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rm% city dope
I’m Not Gonna Pay a Lot for This Parking
PLUS, ENDANGERED ATHFEST, ACC’S NEW MANAGER AND MORE LOCAL NEWS
By Blake Aued and John Huie news@flagpole.com
Drivers could soon be paying more to park on the street
in downtown Athens—but they’d be able to park in decks
cheaper.
The Athens Downtown Development Authority is pro
posing to raise on-street parking rates by a quarter, to $1
an hour. At the same time, authority board members want
to lower deck rates 50 cents, also to $1 an hour.
ADDA Executive Director Pamela Thompson floated the
idea of raising the on-street rate at the authority’s Tuesday,
Mar. 15 meeting. New meters that accept credit and debit
cards are bringing in more revenue, but they’re also costing
$200,000 in transaction fees, and that
figure will increase when new meters §
are installed on Clayton Street and g
ACC adds meters to spaces on Strong s
Street and Dougherty Street, where ™
the Transportation and Public Works
Department recently replaced two
travel lanes with parallel parking.
A 25-cent increase in on-street rates
would bring in more than $400,000.
Board members’ questions to
Thompson revealed that a correspond
ing 50-cent drop in deck rates would
cost $180,000, leaving enough money
to cover the transaction fees.
“The goal would eventually would be
to get the decks and the on-street park
ing in line with each other,” said ADDA
board member and Athens-Clarke
County Commissioner Mike Hamby.
“I’d love to take them all to $1—on
street and deck.”
That’s a smart policy. ACC officials
have long sought to push longer-term
visitors—people who work downtown,
people going out for a night on the
town, students going to class—into decks, leaving on-street
spaces open for those who just want to run in someplace for
lunch or a quick errand. The best way to do that is to make
it cheaper (or at least not more expensive) to park in a deck.
Otherwise, many drivers will circle endlessly looking for a
prime spot rather than pay more and walk a block or two.
Thompson and ADDA Parking Director Chuck Horton
also want to raise ticket amounts for parkers who overstay
on game days. A ticket for an expired meter is $10—far
cheaper than the cost of a parking space when UGA plays
at home. They want to raise it to $25 during football games
because tailgaters are saving money by parking downtown
all day and eating the ticket, which hurts turnover for
downtown businesses, Thompson said.
“It’s unfair,” Horton said. “People try to beat the system.”
That proposal was tabled for a month after board mem
bers raised questions, and some outright opposed it. “I
want us to think long and hard before we do it, because it’s
going to hurt our reputation,” Mayor Nancy Denson said.
The board also put off a decision on parking rates for
a month to gather input from downtown businesses. If
approved by the ADDA in April, the decision on rates will
go to the Mayor and Commission for final approval. [Blake
Aued]
ATHFEST NEEDS HELP: Alicia Nickles, a board member for
AthFest Educates—the nonprofit that raises money for arts
and music education and puts on AthFest and the AthHalf
half-marathon—came to the ADDA meeting with hat in
hand, asking for help keeping the free summer music festi
val running. (Full disclosure: Nickles is also Flagpoles adver
tising director and publisher, and totally did not threaten to
move my office to a broom closet if I didn’t write this.)
AthFest is not a moneymaker for its parent nonprofit,
Nickles said. In fact, after paying the bands and for lighting,
sound and the stage (and keeping club-crawl wristbands a
very reasonable $25), it loses money, she said, and sponsors
haven’t been stepping up. “In order to keep this going and
keep this free, we need help,” she said.
AthFest started 20 years ago in part to bring people
downtown in June, a slow month for most businesses.
“We see places that are dead all summer, and they use that
money to get them through,” she said.
But lately, it seems AthFest has become underappreci
ated. Nickles asked the ADDA for help paying the Selig
Center for Economic Growth at UGA $5,100 for a study on
the economic impact of AthFest to prove that the festival
still has value to the city. “We want to see if the commu
nity still appreciates everything we’re doing,” she said. The
ADDA took no action on the request. [BA]
FREE BUSES: Riding the bus could be free for Athens K-12
students this summer if the ACC Commission approves an
Athens Transit youth ridership program at its Tuesday, Apr.
6 meeting. In addition, students who are participating in
a new mentorship and job training program could ride the
bus year-round.
The proposal grew out of discussions with the Mayor’s
Youth Development Task Force, which is working on
combatting gangs, and the Great Promise Partnership,
a nonprofit started by former Georgia Department of
Community Affairs Commissioner Mike Beatty that
matches at-risk youth with employers like Caterpillar,
Power Partners, Carrier Transicold and Zaxby’s that provide
part-time work, mentoring and training.
Approximately 100 students who participate in GPP
could ride Athens Transit free year-round, and anyone age
5-17 could ride free from May 20-Aug. 9, giving those kids
a way to get to work, parks, shopping and volunteer oppor
tunities while on summer break. The program would cost
$10,000 in lost revenue, Athens Transit estimates.
Several commissioners, including Melissa Link, Allison
Wright and Harry Sims, said they support the pilot project
and would like to see it made permanent if it’s successful.
They also suggested a bus line on Commerce Road, which
has no transit service, to take kids to Sandy Creek Nature
Center. [BA]
MEET THE NEW BOSS: Mayor Nancy Denson announced last
week that she’s naming Blaine Williams, who has served
as interim manager of the ACC government since Alan
Reddish retired in February, to the post permanently, sub
ject to commission approval Apr. 6.
Reddish hired Williams away from Floyd County (Rome)
in 2013 to serve as assistant manager overseeing planning,
public utilities, transportation and public works, building
permits and inspections, housing and community devel
opment, the airport, transit and solid waste. He’s drawn
(mostly) positive reviews from commissioners and citizens,
other than a recent spat with Complete Street Athens. But
one wonders how hard Denson really looked past Athens
City Hall.
One commissioner assured me that Williams really
was the clear best choice among the 17 finalists whose
resumes were reviewed by committee chairs, both from the
standpoint of running the bureaucracy—where Reddish
excelled—and innovating, where commissioners often felt
Reddish was lacking.
Another point is that ACC isn’t necessarily equipped
to draw top-shelf talent. As county finance officials have
repeatedly told commissioners over the years, ACC’s pay
scale is below what many similarly sized governments offer.
External applicants for top jobs are often coming from
small towns that don’t have the same challenges or com
plexity; applicants from bigger cities
often only have experience running a
department.
Still, we’re starting to see a pattern
here with this mayor, and not necessar
ily a healthy one. When the commis
sion didn’t renew the county auditor’s
contract in 2013, Denson left the posi
tion open for a year, then appointed
a retired ACC official, Steve Martin,
on an interim basis. After supposedly
conducting a nationwide search, she
appointed Stephanie Maddox, who
worked in the ACC Finance Department
before Martin tapped her as his deputy.
Nothing against Williams, Martin or
Maddox, who are all competent people,
but one has to wonder who else was out
there.
(Oh, and by the way: The previous
auditor’s contract wasn’t renewed in
2013 because commissioners thought
he was taking too long to finish audits.
He’d taken a little over a year to audit
the ADDA. Martin never completed an
audit in his year on the job, and almost
a year after she was hired, Maddox has yet to release one,
either.) [BA]
WORKING UNDERCOVER: Commissioners’ monthly work ses
sions are open to the public, but no official minutes are
taken, and the meetings are not recorded or televised.
Supposedly, they are mere information sessions where
county managers or departments present information to
commissioners on which to base future decisions. But in
practice, commissioners often make decisions during work
sessions, even taking straw votes to determine a consensus
(possibly in violation of the government’s own charter).
These informal votes and directions to staff determine poli
cies that, months later, are affirmed in an official commis
sion vote at a televised voting meeting.
Such decisions made at work sessions (where no public
comment is allowed, and no notice of specific upcoming
decisions is given) have raised questions about transpar
ency and due process. Local activists, as well as some com
missioners, have been asking for the work sessions to be
televised or at least recorded.
Commissioners have resisted televising the meetings,
because they prefer the informality of meeting around
tables at the Dougherty Street building, rather than the
court-like atmosphere of City Hall, but outfitting Dougherty
Street with television equipment would be expensive.
“At the minimum,” activist Tim Denson told commis
sioners earlier this month, work sessions and committee
meetings should have minutes taken and audio recorded.
Commissioner Melissa Link said she agreed: “I feel like
it’s essential that we get some kind of audio and video,
even if we set up a GoPro camera and download the
video and make it available... We definitely need greater
transparency.”
Commissioner Jared Bailey has also said the work ses
sions should be televised. [John Huie] ©
We haven’t had a big argument about downtown parking in a while. It’s probably time.
MARCH 23, 2016 • FLAGP0LE.COM 5