Newspaper Page Text
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STEP f. WILD ALLEGATIONS ABOUT 1
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE APPEAR ON
FRINGE WEBSITE. '
ACCORDING TO RIGKTW1NG NUTCASE-
DOT-COM. BARACK OBAMA MIGHT
I Actually be A BRAINWASHED
QAEDA KILLING MACHINE'.
NOW ALARMING; X CER
TAINLY WOULDN'T FEEL COM
PORTABLE WITH HIM IN
THE WHITE HOUSE. 1
STEP 2'. Fox NEWS" JUMPS IN.
STEP 3: ALLEGATIONS ARE RE
PEATED IN O-^hER NEWS MEDIA,
.WHERE THEY MAY OR MAY NOT
BE ADEQUATELY REFUTED.
THE MS JR. SAYS THE OBAMA
STORY WAS POORLY SOURCED!
STEP n: talk RADIO HOSTS FIND
NEW ANGLES' TO EXTEND LIFE
OF STORY.
IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL OPINION, IS
fT AT LEAST POSSIBLE THAT BARAcK
OBAMA IS A MANCHURIAN CANDI
DATE WHO COULD BE ACTIVATED
BY OSAMA SIN LADEN AT ANY
MOMENT!
SPEAKING AS
X DON'T SEE
AN
EXPERT,
mNOTU
WHY
STEP WILD ALLEGATIONS about
Another DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE .
APPEAR ON FRINGE WEBSITE... •
ACCORDING TO RJGKTWINOWHACKJOfl-
DOT-COM, HILLARY CLINTON IS SO
DEWSionaL she's going around
TELLING PEOPLE THAT BARACK
OBAMA IS ACTUALLY—GET THIS—A
BRAINWASHED AL QAEDA KILLING
MACHINE!
HOW ALARMING.' X CER
TAINLY WOULDN'T FEEL COM
PORTABLE WITH HER IN
THE WHITE HOUSE.'
WITH THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTION A MERE TWO YEARS
AWAY, it s clearly time For
ANOTHER LOOK AT...
THE RIGHTING
TDRs Committee
Making Steady Progress
A citizens' committee that has been meeting
for over a year to study "transferable develop
ment .ights," or TDRs, has begun discussing spe
cifics of how such a program might work. A TDRs
program is a market-based system that allows a
property owner to sell the development rights
from one piece of land to another landowner,
who could then develop a different property more
freely than would otherwise be allowed. North
Avenue (south of Old Hull Road) might be one
suitable "receiving area" where TDRs could allow
higher residential densities to be built, commit
tee members have sug
gested. "I think this is
exactly the kind of thing
we're looking for," Liz
Kramer of UGA's Institute
of Ecology said at a citi
zen committee meeting
Jan. 17.
But increasing de
velopment density—the
number of homes or
apartments per acre in a residential development,
which developers usually seek to maximize—is
not the only way TDRs might be applied. A de
veloper who bought development rights might
be allowed to build a taller building—perhaps
along Baxter Street, West Broad Street, or down
town—than county rules now allow, committee
members suggested. Or perhaps more parking
spaces could be allowed in new commercial de
velopments, in places (like along Jefferson Road)
where the county wishes to encourage develop
ment. Or, some areas might receive a second
zoning classification (in addition to their normal
zoning) to permit mixed-use development in a
commercially-zoned area.
The idea is to give developers more flexibil
ity to do the things they want to do: especially
things the county wants them to do, committee
members noted. With TDRs in place, a developer
who wanted to take advantage of certain exemp
tions from normal county requirements would not
have to seek special permission, a time-consum
ing and uncertain path that most developers
hate. "We're creating a living, breathing thing
that will evolve over time," land agent Gerry
Whitworth said at the committee's mid-January
meeting.
Some committee members also see TDRs as
a means of balancing the inequity that they
believe was forced onto rural landowners when
the county restricted development in the "green-
belt" to only one house per 10 acres. But selling
development rights from the greenbelt will prob
ably mean "upzoning" parts of it first, since so
little development is permitted there now. And in
order to balance limited
"receiving" areas (where
rights would be bought)
with the much larger
30,000-acre greenbelt,
only limited areas of
the greenbelt would be
used as "sending" zones
(where rights would be
sold from), committee
co-chair and Athens-
Clarke County (ACC) Commissioner Alice Kinman
told Flagpole. Those might be areas of the green
belt "that are under particular development pres
sure," she said.
But once development rights under a TDRs
system have been sold, ACC Planning Director
Brad Griffin told Flagpole, the development limits
would become legally permanent. The landowner
who sells them will never be able to develop
his land to a higher density, and that can't be
changed by a vote of the county commission,
the way that zoning decisions can be. For that
reason, future implications need to be carefully
considered, he said. And while the county's pres
ent land-use plan is designed to accommodate
future density needs for the next 10 years, "if
there's no more developable land, does that drive
the price of what we've got through the roof?"
The idea is to give developers
more flexibility to do the things
they want to do: especially things
the county wants them to do.
committee members noted.
By the reckoning of Flagpole s expert cartographic staff, the new Athens First Bank building planned between Hancock and
Dougherty streets downtown has a chance of blocking out west-end views of the City Hall dome. The ability to put up taller build
ings than currently allowed is one thing a citizen committee has noted that might be attractive to developers in a TDRs program
Griffin asked. In other places where developable
land is limited, that has happened, and housing
prices have shot up, he said.
Committee members acknowledged that
TDRs can't solve all problems. Changes along
Prince or Hawthorne avenues would likely be
too controversial to handle with a cut-and-dried
system like TDRs, some members said. "If you
want to walk into a hornet's nest, propose some
thing like that to the
Boulevard Neighborhood
Association," builder
Tom Reynolds, presi
dent of the neighboring
Cobbham Neighborhood
Association said. And if
county commissioners don't quit giving devel
opers density increases every time they ask for
them, TDRs will never work, committee co-chair
(and former District 1 commissioner) Charles
Carter said. "We're giving it away," he said. "It's
not going to be worth anything until we stop it."
But abandoned industrial "brownfields" or even
some Athens Housing Authority land might make
attractive "receiving zones" for TDRs, members
suggested. "They own some of the finest property
in town," said Whitworth, though he noted
most of those low-income residences
have no nearby grocery stores.
The committee hopes to*send
recommendations to the ACC
Commission in April, Kinman said.
And she does think TDRs might
happen in Athens-Clarke: "I think
there is enough desire and inter
est." Local developer Jon Williams
told Flagpole he would like to see
a TDRs program restore some of the
allowable density in the greenbelt, and
that developers would use such a system,
but mostly to get density increases, not other
amenities like parking or building height. "I
think it would be utilized," he said.
John Huie jphuie@speed(aclory net
Capitol Impact
Herding Democrats
Running the Democratic Party of Georgia isn't
necessarily the hardest job in the world, but it
comes close, as Jane Kidd will soon discover. As
the newly-elected chair of the state Democratic
Party, Kidd has the unenviable job of bringing
order to a party that is famous for its diviaive-
ness and its inability to get everybody to agree
on even the simplest task. It's been said that
chairing a group of Democrats is like trying to
There is no guarantee that the
new leadership can dig the
Democrats out of their deep hole.
herd cats; in the case of Georgia Democrats, it's
like trying to herd a pack of angry mountain
lions ready to tear you to shreds at the first op
portunity.
Kidd brings an impressive political pedigree
to the chairmanship. She's the daughter of for
mer governor Ernest Vandiver, who oversaw the
integration of the state's schools in the early
1960s, and the grand-niece of Richard B. Russell,
a monumental figure in
20th century Georgia poli
tics as governor and sena
tor (Kidd was christened
with the same middle
name as her illustrious
ancestor: Brevard).
She is taking the reins of the party at a pivot
al moment in its history: she's the first chair who
was freely elected by the party's delegates rather
than anointed by the governor. She replaces
Bobby Kahn, the former Roy Barnes hatchetman
who is criticized for not doing enough to rebuild
the party after Barnes' surprise defeat in the
2002 governor's race. Kidd and the other con
tenders for chair all agreed on one thing: Georgia
Democrats need a party organization that can
do basic things like raise funds, recruit
candidates, and do the grassroots work
to turn out voters on election day.
Republicans have been beating the
pants off the Democrats for the past
decade in those fundamental areas,
which is why the GOP is now the
dominant party in state politics.
"We can do more for our candi
dates, our elected officials, and our
counties," Kidd told the state com
mittee caucus. "The DPG should come
to you—and we will. We pursued a 50-
state strategy in 2006 and we now control
both houses of Congress. We need to do the same
here in Georgia in all 159 counties."
The leadership lineup reflects the concern
that Democrats have been putting too much fo
cus on metro Atlanta and neglecting the rest of
the state: Kidd grew up in Franklin County; she
and Labor Commissioner Mike Thurmond, elected
first vice chairman, both represented Athens
House districts in the Legislature.
There also seems to be a recognition that
Georgia Democrats need to do a better job of dif
ferentiating themselves from the national party,
an association that has not resonated well with
many voters. "Basically, we've got to be a center-
right party to succeed in this state," Thurmond
said. To that end, an encouraging sign for party
leaders was the presence at the committee cau
cus of conservative Democrats like state Reps.
Alan Powell of Hartwell and Jeanette Jamieson
of Toccoa, along with Macon Congressman Jim
Marshall.
THIS MMhlM V«ll»
by TOM TOMORROW
WHETHER OR NOT OBAMA REALLY
IS A TOOL Of AL OAELA, WHAT
TO LIKE TO KNOW IS--
6 FLAGPOLE.COM • FEBRUARY 7,2007
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