Newspaper Page Text
6 Cats Placed
0 Adoptable Cats Euthanized
-HIM Me.
ACC ANIMAL CONTROL
45 Beaverdam Rd. • 706-613 -3 540
She’s a happy mutt,
who strives merrily to
please and manages to
make you laugh at least
once a minute (chases
her own tail, loves
toys). Medium-sized
with pretty brown-
black coat
Cod red and white
Staffordshire Terrier
mix has wonderful
manners and
jl doe eyes.
Smart regal girl.
sweet lug of Labrador
mixed with something
that has jowls. Might have a bit of
mange, but don’t let it keep you
from this eager, easygoing fella.
Tall reddish Golden
Retriever mix with lovely,
fluffy coat She’s pretty
unsure of herself in her
current incarcerated
environment Needs
patience and gentleness
and will be a devoted
companion.
More dogs at
athsrjpets.net
omoj-omm athens area humane society
ACC ANIMAL CONTROL !7TbolCaBltot*iwd
25 Dogs Received
20DogsPhced
they may not detect people who aren't near the
sensor. One place they do work, he says, is on
vending machines—to turn off the machines'
bright signs when no one is near. The county has
installed 30 of these "VendMisers," and they are
saving $3,700 a year in electricity costs, county
documents say.
County managers have also asked depart
ments to reduce vehicle use where possible. For
example, Grice says, mowing roadsides four days
a week instead of five means less hauling of
tractors back and forth. And the county is experi
menting in some of its trucks and school buses
with gasoline/ ethanol mixtures and "biodiesel"
that supplements fuel with plant or animal fats.
Electric vehicles—"plug-in hybrids" now being
developed—might make sense for many county
uses, ACC Environmental Coordinator Dick Field
tells Flagpole. Following last years' run-up in gas
prices, county departments were asked to cut
fuel use, and they did, says Field. "There was a
substantial reduction—and without any reduc
tion in service, too."
The county's next step in saving energy will
be to "retro-commission" various county build
ings by carefully adjusting heating, cooling and
other energy systems to work efficiently. That's
a step that doesn't al
ways get done when a
new building is built,
Grice says. And while his
committee has talked
about designating tem
perature settings inside
county buildings, that's
still up to the users in
the buildings, he says. The new county energy
policy calls for more county departments to be
represented on a reconstituted energy conserva
tion committee. "We'd like to do more, and more
comprehensively across the whole government,"
Field says. "And we also hope that we're going
to see a statewide energy policy before long....
In some states, loans or matching grants fund
things like solar panels that locals C3n't easily
afford, he says.
And while the United States has not rati
fied the Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming,
hundreds of U.S. mayors, including Athens' Heidi
Davison, have signed a resolution of support
for Kyoto. Davison also says she'd love to see a
green roof at City Hall, pointing out that the city
halls in both Atlanta and Chicago have them.
Staff is working on that, she says, and mean
while a local example—part of a research project
by UGA graduate student Tim Carter—can be
seen at ground level outside Boyd Hall and the
science library on the UGA campus (just past the
prehistoric giant sloth skeleton in the lobby).
John Huie jphuie@athens.net
Health Benefits
Grad Assistants Keep Watch
Flash back six years ago this spring, to a time
when UGA graduate assistants rallied outside the
Arch and organized extensively on campus to
lobby for a basic right as University employees:
health insurance. As their workloads—especially
as teaching assistants—increased, grad students
steadily wised up and realized they deserved
more than they were yetting as compensation.
Why should the University get such cheap labor
without providing benefits?
Now flash forward to the fall of 2005, when
officials with the Board of Regents and the
University System of Georgia (USG) informed
students that they were planning to put out to
bid a system-wide two-year health plan that
would be mandatory for graduate assistants and
would include international students. The think
ing behind that move was that the bigger the
university system's pool of people needing insur
ance, the greater its bargaining power in negoti
ating with student-insurance specialist provider
Pearce & Pearce. And, given the dismal state of
health care options in
the country these days,
that approach worked
pretty well: Along with a
UGA stipend of $350 per
academic year, graduate
assistants paid $480 for
a 12-month period this
current school year.
But while both grad students and upper-level
UGA administrators thought the plan was settled
for two school years, USG officials decided re
cently io re-negotiate an even better plan for the
parties involved. One of those parties is the large
crowd of international students, who actually
outnumbered domestic graduate assistants in the
Pearce & Pearce plan, according to Lindsey Scott,
the current president of UGA's Graduate Student
Association (GSA). Although both groups were
lumped together for a bulk-buying approach,
that didn't necessarily work best for everyone.
Scott explained to fellow GSA members at a
meeting Mar. 26 that international students are
in a different "risk pool" as far as insurers are
concerned. For whatever reason, they're seen
as less risky than domestic students, so by be
ing lumped together, the international students
subsidize domestic students' insurance to some
degree, "which isn't fair," Scott noted.
Confusing as all that may be, Scott and other
grad students are concerned as much about
proper representation (for UGA, for graduate as
sistants and for international students) a? they
are about the details of their premiums and
Davison also says she'd love to see
a green roof at City Hall, pointing
out that the city halls in both
Atlanta and Chicago have them.
Battling Poverty
Local Students Get Serious
This weekend, Apr. 6-7, local artists, musi
cians and students will join with civic leaders
to show that the high poverty rate in Athens
is no longer something that can be ignored.
The "Battle Against Poverty" is an event geared
to all members of the community, young and
old, to come together to raise awareness about
poverty. As avid readers of the local papers well
know, the poverty problem is reported on almost
daily. Although articles provide grim facts and
figures and encourage readers to help out, the
problem still persists. The Battle Against Poverty
was dreamed up by Cedar Shoals High School
senior Judy Bau and organized with the help of
students from area high schools, Partners for a
Prosperous Athens (PPA), and the UGA Chapter of
Amnesty International.
"Athens is definitely portrayed as a nice col
lege town on the surface and people don't see
a poverty problem," Bau says. "It just isn't fair
that there is such a distinction between those
who are well-off and those who are impover-
; shed. As a town with such a large population
of young people, I feel like we have a chance to
make a difference. The 'poverty cycle' spans gen
erations for some families and affects lifestyle,
behavior, perspectives on education, and it's just
got to stop."
The process of organizing the event has raised
awareness among the younger, and oftentimes
more oblivious denizens of Athens. Volunteers
have attended biweekly meetings at Nug's Space
for the past several months to discuss promo
tional materials, fundraising and how to involve
more people in the event.
The "Battle Against Poverty" includes a
"Poverty in America" juried art show on Friday,
Apr. 6 in the Cedar Shoals High School fine arts
building, hosted by the high school's art club.
Open to anyone in Athens, the exhibition wili be
juried by local art supply business owners Irene
Dodge of Elements Art Supply, and Scott Pope
of the Loft. The "Battle Against Poverty" free
Counter-counter-protest. UGA student Logan Scholfield (r) found this run-of-the-mill sign in a dumpster recently, and decided
to use it to run interference on Chuck Jones' regular counter-protest of the weekly anti-war vigil at the Arch. Concerned he
might confuse motorists. ACC police told him to cut it out shortly after this picture was taken Mar. 27.
Energy Policy
Gov’t Looks to Conserve
Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Commissioners
were scheduled to adopt a formal energy policy
Apr. 3 to continue the county's efforts of at
least a decade to save energy in government
buildings and vehicles. A committee of county
employees has met for the past three years to
study how to reduce energy use, says Gary Grice,
the committee's chairman. Changes have been
made already: the thinner, more efficient "T-8"
fluorescent lights have replaced the older tubes
in several county buildings, and insulation "blan
kets" have been installed around water heaters in
all county buildings. These are changes designed
to pay back their initial costs within five years.
As a beginning, a 2005 energy audit inspected
six government-owned buildings. The audit es
timated that the cooler-burning new lights are
saving the county $17,000 a year. Lights now
being replaced inside the jail could more than
double that saving. Per square foot, it's the jail
that uses the most energy, the study found, and
City Hall uses the least (partly because the jail
operates 24/7).
The county has experimented with "occu
pancy sensors," automatic switches that can turn
off room lights when no one is present. But that
technology is still evolving, Grice says. Sensors
in bathrooms may switch off the lights while
someone is still in a stall, and in larger rooms
concert at Legion Field on Saturday, Apr. 7 is set
up as a "battle of the bands" (separated into
high school and adult categories), a rap battle
hosted by local rapper Ishues, and a headlining
performance by local group Bling the Children
Back Home. There will also be speakers from the
PPA (including Mayor Davison, who is also host
ing the high school band battle) and several UGA
students. (See Threats and Promises on p. 33 and
ABC for more info.)
Catherine Reagan catherine.reagan@gmail.com
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4 FLAGPOLE.COM-APRIL 4,2007
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