News & Views You Can Use
Employees Who Serve Underage to be Subject to Arrest
originally published August 6, 2008
Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Solicitor General C.R. Chisholm has revived downtown Athens’ “Hospitality Resource Panel,” or HRP - a collaborative group aimed at keeping downtown’s nightlife both safe and vibrant - but some of what he had to say at that group’s first meeting in years last week left downtown bar owners feeling stunned and on the defensive.
Chisholm has been working towards reviving the HRP for much of this year, and he organized a first meeting of the group July 31 at the Classic Center. Athens’ HRP, formerly coordinated by a staff member with the Athens Downtown Development Authority (the position no longer exists there), hasn’t met in a few years - certainly not since Chisholm took office as Solicitor at the start of 2007 - but the panel is often credited with providing bar owners a forum for open communication with police, fire safety officials, trash collectors and others in local government. Past members tend to speak highly of the panel’s function as a problem-solving group that could prevent conflict among its varied partners, and many seem to wish that it had still been in place last year when the ACC government revised many of its ordinances governing alcohol license-holders.
And for bar owners who are still smarting from the new rules passed last year - some of which took effect July 1 of this year - the news with which Chisholm started last week’s meeting was not good. Largely because of trends in local DUI arrests involving offenders who are under 21, Chisholm recently consulted with ACC Police Chief Jack Lumpkin about a change in enforcement policy with regard to doorpersons, bartenders, servers and cashiers who enable underage persons to drink: Where formerly those employees received a citation and a court date to deal with their infraction, the new policy is that they’ll be served with a warrant for arrest. Once being served with a warrant, the employee will have 24 hours to show up at the Clarke County Jail to either serve time or bond out (possibly to the tune of $500 to $1,000). Chisholm said he plans to implement the policy starting Sept. 1, giving license holders and their employees one month’s notice of the new system.
“If you work for minimum wage and know that any night you can go to jail - it’s going to be tough to keep employees,” said Georgia Theatre owner Wil Greene, echoing the concerns of many of the 20 or so alcohol license holders present at the meeting. “That’s a tough position to put a business owner in,” Greene said. And Warren Southall, owner of the Boar’s Head, among other bars, says he’s already having enough trouble with staff turnover since one of the new regulations requires all doormen and bar employees involved in the sale of alcohol to be 21 or older. With those rules, he said, he’s hiring less-experienced workers who face harsher penalties for violations - including, now, the threat of arrest. And, Southall asked, why not wait to see the impact of the new rules before adding more? “You’ve got new ordinances and you’re not waiting for them to take effect,” he said. “You’re piling on.”
Chisholm, however, is looking at numbers regarding the 145 underage DUI cases that came through his office (the majority of such cases in the county) in 2007: 63 percent of those DUI arrests were made within a mile or less of downtown. Seventy-six percent were within 2.5 miles of downtown, and 9.6 percent of the total resulted in wrecks. “I don’t want to take a wait-and-see approach,” Chisholm said. “I wanted to do what was appropriate to make sure that everybody is safe now.” He added, “Right now, we’re living on borrowed time in Athens-Clarke County,” in terms of what could result from a DUI incident.
In addition to those figures, to Chisholm it’s now time to tighten up on servers the same way that both Athens-Clarke County and UGA police have tightened up on the underage drinkers themselves - sending them to jail, and putting their academic standing much more in jeopardy - in the past two years. And despite the downtown focus of the figures, the local law enforcement community is well aware that a good deal of underage buying and drinking of alcohol happens outside of downtown (sometimes earlier in the night, before people go downtown). So, the new arrest-warrant-for-violation policy applies to all alcohol license holders countywide; letters will be going out to them all soon. The method of police “compliance checks” won’t change: someone will present a valid, clearly labeled under-21 ID to bar staff; if that person is served, of course, that’s a violation. (Fake IDs are not used in the compliance checks.)
Chisholm told the bar owners that where they see a piling-on, he sees the new policy working “hand in hand” with current ordinances. But, asked Southall, “When does it end? When do we feel like we’ve reached a balance?” Added Greene, “At some point, it’s just going to be impossible to find door guys.”
Also at the meeting, bar owners heard from Athens Transit Director Butch McDuffie, who noted that late-night bus service for downtown hasn’t been discussed much since a brief attempt foundered a few years ago. In a sign of the good that might yet come out of the revived HRP, though, the newly-assembled group was unanimous in its enthusiasm to renew planning discussions for late-night transit service to get downtown-goers home safely.
The group heard, too, from Matt Presnell, who with his brother started a local outfit of the company Zingo this spring. Zingo, now operating in eight cities across the country according to its website, offers customers an insured, sober driver with a fold-up mini-motor-scooter that fits in a car’s trunk for the ride home, giving the hired driver a way back downtown after getting the car and its occupants home safely.
Landfill “Mining” in Athens’ Future?
originally published August 6, 2008
ACC Solid Waste Department
As Athens expands its landfill, ACC Commissioners and staff continue to focus on increasing recycling.
Some ACC Commissioners want to keep options open for future “mining” of buried trash in older sections of the Lexington Road landfill. Usually, the reason for mining is to make more room in an existing landfill for future trash, ACC recycling coordinator Suki Janssen told Flagpole. “It’d be sorting and sifting, and it’s very costly to do that,” she said. Soil (from rotted material) and recyclables are removed; and the soil is then re-used to bury new trash on the site. In Georgia, it’s been used in Lamar County (near Macon), she said.
There’s nothing in the county’s landfill expansion plan that will prevent future mining, ACC Manager Alan Reddish told commissioners last month. But “it has not shown a lot of success in many places,” he said. In addition, Reddish has said, groundwater contamination by the un-lined pre-1976 section of the landfill might keep EPD from allowing any new trash to be buried there - even if it were mined, and a liner added. Methane gas - which contributes to global warming - “continues to be generated” by decomposing materials, Commissioner Carl Jordan said. That’s another good reason to consider mining, he said.
Athens-Clarke County is preparing to expand its landfill onto 79 acres of additional land. (Commissioners were set to approve a contract with a consulting company for permitting services related to the expansion at their Aug. 5 meeting.) The new section of the landfill is expected to open in 2011 and should last another 30 years. When the landfill was being expanded in the early 1990s, Athens-Clarke County told nearby residents (in a written agreement signed by then-Mayor Gwen O’Looney) that the facility would never be expanded again. But current commissioners are under no legal obligation to respect that agreement - which “exceeded its authority,” ACC Attorney Bill Berryman said - and in January they voted 7-2 to expand the landfill again.
But commissioners also made it clear they don’t see landfilling as the best solution to trash - they want to see more recycling. Athens’ trash haulers already accept recycling of paper, glass, metal and #1 and #2 plastic containers. Commissioners could also decide to require homeowners to recycle, said Janssen - as in, “if you’re not using your recycling bin, we’re not going to pick up your trash.” An alternative to such “mandatory” recycling would be “single-stream” recycling - where citizens put everything into one trash bin, and a county contractor sorts out the recyclables after pickup. “Single-stream has its challenges, because the paper quality is not as good usually, because it gets soiled or contaminated with glass,” and it’s expensive… but it’s easier for customers, Janssen said. Used electronics are already accepted for recycling at the dump, along with paint cans (for a 50-cent charge) and old tires ($3).
Meanwhile, the local government seeks citizens to serve on its Solid Waste Citizen Advisory Committee, created just after city-county unification in 1991 and still active. The committee next meets on Wednesday, Aug. 20 at 5:30 p.m. in the ACC recycling facility on Hancock Industrial Drive.
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