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SPLOST Talk:
How to find It ill?
Athens-Clarke County continues to pursue
alternatives to incarceration (like a planned
work-release center), but the Lexington Road
jail remains overcrowded. The county pays
to board and transport around 100 inmates
to other county jails, and commissioners are
eager to replace most of the cheaply-built old
jail with a new, larger one.
That could cost up to $80 million. An
obvious funding source: SPLOST, the one-cent
"local option" sales tax that's paid for parks,
trails, a dance center
and countless other
amenities over the years.
The current six-year
cycle of tax collections
and project-building will
run out in 2011; for the
penny tax to continue after that, voters must
approve another list of projects.
Or not. A new jail may not be the easiest
sell to voters, and commissioners know it. The
jail could use up to two-thirds of the money
collected over six years (other projects could
be chosen by a citizens' committee, but are
only speculative at this point: expansion of
the Classic Center has been proposed, and
Mayor Heidi Davison has suggested vari
ous energy-efficient retrofits). Voters have
approved several previous SPLOSTs, but if they
don't vote for the jail, the county has other
options, staffers explained to commissioners
at a work session Aug. 11. The recommended
option, ACC Finance Director John Culpepper
said, is to issue "general obligation" bonds
(over 24 years) that could be repaid from
sales-tax dollars, if voters approve, or from
the general fund, if they don't. That will
enable the jail to be built sooner rather than
later, saving on prisoner boarding costs.
Borrowing $80 million for 24 years means
paying back $126 million, Culpepper said. But
those bonds could be paid off sooner, reducing
the interest costs (and
still allowing Athens-
Clarke to build a new
jail in 2011). And rather
than a five- or six-year
SPLOST cycle, staffers
recommended a third
option available under state law: continuing
the penny tax until a specified amount has
been collected. Such a SPLOST might run for
about eight years, they suggested, and collect
enough to pay on the jail debt, expand the
Classic Center and fund some other projects
too. But some commissioners were cool to the
assumption that expanding the convention
center would necessarily be part of the deal.
"I'm not sure it's in that league of not having
to compete with all the other projects," said
Commissioner David Lynn.
John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com
A new jail may not be
the easiest sell to voters,
and commissioners know it
Air Quality
Officially
Most of the air pollution in Athens-Clarke
County blows over here from Atlanta, but
that won't keep this county from being
designated a "non-attainment" area by
the Environmental Protection Agency, ACC
Environmental Coordinator Dick Field told
commissioners at their work session last week.
"Non-attainment" could mean required car
inspections, stricter air pollution standards on
local industries, and stricter state reviews of
local transportation projects, he said. Athens-
Clarke has narrowly
missed the designation
in the past, but—while
particulate pollution
levels aren't obviously
rising here—the EPA's
standards have gotten
tighter, and designation
is "very likely by this time next year," Field
said. Particulate matter can cause breathing
problems for young or elderly persons, and
even cancers, Field said.
Athens-Clarke County may want to appeal
the designation, he suggested. "We've done
a lot of things [to improve air quality], and
we need to get some credit for that," he
said. The designation won't help the county
attract new industries that require air-quality
permits, and "that is a serious consideration
Soon to Be
Bad Here
for some companies." They will probably "just
move on" and pick another location if Athens
is in non-attainment, he said—but if they
locate in a nearby county, "we still get a lot
of benefit." Nearby counties may not be des
ignated as non-attainment areas along with
Athens—even though, Field said, "whichever
way the wind's blowing, those are the counties
that are getting the worst ozcne." Or the state
may add additional counties, which would
simplify transportation planning: "We could do
so much better if we had
our neighbors cooperat
ing with us, in terms of
a regional transportation
plan."
Under the non
attainment designation,
local transportation proj
ects must be vetted by EPA (and the Georgia
Department of Transportation) to see if they
cut down on pollution—by improving traffic
flow through intersections, for example, or
encouraging alternatives to automobile use.
However, "non-attainment" could favor alter
native transportation projects, and could also
provide some "mitigation" funds not otherwise
available, he said.
John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com
“We’ve done a lot of things
[to improve aii quality],
and we need to get some
credit for that.”
Splitting Storms:
Does Rain Avoid Athens?
£ . ^ - •
It's happened again. The skies darken,
breezes spurt, the leaves curt to show their
matte undersides. Ahhh... it feels like rain. A
break in the humidity, a drink for the plants—
rain. Then, nothing. Blue sky, thirsty plants.
Maybe you've experienced the same disap
pointment in front of your computer. On the
Doppler radar, the green storm blob scuds
toward Athens-Clarke County. Closer, closer,
then suddenly the storm splits, right there on
the screen. It goes around us, and re-joins to
shower an outlying county with rain. What
gives? Are clouds Republican?
UGA is fortunate to have a world-renowned
researcher on urban climate, Dr. Marshall
Shepherd of the Department of Geography's
Atmospheric Sciences Program. Using satel
lite and other data gathered throughout his
15-year relationship with NASA, he's deter
mined that, indeed, cities can affect rainfall.
"Under certain conditions, urban environ
ments may cause storms to bifurcate or split
around cities... I have published several
papers recently noting increased rainfall or
storm activity downwind of cities," he says.
"Bifurcation is always considered as one of the
possible mechanisms."
It's not only "our" storms that split and
send rain downwind. It turns out this behavior
is often observed in cities during summer. If
the summer heat is a condition that prompts
such events, what makes Athens different
than the surrounding area? First, owing to
the urban "heat island" effect, we may be
as much as six to eight degrees warmer than
our neighboring counties. All our building
and paving material—think concrete, steel,
asphalt, glass—absorbs heat while displac
ing the trees and other vegetation that act to
cool the atmosphere. This amassed heat rises
over Athens. Pumping out yet more heat are
our many machines, including cars, buses and
systems seen and unseen.
Urban rainfall patters are an active area of
research. "There are many subtleties to urban-
induced rainfall and storms, and [splitting]
does not occur every time it rains," cautions
Dr. Shepherd. There are many variables to
consider. Conditions, and thus the weather
events they influence, vary widely. Storm
splitting is most
often observed when
large-scale weather is
weak (e.g., no fronts
or major low-pressure
systems.)
Two hypotheses
are proposed for why
storms may divide
around smaller cit
ies. One contributing
cause may be heat
island effect: the ris
ing mass of hot air
disrupts the storm
clouds above it, caus
ing them to split and
converge downwind
of the heat island.
Another is that tall buildings themselves
interrupt the air flow above them, which may
cause bifurcation. Given Athens' skyline, the
first seems a more likely consideration. The
size of a city does seem to make a difference
as to local rain patterns and possible causes.
"Smaller cities have a different effect than
larger cities," says Shepherd. In large urban
areas, a bigger heat island is created, and
the resultant piling up of air flow over the
city causes clouds and rainfall to concentrate
over the urban area instead of dividing and
re-joining to provide rain downwind. So, notes
Shepherd, "the area most affected by city-
induced rain may shift as a city grows."
That last sentence may have many implica
tions for Athens. Currently, weather forecast
ing models tend not to take into account the
effects of urban land surfaces upon rainfall
patterns. Continued research may increase the
usefulness of forecasts as Athens considers
growth, water resource management and more.
Deb Chasteen
AUGUST 19,2009 • FLAGPOLE.COM 5