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Budget cuts to the University of Georgia have stymied the
EJC's push for a higher minimum wage for UGA workers—
ideally $17 an hour in order to support a family of three,
according to Lloyd. The ACC government's lowest-paid full-time
position remains just under $12 an hour, she said—roughly the
same as UGA's for its lowest-tier employees.
And even with technical schools in place, there still needs
to be a push from the Athens community to change the situ
ation, said Thornton, who also serves on the board of the
Economic Justice Coalition.
It takes residents of all income levels and experience to
help lower the poverty rate, she said. *1 think all the gad
gets that are needed to address poverty in Clarke County are
here—but is there a will? Is there a will to end poverty?"
she asked. "That's just an individual question people need to
ask themselves, because the numbers are growing instead of
decreasing."
Thornton suggested taking a hard look at programs that
are in place for job training—the partnership between Athens
Tech, the Community Career Academy and Caterpillar is one
example of a program that will obviously create results, she .
said—and weeding out ones that don't produce results. And
streamlining the business permitting process is an idea that
was also brought up earlier this year among members of Mayor
Nancy Denson's Economic Development Task Force, whose rec
ommendations for addressing these problems will be submitted
to the public in a few months. But in the end, DeLargy agreed,
it's the community that has to incite change. "We all have to
do our part," he said.
"It cannot be all the poor people who want to alleviate
poverty," Thornton said. "It's going to take people who are not
impoverished to work in a collaborative way. And it can't be all
the well-to-do people—you have to have the people who are
impoverished as part of this conversation," she said. "I think
if the will is there, all the resources are in place here ir« Clarke*
County."
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sees it, Clarke County has all the tool* in
poverty level—but these tools are simply small steps in a pro
cess that takes years, if not generations. |
"People need to be awaTe of the possibility of jobs, and
the skills need to be set up at the technical colleges," he said,
noting that Athens Technical College and the Community Career
Academy, run through the Clarke County School District, are
key venues for training Athenians for higher-paying jobs. In
the coming years, DeLargy said, there should be a greater push
for students—elementary through high school—to leam entre
preneurial skills. This moves away from the traditional route of
graduating and landing a manufacturing job at a company.
Which is good, said Ovita Thornton, who remembers the
Athens of 20-30 years ago, when it was bustling with manu
facturing jobs.
Those jobs—at DuPont, Westclox, Oliver Rubber and
Superior Clothing, for example—moved overseas or were swal
lowed by the changing economy. And rather than expecting
new manufacturing jobs to move in, Thornton said, Athens
might also look to small businesses to help bring people out of
poverty.
"If we give people a way to develop small businesses, you
don't have to be rich to make it," said Thornton, a Clarke
County School Board member and director of the Georgia
Clients Council, a nonprofit that works to bring low-income
residents out of poverty through education and training. She
noted that there needs to be an overhaul of the county's per
mitting process, too, making it easier for businesses of all sizes
to settle here.
"The worst thing I can see happening is to [teach] all these
job-creation skills and there are no jobs in Clarke County, so
we're back to square one," she said. "That's why I think the
one area that hasn't been looked at carefully is entrepreneurs."
Manufacturing jobs like the ones coming thanks to
Caterpillar will also help, Thornton and DeLargy agreed, but
they're not the complete solution. And DeLargy added that
while some residents could benefit from shopping at a store
such as Walmart—a possible addition to downtown as part of
a proposed development at the Armstrong & Dobbs property
on Oconee Street—the low-priced goods also bring low-paying
jobs, adding to the glut of retail work in the area.
"And at the other end of the problem, you've got tons of
college kids with degrees. They'll hire them in a low-paying job
before somebody else without a degree," DeLargy said. There
are a lot of them who owe a lot of money, and they're taking
jobs that won't pay for it."
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