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ATHENS NEWS AND VIEWS
Athens Skyrocketing: Flagpole might as well
change the name of the whole magazine to
Athens Rising. We have a big spread this week
on Selig Enterprises' new proposal,
Stella Smith scolds Selig for want
ing to demolish the old warehouses
at Armstrong & Dobbs, and Kevan
Williams muses about spurring
smaller-scale development down
town, rather than student apartment
monstrosities.
And yet, we still haven't cov
ered all of the growth-related news
around town. The Athens Housing
Authority announced last week that
it won $8.6 million in tax cred
its from the state Department of
Community Affairs to start redevel
oping Jack R. Wells Homes, AKA
Pauldoe.
Rather than merely renovating
the 40-year-old, 125-unit complex
off Hawthorne Avenue, AHA, work
ing with private developer Columbia
Residential, is going to raze it and
start over. The tax credits will be
sold to investors and used to par
tially fund the new development,
keeping it affordable and allow
ing for amenities like a pond, a
park, a town square and new roads
to connect it to the surrounding
neighborhood.
Unlike public housing redevelop
ment projects in Atlanta and elsewhere, no
one will be permanently displaced. Residents
can move into other AHA projects during
construction or get Section 8 vouchers, and
they have first dibs on units in the new
development.
The first phase of the $47 million project
will be a 100-unit mid-rise assisted living
facility for seniors near Pauldoe's entrance,
opening in 2014. Another 275 apartments and
townhouses are planned. The units will be
one-third public housing, one-third subsidized
for low- to-moderate income families and one-
third market rate.
Pauldoe is outdated and sits on a woefully
underused piece of property conveniently
located on bus lines near employers and shop
ping. This public-private project is exactly the
type of development Athens needs to pro
vide working people with a safe and affordable
alternative to decaying Section 8 apartments
and rapidly gentrifying intown neighborhoods,
and at a minimal cost to taxpayers.
Firefly Trail: Running behind the proposed
Selig development (now with 100 percent
less Walmart!), Athens-Clarke County has long
planned to convert an abandoned railroad into
a walking and biking trail. That trail will run
out to the park-and-ride lot by the Loop and
eventually all the way to Winterville, where it
could one day link into Firefly Trail and go 39
miles down to Union Point.
Unlike the East Athens rails-to-trails proj
ect, there is no taxpayer funding for Firefly
Trail. But advocates recently incorporated,
and the IRS has granted them nonprofit sta
tus, allowing The Firefly Trail Inc. to accept
tax-free donations of money, services and
land. Emailfireflytrail@gmail.com for more
information.
"Not only do they help improve the health
and pride of their local communities, long
trails like the Firefly attract signifi
cant tourist traffic and generate sub
stantial economic impact," Maxeys
Mayor John Stephens said. "The old
Georgia Railroad corridor provides a
highly attractive, level route through
friendly towns and beautiful farm
land, as well as a fascinating glimpse
into our area's rich history. We think
it will have national appeal."
-< You Are Not Alone: When The
Daily???Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct
iPad news site???reported last
week that in seven cities, includ
ing Athens, "government officials
are quietly installing sophisticated
audio surveillance systems on public
buses." Athens Transit Director Butch
McDuffie's phone started to ring.
Wired and dozens of other
websites picked up the news.
Understandably, given the con
spiratorial tone of the original post,
some people were a little freaked
out that transit officials might be
listening as passengers talked among
themselves. Soon, Forbes magazine,
CNN and NBC were calling. McDuffie
had to set them straight. "We're
not doing anything wrong," he
said. "We're not listening to people's private
conversations."
Nor was it necessarily quiet, although
no one seems to have noticed when Athens
Transit installed a new surveillance system
in 2007. Because who has an expectation of
privacy on a bus? And even if you did, signs
posted in English and Spanish alerting passen
gers to the surveillance ought to disabuse you
of that notion.
Anyway, road and engine noise makes most
conversations unintelligible, unless some
one is shouting or standing near the driver,
according to McDuffie, who welcomes anyone
mnem
Video
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Editing
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to listen to the recordings. The system hangs
on to audio and video for about two weeks
before taping over it, you can't listen in real
time, and it records about 3,000 hours a day.
So unless there are a few hundred transit
employees I don't know about, no one is
eavesdropping.
The system does come in handy when a
driver is rude to a passenger or a passenger
verbally abuses a driver, and McDuffie said
that frivolous lawsuits are down 50 percent
since it was installed. Recordings have been
used to prosecute a passenger who threatened
to kill a driver and prove that a man who sued
Athens Transit after a wreck was faking his
injury, McDuffie said.
Broun Rowndup: Our man in Congress, van
quisher of Darwin, holy warrior against the
global warming conspiracy and evolution
naysayer Paul Broun, Jr., is back on the House
Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
He may not be there for long, though.
Broun, an avid big game hunter, is widely
rumored to have Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his
sights. At a tea party press conference last
week, a reporter asked him whether he would
run against Chambliss if Chambliss voted to
raise taxes in a fiscal cliff deal. "This is not
about a race in 2014," Broun said, accord
ing to the A7C. "This is about the next two
weeks... I will not cave in. I am going to
vote against raising taxes on anyone. Period.
So not looking forward to any particular race.
This is all about just what makes sense finan
cially for your children and your grandchil
dren's future."
It's hard to read anything into that state
ment, because that's what Broun believes, and
he's the type of guy who will say so to any
TV camera he can find, whether he's running
for something or not. But Georgia Republican
operative Joel McElhannon recently told
Politico on the record that "I feel very confi
dent Paul Broun's running for U.S. Senate,"
to the extent that McElhannon's recruiting
candidates in the 10th District.
One theory is that Chambliss' recent open
ness to raising revenue is intended to bait
Broun into a primary, rather than ostensibly
stronger challengers like Rep. Tom Price or
former Secretary of State Karen Handel. But
Athenians know better than anyone, do not
misunderstimate Broun or the conservative
ness of the GOP primary electorate.
Blake Aued news@flagpole.com
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4 FLAGPOLE.COM ??? DECEMBER 19, 2012