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Land-Use Plan Approved
With Some Dissent
originally published February 27, 2008
At a called session on Thursday, Feb. 21, ACC Commissioners gave their final approval to the county’s comprehensive land-use plan. There was strong dissent to their vote, though, from Commissioner Kelly Girtz (who proposed tabling the vote until the Commission’s next regular voting meeting Mar. 4) and from Commissioner Carl Jordan. Girtz said his main concern was that the plan’s final draft had only been publicly available for a few days. “It’s certainly not the building of this document that’s at issue, it’s the digestion of it,” he said, adding, “Many of the pieces of language were significantly modified… in the past week.”
Mayor Heidi Davison, though, said most of those changes pertained to the various “short term work plans” contained in the document, and that her goal and commissioners’ was to make those plans realistically attainable within the next five years as required by the state Department of Community Affairs. Still, Davison admitted room for improvement: “This is a citizen document. Was the process perfect? No. No process is perfect.”
That was a point made more strongly in feedback from Jerry NeSmith, who addressed commissioners not as a member of the Planning Commission (which he is) but as a member of one of many citizen committees that worked on the plan. “Though this comprehensive planning process was a great improvement over past efforts,” NeSmith said, it could have been made better; his criticism echoed complaints made in recent weeks by various subcommittee chairs who felt they had too little to do with the revisions made to plan sections that their own committees had developed. “While it is still fresh on our minds,” NeSmith said, a group of citizens will be meeting over the next several months to give the local government constructive criticism toward future updates of the comp plan. “All in all,” NeSmith said, though, “it was a very positive process, and I think the result will serve us well.”
Raleigh, NC City Council Withholds Support for NBAF
originally published February 27, 2008
On Feb. 19, the same day that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials held an informational meeting in Athens to answer citizens’ additional questions about the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), a group of elected officials not far from another possible NBAF site - the city council of Raleigh, NC - voted unanimously to withhold their support for siting NBAF in the nearby town of Butner. Butner is about 30 miles north of Raleigh, and is not far upstream of Raleigh’s sole water-supply reservoir, Falls Lake.
The Raleigh City Council doesn’t have jurisdiction over Butner or over the county (Granville) in which Butner is located, but in their vote last week Raleigh officials did lend support to the Granville County Commission, which earlier withdrew its support for NBAF.
According to a press release, “Council members said they want federal officials to meet five conditions before they could consider supporting the facility.“ Those conditions include responding to questions posed by Granville County Commissioners, as well as those posed by Raleigh officials as a part of the scoping process in a letter sent to DHS last fall. (A list of nearly 40 questions ranging from water supply and wastewater treatment to emergency response and security issues accompanied the letter.) A third condition: ”explain plans for keeping sediment runoff from the facility out of Falls Lake.“ Also desired are information on oversight and consideration of alternate sites in North Carolina.
When asked about the city council vote in Raleigh, Athens-Clarke Mayor Heidi Davison had only to say what she’s already said about NBAF in recent weeks: that she will continue to support the project until she has information that will change her mind. In other words, she plans to give Homeland Security’s Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, a “proper review” when it is released. In that sense, her support for NBAF is conditional in essentially the same way that Raleigh’s opposition to the project is. Davison reiterated that the NBAF proposal will not be debated by ACC Commissioners “on the floor,” and that they will not be expected to take formal action on the matter.
A 60-day window for public comment will follow the release of Homeland Security’s draft EIS in late spring. The final EIS is expected in late summer or fall, and it likely will be accompanied by a final site decision by Homeland Security officials.
“OneAthens” Prepares to Go Public Again
With Anti-Poverty Strategies
originally published February 27, 2008
In the time since Flagpole last reported on the work of the local anti-poverty task force OneAthens in early February, the group has released its full set of work strategies for the present time, scheduled a large-scale community meeting for Mar. 31, and (on Feb. 20) brought together its own convening bodies for a status check before going to the public at large with the strategies as planned. OneAthens grew out of the Partners for a Prosperous Athens (PPA) effort - which first emerged more than two years ago - and its organizers say the initiative can already count many successes, though the bulk of its work still lies ahead.
The full set of strategies currently on the table is available for review online at http://prosperousathens.org; committee chairs at last week’s meeting swiftly ran through the main thrusts of each initiative for the benefit of those gathered. In addition to the wide-ranging set of strategies, though, OneAthens is proposing to institute what it calls an “implementation framework” to help ensure success in reaching its goals. In practice, OneAthens co-chair Red Petrovs said last week, this will mean creating a new “OneAthens Community Collaborative,” which will include a “champion” for each of the 11 initiatives on the list, as well as representatives from each of the PPA/ OneAthens convening organizations. Those convening organizations are bodies like the Athens-Clarke County (ACC) government, the Clarke County School District, and UGA. ACC Mayor Heidi Davison indicated that the local government, to take one example, hopes to continue doing what it can (both fiscally and otherwise - its annual budget-making cycle is just beginning) to support OneAthens. And UGA Provost Arnett Mace made clear that - while UGA has been a committed partner since PPA’s inception, in particular paying its staff members - the University is assessing how it can “most effectively” contribute to the initiative at this point in its evolution.
Most notably, the new OneAthens Community Collaborative is to employ an ombudsman to - in the words of the group’s written materials - “assure that the will of the people, as expressed during the PPA and OneAthens process, is honored during implementation.” The “will of the people,” meanwhile, is something on which OneAthens has already found it needs to maintain focus. The task force has recently added a new “convener” group - aimed mainly at representing Athens’ African-American community - to the five conveners that originally kicked off PPA. Rev. Richard Washington, a leader of that group, expressed concern at last week’s meeting that - despite the surprising early success of the “Jobs for Life” program, which has been spearheaded by local pastors to help convicted felons find stable employment - the providing of quality jobs for those in need is perhaps not being incorporated as much as is needed into the OneAthens implementation plans.
Local activist Nancy MacNair, meanwhile, asked if one of the many recommendations the group published in March of 2007, at the time of its last large community meeting - a living wage - would somehow be incorporated into the current implementation plan, where it does not appear. “We have not forgotten the living wage,” co-chair Judge Steve Jones replied.
And Sister Margarita Martin of Oasis Católico San Rafaela wondered if the published figure of 14,000 Athenians lacking health insurance included the thousands of Latinos in the area, who she said are less and less likely to make use of available medical services for fear of being deported. She said young children are not being taken to the doctor when sick, and she told the story of - just a week previous - having driven an expecting mother to the hospital after the young woman went into labor. It was the woman’s first visit to a hospital or doctor during her pregnancy, she said.
Judge Jones’ comment on the figure referencing 14,000 uninsured persons was this: “We realize that’s a conservative number.” Sister Martin’s reply: “Very.”
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