils by Phillip
J. CrauL Information is also available at
the GUFC website, gufc.org.
Liz Conroy
Liz Conroy writes about environmental matters
for Flagpole.
Queer Events
Graduation And Picnic
No sooner have the Boybutante drag queens
parked their wigs and drag kings their chaps and
hats, than it's time to plan what to wear for two
other events coming up, both on the same day.
The first ever Lavender Graduation will be held
Saturday, Apr. 30, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in UGA's
Memorial Hall ballroom and will honor UGA's gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender graduates as
weU as LGBT alumni. University of Iowa Law
Professor (and UGA law graduate) Patricia Cain,
author of Rainbow Rights, will be the keynote
speaker. Asa Green, co-founder in 1971 of the first
gay undergraduate group at UGA, called the
Committee on Gay Education, will be recognized
and honored.
The next event is the Athens Pride Picnic The
eighth annual all-Athens lesbian, gay, bisexual
6 FLAGPOLE.COM • APRIL 27, 2005