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Area Transpo Plan
Out for Comment Now
Cat Policy:
With the non-profit Athens Area Humane
Society (AAHS) having declined to renew its
annual contract with the Athens-Clarke County
(ACC) government, cat management in the *
county is presently minimal. The ACC Animal
Control Division, which focuses on dogs and
nuisance animals but does not have the
facilities to take in cats, is presently handling
only "emergency" cat cases: bites, suspected
rabies cases and seriously sick or injured
cats at large. AAHS had told ACC officials in
February that it was considering canceling its
long-held annual contract after another year
in order to become a "no-kill" shelter, but in
June the Society decided to cut ties for Fiscal
Year 2010, which began July 1. ACC Central
Services Director David Fluck, whose depart
ment includes Animal Control, told Flagpole
late last month that he and staff had yet had
"no guidance on where we want to go with
this" from the ACC Mayor and Commission.
Citizens seeking to surrender healthy,
adoptable cats to AAHS can still visit one
of its area locations, including its new
Watkinsville center (see www.athenshumane-
society.org for specifics). But for the time
being, anyone who traps a feral cat—there are
estimated to be thousands in the county—has
nowhere to take it. In the past, ACC residents
could rent humane traps from Animal Control
and take ferals there or to AAHS, which would
euthanize them. (AAHS says it was strained
Downtown:
It's hard to predict which local issues
will grab the public's fancy-and become a
cause celebre. When the Classic Center was
being planned, its bland initial design was
so unpopular—partly because it failed to
incorporate the old firehall that's now part of
it—that the county went back and redesigned
it after having already spent a million dollars.
The never-built east-west connector became
"the road that won't die" and drew demon
strators to City Hall. The Gameday building
has become the local definition of distasteful
development. Will the big new
downtown parking deck (planned
for the entire block surrounding
the Georgia Theatre) be the Next
Wrong Thing?
Maybe not; criticisms of the deck plans
have so far been unspecific, and, some ACC
Commissioners argue, late in coming. But
such criticisms do raise issues about how
new developments will affect downtown (and
demonstrate that people care). Athens-Clarke
Heritage Foundation director Amy Kissane
got a sympathetic audience response at an
Aug. 3 Federation of Neighborhoods forum
on downtown's future when she critiqued
recently-built downtown buildings. "What does
the community thinly about these buildings?"
she asked. "To me, they're all built from the
same recipe." Nor did she like the county's
"alternative design standards" for new build
ings in the part of downtown that surrounds
the core historic district. "They don't encour
age greatness," she said. "It's a recipe for
mediocrity." Those standards are only two
years old, and so far no builders have applied
to use them. They offer only general guidance
What’s Next?
for space and money as a result of satisfying
this part of its county contract.)
Is that a problem? For Joel McNeal, it isn't
right now, but it would be if his neighborhood
were still home to the small colony of feral
cats that it once had. McNeal, a UGA plant
biologist, successfully trapped four feral cats
in his Eastside backyard when he moved in a
few years ago, and cats have not returned.
McNeal has lived in other cities where the
local government's animal control facility
didn't accept feral cats, or would charge a fee
to take them—which "just encourages people
to take care of it themselves," he says: often
with poison, which is less humane than other
methods and can harm the environment or
other animals. "That's one of the things I liked
when I moved to this area, was that there's
actually a system in place where you can deal
with feral cats," he says.
ACC officials say there's no specific timeline
in which they expect to adjust policy, but they
do have roughly $100,000 to work with—
funds that would have gone to AAHS. McNeal
says he's worried that as they determine what
to do next, the practice known as Trap-Neuter-
Release may be legalized. McNeal is opposed
to TNR because it involves the feeding of feral
colonies, but it does have supporters here, as
well as practitioners on the UGA campus.
A Hot Topic
for developers who seek an exemption to the
regular downtown requirements. Those regu
lar requirements aren't very stringent, ACC
Planning Department staffer Rick Cowick says,
and mostly cover street setbacks, percentage
of windows and trim.
Kissane and others—including Mayor Heidi
Davison and Athens Downtown Development
Authority director Kathryn Lookofsky—think
that downtown needs to develop a "master
plan" to guide future development. (Lookofsky
is initiating the process to create one.) Also,
at the recent forum, Kissane sug
gested having an architectural
review board approve designs for
new aowntown buildings. "I think
this Commission needs to be
woken up about what's possible," she added.
"We just have one project after another that
we settle for."
ACC Commissioner David Lynn was also
on the panel at the forum. He told Flagpole
he had Kissane's criticisms on his mind the
next night when he suggested, at the ACC
Commission's regular voting meeting, that
downtown might need "a specialized architec
tural review board, a Planning Commission,
so to speak, specific for downtown." The ACC
Planning Commission—like most, Lynn says—
"has shied away from any kind of architectural
subjective review" of proposed projects. But,
he told commissioners, "I think we've had a
number of issues downtown—both private
development and public development—where
there might be a good role for [such a board]
to play."
John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com
Changes at the Georgia Department of
Transportation (GDOT) are giving a new look to
local transportation plans: projects are being
placed on the back burner. "The money is just
not there," ACC transportation planner Sherry
Moore says. Moore works with local decision
makers on the MACORTS board—elected rep
resentatives of Madison, Clarke and Oconee
counties plus citizens and a UGA official—as
well as with GDOT, which decides which proj
ects to fund. "Most everything's being pushed
back at this point," she says.
"GDOTs kind of a mess right now," she
says. "The gas-tax revenue is not keeping
pace with what we need in Georgia to get
things done." Expected construction dates on
some proposed local projects are now "null
and void," she adds. She now anticipates
funding for just four local projects in the
upcoming "TIP," the four-year "Transportation
Improvement Plan" that gets updated yearly.
Those are: widening the river bridges along
College Station Road to accommodate bike
lanes; replacing the
stoplight intersection
of the Loop 10 at Peter
Street/ Olympic Drive
with an overpass; con
tinuing the greenway trail from Oconee Street
southward along the North Oconee River to
College Station Road; and construction of
the rail-trail from downtown to the Loop at
Lexington Road. The TIP is, effectively, GDOfs
reply to local requests: it tells which projects
the agency will fund. Those local requests go
into another document: the MACORTS "Long-
Range Transportation Plan." That plan is now
being updated. • .
The draft plan, available at www.macorts.
org, moves some 30 proposals into an
"unfunded" category. Those are projects
that given the expectation of reduced rev
enues, local planners decided are of lowest
priority. For instance, still in the plan is a
new road that has been controversial in the
past. It would connect Commerce Road with
Danielsville Road, crossing Sandy Creek. An
initial route across Cook's Trail (between
Sandy Creek Nature Center and Sandy Creek
Park) drew objections from local environ
mentalists; the current proposal shows no
specific route. Also included in the report (as
"unfunded") is the Athens/ Atlanta commuter
rail, but with no specifics—aside from giving
the project length as one-tenth mile, and the
number of lanes as four. Go figure.
Most proposed but unfunded projects are
road widenings, plus three new or rebuilt
interchanges along the Loop and one new
road: the four-lane Jennings Mill Parkway,
which.will parallel part of Atlanta Highway
and cross the 10 Loop (it will connect with a
separate Jennings Mill Parkway being devel
oped in Oconee County via a new access
road). Widening proposals include Mitchell
Bridge Road, Tallassee Road and Hawthorne
Avenue (all with bike/ pedestrian facilities);
widening with bike lanes of Indian Hills Road
and portions of Olympic Drive and Winterville
Road between Beaverdam Road and the Loop;
three-laning Old Hull Road and widening U.S.
29 in Madison County to four lanes. Ramps
will be reworked at the Atlanta Highway exit
on the Loop, and an additional Loop exit will
be added for Atlanta Highway access near
Mitchell Bridge Road.
In Oconee County, Hog Mountain Road and
Mars Hill/ Experiment Station Road would be
widened with bike lanes and sidewalks added;
Simonton Bridge Road
would be widened to
four lanes (plus four-
foot bike lanes); and
Union Church Road and
others would be widened. A new connector
south of Watkinsville would connect from U.S.
441 to Green Ferry Road.
Public comments on the draft plan may
be emailed to macorts@co.clarke.ga.us
through Tuesday, Aug. 18. The local group
BikeAthens plans to solicit input on the
MACORTS Long-Range Transportation Plan from
its membership before submitting its official
comments. (The group will meet at 7 p.m.
on Wednesday, Aug. 12 at Trappeze pub to
review the plan and receive input for develop
ing its comments.) BikeAthens board co-chair
Amy Johnson says that the group points out
that, so far, the long-range plan contains
"virtually no specific funding" for the bike/
pedestrian infrastructure which its language
calls for—"a primary concern in our current
economy," she says, since bike and pedestrian
projects are "vastly less expensive than road
projects." BikeAthens would also like to see
better integration of transportation planning
with land-use fanning, and would like to see
the MACORTS document better reflect Athens'
status as a "non-attainment" area for federal
air-quality standards, she says.
John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com
Ben Emanuel benOflagpole.com
“It’s a recipe
for mediocrity.”
“Most everything’s being
pushed back at this point.”
AUGUST 12,2009 • FLAGPOLE.COM 5