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CITY PAGES
continued from page 5
neighborhoods," Maxwell, who is a minister, said
at the committee's meeting in August.
Commissioner Andy Herod (a transplanted
Brit) offered a different view. "I just don't buy
the argument that this is somehow corrupting
schoolchildren," he said. In Europe, alcohol is
not such a taboo, but children are taught to
respect it and there are fewe r problems, Herod
said. And Commissioner David Lynn (who intro
duced the measure) said the problems seen in
bars aren't happening in restaurants, and insisted
that "a majority" of commissioners want to be
able to grant the exemptions. At the committee
meeting last month, Lynn pitched the idea as
a way to help make mixed-use zoning effective
at encouraging successful restaurants in small
"neighborhood node centers." (The proposed
discretionary approach would only apply in zones
where restaurants are already allowed.) Lynn
said then that he saw the question as "more of a
planning and land-use issue than a public safety
issue." The committee voted to send it to the full
commission for a November decision.
John Huie iphuie@athens.net
Sexual Assault Center
Services Continue Unbroken
minister a more than $120,000 grant—the cen
ter's largest—through federal Victims of Crime
Act funding.
Meanwhile, Lt. Greg Paul of the ACC Police
Department's domestic violence and sex crimes
units tells Flagpole that things have been "fairly
routine" so far this fall in his office. Although
there is sometimes an increase in reported sexual
assaults after the start of a new academic year
at UGA, Paul hasn't been seeing one this year.
"Every so often when you get a new groLp, or a
new class coming into the University, sometimes
things will spike," he says. But that hasn't hap
pened (yet, anyway) this fall, a fact he attributes
in part to increasing outreach and education
on campus spearheaded by the local group Safe
Campuses Now.
"It's been quiet, you know, and I hope it's not
the calm before the storm," says Safe Campuses
Now Director Keith Sims, who recalls the dif
ficulty of dealing with a high number of reported
sexual assaults in the fall of 2006. "Last fall it
seemed like there was about six weeks when
every week there was a new one reported,” she
says. "And that's what gets the attention of a lot
of people, but what they don't realize is there are
so many more that don't get reported."
The sexual assault hotline number—currently
being forwarded from SACNEGA to Project Safe,
and staffed 24/7—is 706-353-1912. Project
Safe's own hotline 24/7 number is 706-543-
3331; the website is www.project-safe.org.
Ben Emanuel ben@llagpole.com
Two months after Athens-based domestic
violence center Project Safe took over hotline
calls and emergency services from the founder
ing Sexual Assault Center of Northeast Georgia
(SACNEGA), Director Joan Prittie says calls are
coming in, though there's no way to know if ev
ery sexual assault victim who needs the hotline
is using it. Prittie was worried that might not be
the case after Project Safe received just 13 sex
ual assault hotline calls in the month of August.
That number would be good news if it were
known to reflect the volume of actual incidents,
but with upheaval earlier this year at SACNEGA,
she wondered if some victims who would have
been calling weren't. That concern has been al
layed somewhat, as by mid-September there had
been 15 sexual assault hotline calls to Project
Safe. (The numbers seem to range widely so far,
though: in the five days at the end of July when
SACNEGA's hotline was first set up to be forward
ed to Project Safe, 13 calls were forwarded.)
lower-than-expected numbers are also a re
sult, Prittie says, of Project Safe receiving only
new calls, not any from past SACNEGA clients.
Those clients, she says, received mail from the
center informing them of its impending clos
ing early this summer. "The volume was lower
than we were think
ing it would be until
we realized the fact
that all we're getting
are new calls," Prittie
explains. In addition.
Project Safe has not
been doing the kind of
publicity that normally
advertises a hotline number for the reason that
they expect to be turn it back over to a newly re
constituted SACNEGA before the end of the year.
Tim Johnson, the temporary new president
of SACNEGA's board, says things are progressing
there. The board now numbers 10 people, some
of whom, like Johnson, are there just for the
current "rebuilding period," and some, he says,
"that I expect to be there for the long haul."
At present, the board includes District Attorney
Ken Mauldin and ACC Assistant Police Chief Alan
Brown, but it is likely those two members will
serve in an advisory, non-voting position on a
fully-formed new board, in order to prevent com
munication breakdowns as seemed to have been
a problem for the former center. The interim
board is hoping to hire three new staff members
as soon as it can, Johnson says, and it has heard
good news from more than one of the agencies
funding the center, including the Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council of Georgia, which recently
expressed confidence it will be able again to ad-
Miscellanies
From City Hall
At a Sept. 18 meeting, a committee of ACC
Commissioners declined to pass on to the full
Commission a proposed ordinance to limit con
struction noise, which apparently will remain
unregulated. Out of 3200 noise complaints last
year, only 17 were about construction noise,
assistant county manager Bobby Snipes told
commissioners, and only four of those would
nave been affected by the proposed ordinance.
The committee had discussed prohibiting
construction noise between 11 p.m. and 7
a.m., although the Athens Area Home Builders'
Association arjued for 6 a.m. after being asked
for its opinion.
Meanwhile, commissioners are expected
to approve plans for (relatively) soon-to-be-
built sidewalks at their next voting meeting.
Sidewalk construction continues at a snail's
pace in Athens-Clarke, with five new proj
ects approved for construction next summer.
Stretches of sidewalk will be added to Cedar
Shoals Drive (near
Cedar Shoals High
School), Oglethorpe
Avenue (near Loop
10) and Timothy Road
(near Epps Bridge
Parkway), and shorter
sections will be built
on Baxter Street and
Barnett Shoals Road. Those projects are but a
drop in the bucket of six pages of requested
new sidewalks along existing roads, but side
walks are expensive and not generally included
in transportation funding (unless a new road is
being built, or one is being widened).
But then, for years, sidewalks weren't even
built along with new streets, which is why so
many streets don't have them. For the past few
,ears, Athens-Clarke has dedicated at least
$250,000 a year in sales-tax money to sidewalk
building. But at a cost of around $50 per run
ning foot to build them, that's only about a
mile of new sidewalks each year. (Meanwhile,
expensive road projects continue well-funded.
One example: replacing the stoplight intersec
tion at Peter Street and Olympic Drive on Loop
10 with an overpass—whenever officials deem
it doable—will cost $10.8 million, the equiva
lent of 35 years of sidewalk funding.)
John Huie jphuie@athens.net
“The volume was lower than we were
thinking it would be until we realized
the fact that all we’re getting are
new calls.”
6 FLAGPOLE.COM-.SEPTEMBER 26.2007 NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS