originally published April 9, 2008

Policy Versus Process: At its core, is local government about policy, or is it about process? That’s what arguments over last week’s ACC Commission vote on Community Development Block Grants (see City Pages for details) boil down to. Commissioner Alice Kinman and the five commissioners who supported her may well have been right to reshuffle how the county distributes those federal dollars - taking a combined $285,000 away from the East Athens Development Corporation and the Hancock Corridor Development Corporation - but City Dope can’t help but agree with the four commissioners who voiced their strong displeasure with the way the decision-making went down.

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Elton Dodson Put It Well: “If we need to make changes with these numbers - and quite frankly I believe we do - we need to do it in an open and democratic fashion,” he said at last week’s meeting.

Let’s stop here and make one thing clear: open dialogue and the workings of a transparent, democratic government are good processes not just for the sake of themselves. They’re good processes because, painful as they may often be, they can move communities to places they’d never otherwise get to. A truly open discussion does a lot more than solve a particular problem: it empowers people by making them a part of the political process, even if they lose the battle.

In other words, for the folks who’ve been unhappy - for quite a long time, apparently - with how public dollars were being spent at those two organizations, there were two options: either line up the votes and fix the problem straightaway one night at City Hall, or begin the process of what would surely have been a knock-down-drag-out fight over community priorities. And yes, that process would take a lot of time - which is why Commissioner Kinman had a point last week when she told City Dope frankly that the late arrival of her proposal was “partly an effect of the part-time commissioner.”

Why would such a process have been so painful? Because it would have been widely seen as a move by our majority-white commission to cut off funding to two longstanding, high-profile agencies in the local African-American community. Commissioners must have thought it wasn’t worth the heartburn. But if we do have a disconnect between the power structure in Athens and the black community - and we do - then getting things out in the open, lancing the boil, is the courageous, painful, productive and progressive route to go.

That brings us to the Partners for a Prosperous Athens/ OneAthens effort, which has been notable so far for its process as much as for its accomplishments. Even OneAthens was regrettably slow to bring race into the equation, to take that bull by the horns, but this year it has finally - commendably - created a new “co-convenor” to keep itself in touch with the concerns of the African-American community that bears the brunt of so much of our endemic, persistent poverty.

The CDBG vote is disappointing - and should be disappointing for anybody in Athens who considers himself a progressive - because it’s a signal that the current local leadership is not interested in changing the way things are done. Our liberal-progressive government has done great things for this community in the first decade of the 21st century, and it may well continue to do so. It’s done so partly by changing the system and getting new people involved; and it’s done so partly by using the same old political processes but with new, better goals in mind. Long-term change for the better involves sticking with changes to the system, opening decisions up until everybody is empowered.

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Ever Shorter Showers: In other news, commissioners last week approved a new rate structure for water billing. City Dope won’t even try to encapsulate the system here, but will commend John Huie for his strenuous and worthwhile efforts toward explaining the magnificently complicated structure to readers of Flagpole’s City Pages.

What will the new system do, anyway? It probably won’t encourage water conservation. It is not intended, officials say, to boost water department revenue. It will, however, help the county recover the revenue it loses when we all conserve water, and it will do that primarily by cracking down on extra-high water use.

One thing it doesn’t do is crack the whip on large industrial users of water, and Commissioner Kathy Hoard (who deserves a lot of credit for finally getting this policy put together and passed) said last week that she expects voluntary reductions at area industries to make a big impact on conservation. Thanks for the Reaganomics, Commissioner.

One last point: why the time lag between April and July, when the rate structure goes into effect? There are innumerable details to work out, among them the fact that you can expect a new and improved, user-friendly and actually informative water bill, which is a good idea. But in other words - and speaking of public funds (see above discussion of block grants) - it takes time to pay consultants a bunch of money.

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In Atlanta: It was a whirlwind last week as the legislative session hurtled to adjournment, but at press time the notable events included state Senate follow-through on a move to centralize water-restriction decisions in Atlanta (definitely a bad idea, and one over which our local leaders have a bit of a disagreement with state Sen. Bill Cowsert), a still-thrashing-around bill that would dam up as many rivers in North Georgia as the engineers think possible, and the announcement that Linger Longer Communities had finally relented - at least in part - on its redevelopment plan for Jekyll Island. Assuming Linger Longer and the Jekyll Island Authority are telling the truth this time, that’s a big win for the impressive network of grassroots activists working to save Jekyll. It shows the power of the public, and casts a ray of hope in what’s still a dark, dark time for Georgia politics.

Ben Emanuel

Send your city dope to ben@flagpole.com.