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public. I guess the* ** are so many that they ust don t stand
out individually. However, as many 2re Black Lab mixes, they
are usually VEfaY sweet and loving and well worth getting to
know. Two young dogs
below, fun extrovert
There’s a sad phenomenon that folks who work with Animal
Control see a lot and it’s that GBD’s - Georgia Black Dogs -
are the most likely to be overlooked for adoption by the
scent Shepherd
mix. Don’t pass them by!
Two happy-go-lucky types below. The first is
a special needs dog (though HE doesn’t know
that). He is an extremely mendly young Boxer
mix who gets around pretty well despite the
fact that his forelegs do not support him and
he walks on his front knees. A vet may be
able to figure this out and fix him if someone
will rescue him. The black and white Japanese
Chin mix is a sweet, confidentlove of a dog.
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23617
:
03/08/07 - 03/14/07
ACC ANIMAL CONTROL
. 24 Dogs Received
20 Dogs Pricec ’
ATHENS AREA HUMANE SOCIETY
7 Total Cats Received
3 Cats Placed
0 Adaptable Cats Euthanized ‘
* ? Mere dogs at
. .
Like many of the small mobile home parks still remaining tucked away in unexpected places across Athens-Clarke—especially
inside the Loop—the AAA mobile home park is one you may have passed a thousand times without ever knowing it was there
Its residents have been told to move out by May 1.
Drinkin’ Rules
The OT Go-Slow Approach
At their work session Mar. 13, Athens-Clarke
County (ACC) Commissioners put the brakes on a
proposal by ACC staff to revise the county's ordi
nance pertaining to alcohol licenses. The chang
es, suggested by the ACC Police Department,
the county attorney's office, and the Finance
Department (which handles alcohol licenses) aim
mainly at ironing out a section of local law that's
seen more than 20 amendments since city-county
unification in 1991. There are also cases in which
local authorities seek to better match ordinances
with state law, which has also seen changes;
overall, ACC Manager Alan Reddish told commis
sioners, the goal is to make local regulations
more "user-friendly" for both police (who would
benefit from more clarity in enforcing laws) and
vendors alike.
But commissioners saw multiple cases in
which they felt the proposed revisions might be
too harsh, and asked staffers to hold off before
taking the proposal to the
public and to stakeholders
like bar, convenience store
and package store owners.
Many of the "housekeep
ing" changes might effectively change little
about the way bars and other vendors do busi
ness. Others would involve higher fees for alco
hol licenses, such as one section that would clear
up rules on after-hours foodservice (applicable to
eight establishments in Athens) and increase the
fee for that type of license to S50 per year from
$5. There could also be an increase in the fee for
late submittals on annual license renewals, and
the Finance Department would like to require full
payment of all ACC taxes and fees before licenses
are issued (that strategy collected $47,000 in
unpaid property taxes last year. Finance Director
John Culpepper told commissioners).
But other possible changes raised commis
sioners' concerns. They were wary of a proposal
to require employees to be 21 to serve alcohol or
work the door at a bar, when they'd only have to
be 18 at restaurants, and just 16 to sell at gro
cery stores. ACC Police Chief Jack Lumpkin told
commissioners, though, "We've literally arrested
people under 21 working the door, intoxicated
themselves and allowing people in." Lumpkin
echoed a refrain that seems to guide the relation
ship between local law enforcement and bar own
ers: "We have some quality operators of bars...
but we have a certain group that are pushing the
envelope." The majority of bars, he said, do well
to follow the law. Downtown bar owner Damon
Krebs (a partner in Walker's Pub and Allgood),
who attended the work session, told Flagpole
later he tends to agree with that assessment, and
looks forward to being included in stakeholder
discussions of the issue in order to advocate for
the above-board majority of bars downtown.
Commissioners also balked at a rule that, if
passed, would require doorpersons to be trained
and certified individually, and to be re-certified
each time they start a job at a new establish
ment. Lumpkin, however, explained that the idea
had come out of conversations with bar owners
themselves, who were having problems with cer
tain people "going from place to place" despite a
record of violations.
As for changes to bar ownership, corpo
rate composition, or even a bar's name, staff
suggested requiring a 100-percent change in
ownership—with no new license issued to an
individual or company for two years after a cita
tion—to keep businesspeople from skating out
of trouble when they accrue enough citations for
underage service, for example, to be shut down.
County Attorney Bill Berryman estimated that
rnaybe three "very serious offenders" have done
so in the last few years. District 9 Commissioner
Kelly Girtz seemed wary of punishing some part
ners too heavily.
As county staff made even more suggestions,
commissioners became increasingly apprehensive
and eventually decided to have a committee
review the proposal before letting it move any
further. Those ideas in
cluded clamping down on
pricing promotions in which
drink prices change inside
a 24-hour period (appar
ently aimed at super-cheap drink specials, but
potentially also nixing happy hour), combining
drinks together (as in boilermakers, sake bombs,
or any beer with a shot of liquor in it), and even
selling more than one drink to one person stand
ing at the bar (who might or might not intend to
deliver some to friends at a tuble, or just drink
them all).
Commissioners—appreciative of the effort but
caught off guard by some of the ideas—agreed to
send the proposal to the Commission's Legislative
Review Committee and bring the topic back to a
work session before going public with it at all.
Rushing the process "could send the wrong mes
sage," District 10 Commissioner Elton Dodson
warned. "Everybody gets burned if you present
this as, This is what the Mayor and Commission
[are] pushing out on the community.'" As points
of disagreement between commissioners and staff
became clear, Lynn said, "I don't think this is
cooked yet," and other commissioners agreed.
Krebs told Flagpole he was glad to hear those
sentiments from commissioners, and, as a bar
owner, he worries about the focus on downtown
when officials acknowledge that much underage
drinking goes on in homes with cheaper drinks
bought at convenience stores. He also noted
that an imposition on happy hour—unlikely to
happen, given the commission's response last
week—would likely affect their demographic
more than it would the college-aged set. "I think
they were more upset about ^appy hour than I
was," Krebs said with a laugh.
Ben Emanuel ben@tiagpole.com
“I think they were more upset
about happy hour than I was.
Housing Notes
Another Trailer Park Closing
In September of 2006, Patricia Gomez and her
husband and two children made a move. After
some years of renting and carefully saving, they
found an opportunity to buy a mobile home for
$4,000 in the AAA Mobile Home Park on Atlanta
Highway near Timothy Road. Just a small one,
built in 1979, with two bedrooms and no air
conditioning, but it was their own. The park had
a fairly long history of stability, they were told,
and they thought the move would be a long
term one. A month after they moved in, a run of
bad luck began when a storm blew a heavy tree
limb through the roof, causing more than $1000
worth of damage. Not long after that, medical
expenses dealt another blow to their finances.
Then, in February of this year, the owner of the
park sent out letters to the residents informing
them that it had been sold and asking them to
be out by the first of May, 2007.
For a while it seemed that Patricia and her
family might at least be able to save their in
vestment by moving the home to another loca
tion. Folks from People of Hope had come around
when they heard of the closing and made sure all
residents knew how to get their homes inspected
for approval to move. But Patricia's home didn't
pass because of a problem deemed irreparable by
the inspector. At this point, they're just hoping
they'll be allowed to abandon the trailer rather
than pay another $1000 dollars or so to get it to
the landfill. For Patricia, this episode in her life
has been sad but familiar. The same exact thing
happened to her family when they were evicted
from Garden Springs in 2002 and lost a trailer
they had only owned for a year.
Patricia and her family are not alone. Since
the closing of Garden Springs, seven more mobile
home parks in Athens have closed. The options
for affordable housing for families like hers—a
family of four earning $1800 a month—are
narrowing drastically. Many such families see a
mobile home, even an old one, as a desirable op
tion because it provides a chance to own their
own home and enjoy the privacy not found in
high-density apartment living. For families like
Patricia's, home ownership is otherwise a mere
fantasy. So what are her housing options now?
She would like to find another trailer, but says
she's scared. "This could just happen again and
again," Gomez says. The family would like to
be able to buy its own little plot of land that
couldn't be sold out from under them, but they
can't find anything. They don't want the higher
expense and potentially greater instability of
renting, but that is what they will probably do.
Oscar Cardenas, director of the nonprofit
People of Hope, is concerned about the trend
these park closings represent, a trend that fur
ther marginalizes low-income families. "It's a
housing choice," he notes about mobile home
living, "and people should be treated with
dignity." When a park closes, he observed, the
losses are not limited to homes and lots. "When
neighborhoods get disrupted, people lose sup
port systems, the friends who give them a ride to
work and watch their kids after school."
People of Hope was organized by former resi
dents after the closing of the Garden Springs mo
bile home park on North Avenue five years ago,
and their mission is to open a resident-owned
mobile home park. Through grants and fundrais
ing, the group was able to buy land in 2004 to
accommodate 40 lots. They then deeded that
land to the Athens Land Trust. They are antici
pating closing on a loan in the near future that
will start the work on the infrastructure, which
will be owned by People of Hope. Residents will
purchase their own homes to move onto the
land, and as residents, they will be voting mem
bers of the organization.
Though fulfillment of the vision may still
be some way away, Cardenas is optimistic. The
resident-controlled park is a model that has been
very successful in other parts of the country. This
is the first time it's been attempted in the state
of Georgia, but, he says, "it's going to take off
once people see it can be done." Until then, un
fortunately, Patricia Gomez is looking for a cheap
apartment.
Nancy Heiges nheiges@gmaii.com
mm Me
Several chickens needing
homes, too! No adoption fee.
ACC ANIMAL CONTROL
45 Beaverdam R d . • 706*613-3540
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