ACC Budget

Not Without Objection

originally published June 13, 2007

Athens-Clarke County (ACC) property tax rates for homeowners continue to compare favorably with those of other Georgia cities, but higher property values mean actual tax bills continue to rise. ACC Tax Commissioner Nancy Denson recently told Flagpole that there are indeed citizens in redeveloping areas (where tax increases can be dramatic) who are being taxed out of their homes. Typically, those are widows who are dependent on a single retirement income. ACC homeowners already benefit from a relatively generous “homestead exemption” for the houses they live in, and commissioners have discussed adding some kind of freeze, perhaps based on age or income. But Commissioner Carl Jordan thinks commissioners need to look harder at how money is spent. They should spend more time scrutinizing the county’s $100 million annual budget, he says, and he wants to see county departments justify their budgets every year, item-by-item, a practice known as “zero-based budgeting.”

“Last year, [former commissioner] States McCarter voted against the budget because of a fundamental disagreement about the process,” Jordan said at the commission meeting June 5, when the annual budget was approved. “He thought that we should be doing zero-based budgeting, and he was becoming impatient with the fact that we haven’t gotten any closer to that concept.”

Jordan then cast a lone vote himself against the upcoming year’s budget.

It’s true, Jordan told Flagpole, that county departments are required to make lists each year of where they might cut three percent from their budgets. But “invariably, people will put down things that are at the very core of their mission, knowing that nobody would possibly cut those out. They’re not going to show the fat; they’re going to show the lean.” One year, Jordan said, ACC Manager Alan Reddish even suggested cutting out transit service. “That’s never going to fly,“ Jordan said. And while Reddish “put a lot of care” into discussing budget goals with commissioners this year, it was done too late for this year’s budget, Jordan said at the meeting: “This ship moves very slowly; it turns very slowly. I’d like to see us do a two-year budget rather than a one-year budget.”

“You should rethink everything you do and what every employee does” each year, Jordan told Flagpole. And he quibbled with Mayor Heidi Davison’s contention that this year’s budget is unusually tight. “It’s not a tight budget,” Jordan said. “It’s tight because nothing was left to us to decide."

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net

The Bus Goes Bio

B20 Blend Runs Athens Transit

originally published June 13, 2007

Athens Transit Director Butch McDuffie reports that The Bus is now running biodiesel. As of Friday, June 1, all of Athens Transit’s diesel vehicles have a B20 biodiesel blend in their engines. (That’s 20 percent biofuel - bought from local distributor Boswell Oil, using Georgia-sourced leftover chicken fat for the bio blend - and 80 percent standard petroleum diesel.) The changeover follows action by UGA Campus Transit in April to run all of its buses on B20 biodiesel, too.

The switch ought to help at least a bit with local air quality, though it’s hard to say how much. For years, Athens has been flirting with the “attainment” level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for particulate matter, or soot. A big source of particulate matter is vehicle exhaust - both from gas-powered cars and from diesel engines - and “attainment” is the reason that drivers in places like metro Atlanta have to get their cars’ emissions tested, among other restrictions.

The ACC government has been experimenting with biodiesel blends in its trucks since last fall, and it has made progress in the time since Flagpole reported on the move in August. ACC fleet supervisor Steve Hinsch reports that the two-dozen trucks initially running B5 biodiesel as a pilot project have now been moved onto a B10 blend. Perhaps more importantly, most other diesel-fueled county trucks are now burning the B5 blend. Hinsch says that for back-up the fleet is keeping just one small fuel tank on hand with traditional low-sulfur diesel (with no bio component). “The vast majority of Athens-Clarke County diesel-powered vehicles are using B5 at this time,” he says.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Hinsch says, noting that his zeal to use more biofuels has to be balanced with caution to keep from damaging expensive engines or voiding warranties. (And engines, he says, are getting more expensive as emissions controls tighten.) McDuffie also explains that The Bus had been waiting for certification from its engine manufacturer on biofuel use. Once he got those assurances, he says, “It was very easy to make the switch.”

Even a B20 city bus is still burning a good bit of diesel fuel, of course, and its emissions - while lighter on particulate matter, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide - are by no means harmless. (There’s even a reported very slight increase in nitrogen oxide tied to biodiesel emissions - generally seen to be outweighed by the greater reductions in other emissions components.)

On the zero-emission-vehicle front, the ACC Solid Waste Department recently purchased two tiny electric trucks for its downtown litter-management staff. The trucks - more like oversized golf carts - are made by DaimlerChysler subsidiary Global Electric Motorcars and run on several batteries that must be charged from an electric power source. The ACC Tax Assessor’s office, meanwhile, has a new Ford Escape hybrid for its trips around town. As for those vehicles, Hinsch says, “We’re excited about the promise of this technology, and we hope we’ll be using more of those vehicles as we move forward.”

Athens Transit, meanwhile, is looking forward this year to technological advances beyond just its engines. By this fall The Bus hopes to institute an internet-based dispatch system (it will include up-to-the minute electronic signage at the Multi-Modal Transportation Center), add cameras to buses and upgrade electronic fare boxes as well. As for using a biofuel blend, McDuffie says a small minority of transit systems nationwide have made the switch. “I think there’s huge advantages to going bio,” he says. “I think the whole country will be going that way, eventually.”

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com

Drought!

River at Record Low

originally published June 13, 2007

So just how bad is the drought we’re in? With at least a little bit of rain having fallen in early June, some might be inclined to think conditions have improved, but officials monitoring the drought consistently add a dose of reality to any such discussion. In an early June press release after the remnants of tropical storm Barry came through the state, for instance, State Climatologist David Stooksbury took pains to point this out: “The long-term outlook is for the drought to continue to intensify. Little if any widespread, sustained relief from the drought is anticipated.”

How do officials measure the drought? There are many ways, ranging from rainfall to reservoir levels to streamflow (the amount of water running through rivers, streams and creeks), groundwater, soil moisture and more. Taken together, these factors and others define the severity of the drought. But taken individually, something like streamflow can give people a visceral idea of just how bad the drought is.

For example, The U.S. Geological Survey coordinates “Georgia DroughtWatch,” and the agency put out a press release June 1 detailing just how bad the month of May was, specifically in terms of streamflows across the state. According to that document, “The lowest May streamflow on record was recorded for 28 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) monitoring stations with at least 30 years of record in Georgia.”

Those monitoring stations are real-time stream gauges that constantly collect automated data about what’s happening in the stream. There’s one in the Middle Oconee River at Ben Burton Park (near one of Athens’ municipal water intake points), and it was one of six statewide featured in the USGS report. Why? The Middle Oconee, along with several other rivers in the state, set a low-flow record for itself last month. Its stream gauge at Athens - with 76 years’ worth of data on file - recorded the lowest average May streamflow ever for that part of the river. Dropping even lower than a previous record set in 1988, the Middle Oconee’s average flow rate for the month of May was about a third of the 76-year May average recorded at the site.

And that’s just for May. As the USGS document points out, it’s early in the year to see the river running so low. The typical pattern is to see the lowest streamflows of the year late in the summer (when people’s use of water grows) and in fall. “If below average rainfall continues through the summer and fall, new record low flows are likely to occur in Georgia’s rivers,” USGS points out. If that happens, the drought’s impacts will likely go well beyond the agricultural impact it’s had so far (delaying planting in much of the state) and the municipal outdoor watering restrictions that have been in effect in Athens and statewide. In metro Atlanta and elsewhere, those restrictions have already moved to weekend watering only, instead of three days a week; tighter outdoor watering restrictions are probably coming to Athens-Clarke County too.

Stream flow data and more is available to the public all the time at http://ga.water.usgs.gov.

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com

Go Vote!

originally published June 13, 2007

The special election to choose our new U.S. Representative is Tuesday, June 19. Your polling place should be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. that day. Through this Friday, June 15, you can vote from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the ACC Board of Elections office at 155 E. Washington St. downtown. Still need to know more? Check www.athensclarkecounty.com/elections, or call (706) 613-3150.