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rrm trouble in god’s country
Worse Than We Thought
GEORGIA VIES FOR THE MOST DEAD AND DYING COUNTIES
vetoing both the resolution and the ordi
nance, should it ever pass.
“One of the phenomena in large organi
zations is that everybody is looking around
at everybody else’s experience,” Girtz said.
“A healthy organization is doing every
thing it can to create a strong platform
for everyone. In the new year, I am very
glad to assign to committee the question
of employee engagement and benefits,
broadly. I have experienced the fracturing
and atomization that can happen when you
don’t have the broad conversations but you
have narrow conversations. So, I am going
to veto the resolution, and I would in fact
veto the ordinance had it passed.”
The commission can override a may
or’s veto with seven votes, but that seems
nearly impossible considering that three
union supporters—Link, Denson and
Edwards—are rolling off the commission
next month.
ACCESSORY DWELLINGS: Despite a recommen
dation from Girtz’s Inclusionary Housing
Working Group and unanimous approval
from the ACC Planning Commission, a
proposal to allow accessory structures
like garage apartments, small cottages or
“in-law suites” to be used as long-term
housing, even in single-family zones, was
rejected by the commission in a series of
5-4 votes. As mentioned above, ordinances
require the affirmative votes of six commis
sioners, regardless of how many commis
sioners are currently serving on the body.
Knowing the accessory dwelling unit
proposal was controversial, Houle sug
gested a compromise that would have
allowed accessory dwellings but limited the
number of bedrooms in them to a maxi
mum of two. This proposal failed despite
winning a 5-4 majority, with Link, Wright,
Thornton and Hamby voting no.
Link said she supported the right of
property owners “to build a small unit in
the backyard,” but worried that allowing
two bedrooms in an accessory unit would
make them too attractive to student hous
ing developers. She did not want to increase
the pressure on some neighborhoods in her
district, which she says have been “overrun
with student housing.”
Link then made her own proposal to
allow accessory units, this time with a cap
of one bedroom. This proposal also failed
5-4 despite gaining a vote from Link,
because Davenport switched his vote to no.
He did so because he worried that accessory
units with only one bedroom would be used
primarily as short-term rentals like AirBnBs
instead of long-term rentals.
“From listening to my constituents, they
have concerns that we already have an issue
in East Athens with short-term rentals.
Just having that one bedroom will incentiv-
ize it,” Davenport said.
Edwards and Girtz tried to squeeze in
a (possibly rule-breaking) third vote on
this issue, but neither Link nor Davenport
budged. “It would be a betrayal of my con
stituents,” Link said.
Edwards’ suggestion to table the ordi
nance was ruled out of order by Girtz.
As the meeting entered its sixth hour,
Thornton had already left by the time
the third vote was called. Both Link and
Davenport voted no this time, resulting in
a 4-4 vote that was broken by Girtz, leading
to a third, failed 5-4 vote. Due to Girtz’s
strong support for the idea, though, it’s
possible we might see this idea again in
some form in the future.
AUDIT COMMITTEE: The commission voted
unanimously to restructure the Audit
Committee and relaunch the ACC Office
of Operational Analysis. The new Audit
Committee will include only two commis
sioners out of a total of five members. The
remaining three members will have “signif
icant public or private sector management
or systems analysis experience” and will be
recruited from the community at large.
The new Audit Committee will launch
early next year, according to Girtz. At that
point, the search for a new internal audi
tor will begin, and the committee will be
involved in the interview and hiring pro
cess for this position. The internal auditor
position has been vacant since Stephanie
Maddox was fired in September 2021.
LINNENTOWN REPARATIONS: The Athens Justice
and Memory Project is a committee created
by Girtz in an attempt to make amends for
the role the city of Athens played in the
destruction of the Linnentown neighbor
hood during urban renewal in the 1960s.
Led by Hattie Whitehead, a former resident
of Linnentown, the Athens Justice and
Memory Project has been studying the best
way to provide reparations to those affected
by urban renewal.
Recently, it made a recommendation
that the commission provide $1.25 million
from the federal American Rescue Plan Act
for the preservation of affordable housing
in Athens, and put another $1.25 million
towards the creation of an ACC Center for
Racial Justice and Black Futures. Those rec
ommendations were unanimously approved
by the commission. [Chris Dowd]
Qualifying Dates Set for
Commission District 2 Seat
Candidates who are thinking of running
to replace Mariah Parker on the Athens-
Clarke County Commission won’t have long
to decide. Qualifying will start Monday,
Dec. 19 and run through noon Wednesday,
Dec. 21. Anyone who’s at least 18 years old
and lives in the district can go to the Board
of Elections office, slap down $450 and put
their name on the ballot.
Keep in mind, though, that come
January, District 2 will look vastly differ
ent than the District 2 Parker represented
until they announced their resignation in
August. Thanks to Republican state legis
lators almost completely redrawing com
mission district maps over local objections
during post-Census redistricting earlier
this year, most of what used to be District
2 will be part of a brand-new District 3 that
has no overlap with the current District
3. Tiffany Taylor was elected to that seat
in May, since incumbent Melissa Link
was drawn out and could not run again.
Meanwhile, the new District 2 consists of
East Athens inside the Loop, plus much of
Link’s old District 3, including downtown,
Boulevard, the Hancock Corridor and
Normaltown (including a bit of old District
5 around King Avenue), but not Cobbham,
which is now in District 4, or the Kathwood
Drive area, which is now in District 5. Got
it?
Link has already announced her inten
tion to run, and several others are rumored
to be interested as well. Election Day is
Mar. 24, with an Apr. 18 runoff if neces
sary. Whoever wins will serve out the last
21 months of Parker’s term, ending Jan. 7,
2025. [BA] ©
By Charles Hayslett news@flagpole.com
Editor’s Note: Go to Charles Hayslett’s blog
troubleingodscountry.com for the uncut
version of this piece, complete with maps.
A year ago, I stumbled onto a TIGC story
that has occupied much of my attention
since then. It started when I took what I
thought would be a quick look at the latest
county-level per capita income (PCI) data
from the federal government. As part of
that “quick look,” I compared Georgia’s
county-level PCI performance to nearly
all the other counties in the country and
unexpectedly found that we have more
counties and more people stuck in the bot
tom national PCI quartile than any other
state.
That discovery pulled me into a year-long
examination of barrels full of data, most of
it economic, but a lot having to do with edu
cation, health and even politics. I’ve come
to think of it as an economics and political
cold case, one with myriad clues scattered
across geography and time.
Were TIGC a TV crime drama about cold
cases, this would be the scene where the
investigators stand staring (and still con
fused) at a huge murder board covered with
a mishmash of massive spreadsheets, news
paper clips and handwritten notes, among
other materials. Thick lines would be drawn
with magic markers to show connections
amongst the various dots.
The show’s not over yet, but I can begin
to report some of my findings and frame
some new questions. For starters, I can
offer a body count and damage assessment
that I’ve been hesitant to put forward
before now. Tragically, Georgia now has 36
counties that I would declare dead at the
scene and dozens more, mostly south of the
gnat line, that have been badly wounded
and may not make it to a hospital (if there’s
still one nearby, that is).
For this post, I’ve compared the perfor
mance of Georgia’s 159 counties against
roughly 3,000 other counties nationally
in four economic categories: per capita
income, poverty, gross domestic product
per capita and median household income.
I’ve ranked all the counties in each category
and then divided each set of rankings into
quartiles.
My overarching finding is that Georgia
has a highly disproportionate number of
counties and shares of population in the
bottom national quartile in each of those
categories. Here’s a topline summary of
what I’ve found so far.
2020 PER CAPITA INCOME: One hundred and
seven Georgia counties are home to 3.454
million people who fell into the bottom
national quartile of 778 counties in this
category. That’s more counties and more
people than any other state. By compari
son, only 39 of Texas’s 254 counties and
3.449 million of its 29.21 million resi
dents landed in the bottom quartile for
PCI. Closer to home, Florida has double
Georgia’s population but far fewer of its
residents—1.94 million—in this bot
tom quartile. Similarly, only 29 of North
Carolina’s 100 counties and 1.3 million
of its 10.5 million residents (only slightly
smaller than Georgia’s population) landed
in the bottom quartile.
Most of Georgia’s land mass falls into
that bottom quartile. Nationwide, 25.088
million people live in bottom-quartile
counties. Nearly 14 percent of those are in
Georgia.
2020 POVERTY: Eighty-nine Georgia counties
fell into the bottom national quartile for
poverty, based on the Small Area Income
and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) produced by
U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community
Survey.
Here, too, Georgia had the largest num
ber of counties in this bottom quartile, and
one of the largest populations. Georgia has
a total of about 2.7 million people living in
these high-poverty counties.
That compares to 1.1 million people liv
ing in the 25 Florida counties that landed
in this bottom national quartile and 1.6
million North Carolinians in that state’s 32
bottom quartile counties.
2020 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: The picture
here is similar to the PCI and poverty maps.
In this case, 76 Georgia counties fell into
the bottom national quartile, and there is
obviously substantial overlap with the first
two maps. Here as well, Georgia has more
counties in this bottom national quartile
than any other state.
2020 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT PER CAPITA:
This relatively new dataset from the U.S.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) offers a
county-level look at economic output, and
here the picture is a little different. The 81
Georgia counties in the bottom national
quartile for this category tend to be more
scattered across the state and are less con
centrated in South Georgia. This category
does, however, have a couple of things in
common with the other categories: Georgia
once again has more counties in this bot
tom national quartile than any other state,
and the 2.3 million people who live in those
counties are among the largest populations
stuck in this bottom tier. Texas (with,
again, nearly three times the population of
Georgia) has 2.9 million people living in the
44 counties that fall into this bottom tier,
and retiree-heavy Florida has 3.7 million
people living in its 31 low-GDP-per-capita
counties.
Finally, Georgia has 36 counties that
made the bottom national quartile in all
four of these economic categories—and
these are the ones I pronounce dead at the
scene.
Readers familiar with the geography
of poverty and economic deprivation in
Georgia will not be surprised at this finding
of a “crescent of poverty.” Neither, obvi
ously, has anybody else. I’ll flesh out their
travails in future posts, but it’s difficult
at this point to fathom how any of these
counties might be resuscitated. Watch this
space for a detailed post-mortem on these
36 counties. ©
DECEMBER 14, 2022- FLAGPOLE.COM
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