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pay at least something to participate; and ACC
Manager Alan Reddish disputed Commissioner
Jordan's "anecdotal" information that basketball
participation dropped after fees went up. But,
said Jordan, "we're the ones who get elected.
We're t-fie ones who have to listen" to complaints
of high fees. Still, Jordan acknowledged that
keeping track of costs is important, because
bureaucracies tend to expand themselves, he
said, and costs can get out of control. The pro
posal will likely spend more time in committee
before going to the full Commission again.
John Huie jphuie@alhens.net
visitors could be obtained), and residents may or
may not be able to buy extra tags beyond those.
(Clark and Decker are taking comments on issues
like these through Oct. 24.) Allowing three tags
per household seemed to some homeowners at
the meeting to conflict with the area's largely
single-family zoning. Particularly in the Midtown-
Bloomfield area, though, many houses and
duplexes are grandfathered to allow multi-family
living arrangements, Hoard points out.
Still, the issue of high use of neighborhood
streets for parking by UGA students—whether
neighborhood residents, commuters to campus,
or Greek house visitors—struck a nerve with
some homeowners at the meeting who seemed
to want to find a way to crack down hard on
what they see as many student-related problems.
Pay to Park
On a Street Near Yon?
The Athens-Clarke County Transportation and
Public Works Department is working on a plan
to greatly expand Five Points' on-street permit
parking program, and the proposal could be
implemented as soon as January. The current
proposal "will be tweaked in the next couple of
months," transportation director David Clark told
neighborhood attendees of a public meeting Oct.
15, but it is substantially complete, and as now
drawn would expand the permit parking require
ment from serving about 75 parcels to serving
around 650 parcels. That kind of jump in size is
"a different program altogether" in the words
of District 7 Commissioner Kathy Hoard, who
represents (with District 4 Commissioner Alice
Kinman) part of the area under consideration.
Hoard says the proposal, and requisite studies
by Clark's staff, came about because of inde
pendent inquiries made by her and by Kinman,
based on "several requests" in recent months.
As parking prices on the UGA campus had gone
up, Hoard's constituents told her, "more of the
neighborhoods were
being used as a com
muter parking lot."
That was one reason
that five streets in the
area of University Drive
and Morton Avenue got
permit parking between
1999 and 2002, and
that Henderson Avenue
(just north of Baxter
Street) got the program
in the late 1980s. The
new proposal would
essentially fill in tne
Midtown-Bloomfield
neighborhood in
between those two
areas, aoss to the west
side of Milledge, and
expand the current
University Drive-area
permit parking zone.
Under the current
draft of the proposal,
the hang-tag permits
would not be assigned
to specific spaces (or,
for that matter, to
specific streets) r but
they probably would
be specific to a certain
car. They would cost
S10 a year (and have to
be renewed annually),
and proof of residence
would be required to
get them. Enforcement
would be only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday
through Friday, and would be entirely complaint-
driven. Clark and traffic engineer Steve Decker
emphasized at the public meeting that police
will not patrol the area looking for parking viola
tors, though after 72 hours a violating car could
be towed.
As drafted, the program might allow two or
three tags per household (temporary tags for
Signs like these could be multiplying all around Five Points
as soon as January.
"The transients," as some residents referred to
students, block fire and garbage truck access,
clog streets, and inconvenience residents, they
said. (Parts of the neighborhood are already get
ting more yellow curbing to solve the fire truck
problem.)
A "separate but related problem," resident
Jason Rogers—a father with two-year-old
children—said at the
meeting, has to do with
large fraternity and
sorority meetings on
weekday evenings and
events on weekends.
"There's still a problem
during the day," Rogers
said, "but the bigger
problem for me is at
night when my daugh
ters are trying to sleep,
and I'm trying to sleep."
He said high traffic at
2 a.m. for three nights
a week (plus "whoop
ing and hollering and
throwing up in my
yard") was unexpected
for him: "They're making
my home their play
ground at all hours of
the night."
But Clark and Decker
said a "one-size-fits-
all" program would be
impossible to construct,
and said that a daytime
program would cut
down on the largest
numbers of non-resident
cars parking on the
streets. Commissioner
Hoard is in agreement
with their plan to try
the expanded program
as a pilot and revisit
the topic a year later. "I
don't mind trying a pilot program in the district
I represent. I don't think this is for all neighbor
hoods," Hoard says. Other neighborhood issues,
she says, can be addressed through other means
like the Community Protection Division, adding,
"I don't think we should use a parking program
to solve all of the ills of our neighborhoods."
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com
THINK AT THE SINK!
• If you have a well at home, check your
pump periodically. If the pump turns
on and off while the water is not being
used, you have a leak.
• Put food coloring in your toilet tank. If
it seeps into the toilet bowl, you have a
leak. It's easy to fix, and you can save
more than 600 gallons a month.
• Select the proper size pans for cooking.
Large pans require more cooking water
than may be necessary.
• Turn off the water while you brush your
teeth and save four gallons a minute.
That's 200 gallons a week for a family
of four.
• Pre-treat stains on your clothes with a
stain-removing formula before putting
them in the washing machine. You can
avoid re-washing your clothes and save
water.
These water-saving tips are brought to you by
Flagpole and the Unified Government of Athens-
Clarke County. For more tips on how to save water,
visit www.athensclarkecounty.com.
As of the last reading taken on Oct. 17, the Bear
Creek Reservoir remains approximately 14.9 feet -
below full pool. For 2007, the precipitation deficit
is approximately 16.5 inches.
A NEW DRIVER AT THE DOT
It is not exactly what you would call a
strong mandate. The State Transportation Board
voted by only a seven to six margin last week
to select Gena Lester Abraham as the next com
missioner of the Department of Transportation
(DOT), which means she will be the first woman
ever to hold that important position.
Whether she will end up loving the job or
hating it is another matter. Georgia is hope
lessly behind on dealing with its traffic conges
tion and legislators tend to blame DOT for not
working quickly enough to get highways built.
Some lawmakers, like Speaker Glenn Richardson,
are also very displeased that the board mem
bers picked Abraham instead of state
Representative Vance Smith, who badly
wanted the appointment.
Abraham has the academic
credentials (a doctorate in civil
engineering) and the experience
(she has run state government
construction projects for several
years) that would be essential for
a position like DOT commissioner.
Governor Sonny Perdue backed her
because he and her other support
ers feel she can bring about a cultural
change in the enormous bureaucracy that
has run the DOT for so many years.
She does present a contrast to past com
missioners, who were either career engineers
moving up the DOT ladder or political cronies
of the governor. Abraham has never worked as
a DOT employee and she isn't limited by any
allegiance to departmental traditions. While
it was Perdue who lobbied the board members
to appoint her, she actually got her first job
in state government when she was hired dur
ing the Roy Barnes administration to oversee
the renovation work on the state capitol.
Obviously, Abraham can bring a new way of
looking at things as she takes over the massive
department with nearly 6,000 engineers and
employees on its payroll. It probably wouldn't
hurt to look at DOT'S procedures and see if
there aren't any better and faster ways for a
highway to be designed, paid for, and built.
Will a shakeup in the DOT culture be enough
to deal with the traffic congestion crisis that
threatens, along with water shortages, to choke
the life out of the state's economy? There are
some who contend that the only problem with
DOT is that it operates inefficiently in carrying
out its mission of building roads and bridges.
By naming someone with a new approach to
running the department, like Abraham, they
say DOT can save all sorts of money that can be
used to pay for additional new highways with
out anyone having to raise taxes.
That might not be enough. Even if you
assume that Abraham is such a skilled leader
she can squeeze an additional 10 percent out
of the department's budget, you're talking
about S200 million in extra funding at most
(DOT spends about $2 billion a year). That
would make barely a dent in the funding
shortfall that Georgia faces in the area
of transportation infrastructure.
To build enough highways to cope
with current and projected traffic
congestion, Georgia would need
about $7 billion to $8 billion more
than it figures to bring in under
the existing tax structure over the
next decade,'according to trans
portation experts. Even if the state
should decide that mass transit is a
better alternative than building new
highways, it would still cost billions of
dollars to buy buses and install commuter rail
facilities.
Abraham's an intelligent person who knows
the construction trade, but she's no miracle
worker. She can't make billions of dollars sud
denly materialize out of nowhere. If they really
want to deal with Georgia's traffic mess, our
political leadership is going to have to give up
the idea that we can solve all our problems if
we just cut taxes some more.
Traffic congestion is out of control—the
evidence is there for anyone with the eyes to
see it—and eventually we're going to have to
pay for some kind of solution. There's no such
thing as free asphalt. The greatest DOT commis
sioner in the world couldn't escape that basic
economic fact.
Tcm Crawford
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia
Report, an Internet news site at www.gareport.com that
covers government and politics in Georgia.
THIS MMMM W«IL» by TOM TOMORROW
ITS TIME TO CHECK IN ON PAR
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COMPLICATED TO RECOUNT HERE,
AN ACTUAL NEANDERTHAL
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REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOM
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6 FLAGPOLE.COM • OCTOBER 24,2007 NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS