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"I have been thinking, for several months,
about a green SPLOST," Mayor Heidi Davison
wrote to her "colleagues," the 10 Athens-
Clarke County Commissioners, in an email last
month. If voters next year approve extending
the one-cent "special-purpose, local option
sales tax" next year (for another five or six
years), it could fund a $70 million new jail,
but what else? Over the past six years, those
pennies generated $122 million, and in the
next six, "it's hard to think that there'll
be much more than that," given the eco
nomic downturn, ACC Finance Director John
Culpepper told Flagpole. SPLOST revenues by
law must go to capital projects (investments
like buildings, parks or sidewalks) and cannot
be used for salaries or operating expenses.
And there's the rub: some of those new
facilities will require staffing, and most will
need routine maintenance over time. Those
costs add to the county's general budget.
"Rather than building new, let's maintain and
retrofit what we have," the Mayor wrote. "My
goal was to look for ways that reduce costs
over time," she told Flagpole. She offered any
number of suggestions, "merely as a conver
sation starter": "cool roofs" that reflect the
sun's heat, roof gardens, small parks within
a half-hour's walk of all residents, commu
nity gardens, a bike-share program, recover
ing rainwater from roofs to water landscape
plants, adding cigarette butt containers "all
over town, n^t just downtown," and adding
adding solar panels at water treatment plants
(where pumps use a lot of electricity). More
traffic lights could be synchronized, she sug
gested; "more sidewalks (TONS of them) and
bike lanes (TONS of them)" and end-of-trip
bike facilities like showers could be built. (See
more of her thoughts alongside this story at
Flagpole.com.)
"My sense is that any large-scale project
requiring long-term M8.0 [maintenance and
operating expenses] will not be looked upon
favorably by the community," Davison wrote,
SPLOST?”
"with the exception of a jail and possibly one
final Classic Center expansion." The conven
tion center may be missing out on some larger
conventions, she says, but "at some point,
you've got to quit building." The only other
large-scale project that "comes to mind," she
wrote, is replacing the existing courthouse
parking deck with "an expanded judicial center
tacked on to the Courthouse," and building
another deck "elsewhere (where is a good
guess)." ACC voters have approved three previ
ous sales-tax referenda, but if next year's were
to fail, the new jail would have to be built
from general-fund revenues, Davison says.
A "green" SPLOST with more retrofits than
new projects might appeal to voters, but
energy-saving efforts are nothing new to the
county government. For some time, a staff
committee has sought out energy savings,
and such upgrades are the reason the county
used 5 percent less electricity last year than
the year before, Central Services Director David
Fluck says. (With electric rates going up, the
county's power bill was about the same.) The
government expects tt> get a $1.3 million fed
eral stimulus grant to reduce its greenhouse-
gas footprint—which mostly means reducing
energy use—and UGA will soon begin an engi
neering study of how the county can best do
that, Fluck says.
But a couple of the county's energy-
efficiency efforts have been placed on the
back burner. It started using biodiesel fuel
in trucks, buses and other vehicles, but had
to stop early last year because the fuel is no
longer sold locally. And while the govern
ment had planned to commission energy
audits on its buildings to learn how to best
reduce energy use, the companies that do
those audits raised their prices because they'd
become popular, Fluck says. "It just didn't
seem to be cost-effective*" he says, except for
in large buildings.
John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com
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Planners at the Northeast Georgia
Regional Commission (formerly the Regional
Development Center) are assembling the first-
ever "Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force" for
the 12-county area in which the agency works.
The group seeks local government officials in
addition to "qualified individuals represent
ing nonprofit organizations, bicycle- and
pedestrian-related businesses, as well as unaf
filiated private citizens," according to a press
release. To apply, interested parties should fill
out an online survey found at www.negplan-
ning.org by Aug. 14.
Envisioned as a body that will exist indefi
nitely, the new task force's first task will be to
help staffers update the bike/pedestrian trans
portation plan for the region. The last such
plan was submitted to the Georgia Department
of Transportation (GDOT) in 2005, says NEGRC
Senior Planner John Devine.
"What we're looking at with this task force
is trying to use it as an advisory council for
the bicycle/pedestrian plan.... This is the
major jumping-off point for it," Devine says.
In the end, of course, it's a long road to get
ting any transportation project built, and it's
no secret that moving alternative transporta
tion projects through the GDOT bureaucracy
is a challenge. Still, Devine says, encouraging
GDOT to include bike and pedestrian facilities
in its own projects (when widening roads, say)
is "a huge step," and may be a focus of the
task force. "I think there are some neat ideas
that we can start talking about," he says, and
he's been impressed by the support for rail-
trail concepts like an Athens-to-Union Point
line. "I think things are coming together very
well with all this stuff right now," he says.
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpoie.com
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AUGUST 5,2009 iFLAGPOLE.COM _. 5