McCarter Quits

District 8 Up For Grabs

originally published February 14, 2007

The day after their February voting meeting, Athens-Clarke County Commissioners learned that their colleague representing District 8 since 2001, States McCarter, had decided to quit his post, effective immediately. On Wednesday, Feb. 7, he sent a simple, enigmatic email to constituents and others on his email list, as well as delivering a letter to ACC Clerk of Commission Jean Spratlin. According to Spratlin, the official letter of resignation was similar to the email missive in that it offered nothing in the way of explanation for McCarter’s resignation.

Since quitting, McCarter has made himself unavailable for comment either by phone or email, so any guesses about his resignation are pure speculation. His motivation for resigning aside, there’s also been little in the way of explaining McCarter’s timing. One detail is interesting, however: McCarter’s announcement came 30 business days ahead of the Mar. 20 special election date that’s now been set. State law limits local special elections to only four days out of the year; after Mar. 20, the next available date would be in June. State law also requires a space of at least 29 days between the announcement of the election and the day it’s held.

The ACC Board of Elections met on Friday, Feb. 9 to set the election date, and legal notice of it was published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, Feb. 10. Elections supervisor Gail Schrader says that the board counted every day of the week, not just business days, in scheduling the election, because the law simply reads “days,” not “business days.” There are almost 40 days, including weekends, between Feb. 10 and Mar. 20.

Because McCarter has made himself unavailable for comment, it’s difficult to evaluate the significance of the timing of his resignation. It’s also impossible to say whether he was counting business days or including weekends in scheduling his resignation. If the former were true, it would seem possible that he tendered his resignation so as to leave only a minimal amount of time - a week and a half, as it turns out - for candidates to qualify to run for his seat. (Candidate qualifying will run from 9 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 19 until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 21. District 8 residents should also note that they must be registered to vote by Feb. 19 in order to vote in the special election.)

So, who’s running? At press time, two candidates had announced their intentions: insurance agency owner David Hamilton and UGA professor Andrew Herod. Both men are well-positioned for what will be a quick campaign: Hamilton has just become president of the Cedar Creek Civic Association and sits on the steering committee of citizens appointed to work on the update of the ACC Comprehensive Plan. Herod has been president of the Green Acres-Crestwood homeowners’ association since 2003 and of Athens’ Federation of Neighborhoods and Community Groups since 2004, and he was appointed to the ACC Planning Commission late in 2006. (It’s certainly possible there will be more candidates: some may be attracted by the chance to run for a vacant seat rather than opposing an incumbent, and it may also be less daunting to try for a term that has less than two years left in it, rather than committing to the full four.)

Discussion of the two candidates has already begun on local blogs. An anonymous commenter on the blog safeashouses.blogspot.com raised the question of Hamilton’s relationship, politically speaking, with McCarter. The impression seems to exist - it’s not clear to what degree - that Hamilton was essentially hand-picked by McCarter as a successor in 2005. It seems to have come in part from a sentence in an Athens Banner-Herald article in September of 2005, when McCarter quit his short-lived run for mayor: “McCarter still plans to resign his commission post at the end of 2006, and lined up a candidate, insurance man David Hamilton, a resident of the same subdivision, Cedar Creek, that McCarter lives in, to run in his place.” Hamilton tells Flagpole that the now year-and-a-half old article gave the wrong impression; he says the decision to run has always been all his own.

Similarly, Jonathan McGinty, the blog’s administrator, responded to the anonymous poster by calling their impression a “misconception,” and said, “To say McCarter recruited him is flat-out wrong.” Hamilton describes McCarter as a neighbor and friend, and says that beyond their similarity in background (they’ve both approached politics through neighborhood-level organizing) there’s nothing more in the way of a connection between him and McCarter. Hamilton points out that it’s nearly impossible to hand-pick a successor anyway, noting that the point is to convince the electorate of one’s own merits.

As for expectations of the contest between the first two announced candidates for the seat, Hamilton cites smart growth, quality of life, and neighborhood protection as top issues. Herod notes the importance of smart growth, too, as well as environmental protections, and both men emphasize Athens’ unique characteristics as a community. There’s one issue on which it seems the two already largely agree: assessing the commissionership of States McCarter. Says Hamilton, “Whether folks agree with him or disagree with him, you can’t argue that he’s a strong advocate.” And Herod says: “Obviously, not everybody’s agreed with him on everything, but I think he’s been a very hardworking commissioner.”

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com

Commish Business

Corridors & Politics

originally published February 14, 2007

Despite some misgivings, ACC Commissioners went ahead at their Feb. 6 voting meeting with a “corridor management” plan to provide future design goals for various categories of streets in the county. Major streets would be designated as suburban, urban, rural, “transitional,” or “scenic” corridors (like Morton Road), “limited access” corridors (like the Loop) or “gateway” corridors (like College Station Road). The “corridor appearance program” (as it was first called) came out of successful streetscape improvements made before the 1996 Olympics, and improvements made to Baxter Street have been its first success story. The changes along Baxter have helped draw back businesses to that area, which was once a prime business district, but had declined in recent years.

No major renovations of other streets have been planned or funded yet; that will be up to county commissioners. In the meantime, the corridor plan provides fairly specific guidelines on inclusion of sidewalks, street trees, and such amenities. The plan recommends bike lanes only where specified in the existing Bicycle Master Plan, and sidewalks along most streets (but not along “scenic” or “limited access” roads). At present, sidewalks are required to be built piecemeal on all roads along with any new development. Center medians - controversial with business owners, who feel they limit customer access - should be considered only “where acceptable to adjacent businesses,” the consultant-written study says. Curb cuts - driveways entering businesses - are to be limited in some corridors, but only to one per business. Grass strips (between curb and sidewalk) and street trees (beyond the sidewalk) are recommended for most urban and suburban streets. The $42,400 consultant-produced study initially recommended outlawing billboards, but the final version recommends banning them only along “scenic” roads, with “strict limits” elsewhere. To ACC Planning Director Brad Griffin, the document represents a “buy-in from the elected officials” (and the people they represent) that gives authority for developing more specific requirements that might apply to zoning districts or county street maintenance. “It’s a green light to continue to work on the more detailed standards,” he told Flagpole.

But some commissioners wanted to see the plan go farther, while county staffers have consistently resisted widening its scope. “It’s short of establishing a vision for us,” Commissioner Carl Jordan said at last week’s meeting. Jordan wanted to see policies on overhead utility wires and methods of slowing down vehicle traffic. Commissioner Kelly Girtz thought the plan should also address lighting and how to integrate bus transit, and should include more specifics about planting trees. But ACC Manager Alan Reddish told commissioners he couldn’t see going back and revising it, and Griffin said that, while the document is supposed to provide a general vision, “it was never intended” to cover traffic-calming or road design.

Those are the kinds of conflicts that occasionally surface between commissioners - who meet only several times a month and sometimes advocate far-reaching visions - and Reddish and his assistants - who must carry out policies as day-to-day managers of the government. Commissioners make policies, and the mangers carry them out, but within limits. While he’s typically deferential to commissioners (“I would suggest to you, commissioner…” is a frequent refrain), Reddish urged commissioners at a Legislative Review Committee meeting last August not to tell him exactly how he should carry out policies about downtown representation on local Historic Preservation Commission (HPC). “The charter leaves that for the manager to do,” he said. At last week’s meeting, commissioners approved a new requirement that at least one member of the eight-person HPC - an appointed board that must approve significant exterior changes to buildings that lie in Athens-Clarke’s historic districts - must either own downtown property or have “documented experience in development in historic districts.” A core area of downtown was added last year as the county’s ninth historic district, and the change to the makeup of the HPC represents a compromise with the recommendation of a downtown citizens’ committee that wanted two seats set aside for downtown property owners. “I recognize that not everyone involved in this thinks it’s perfect,” said Commissioner Elton Dodson, but no citizens spoke against the proposal.

Similarly, a majority of commissioners last week saw the corridor management plan as a good start, and didn’t want to postpone its passage. They approved a compromise suggested by Dodson: Implement the plan as written, but give commissioners six months to study possible changes. “Let’s get elected officials and the public involved in this,” Dodson argued.

John Huie

jphuie@speedfactory.net