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Jackson County Makes Rumblings About Bear Creek Reservoir
originally published October 1, 2008
Relationships among the four counties in the Upper Oconee Basin Water Authority - so often touted as the standard-bearer for intergovernmental cooperation in Georgia - have finally begun to show signs of wear. Jackson County - which has serious intentions, if the presence of former state Attorney General Mike Bowers on its legal team is any indication - is threatening a suit over a clause in the Authority’s intergovernmental agreement of 1996 which, Jackson officials say, requires that the yield in the Bear Creek Reservoir be recalculated after the reservoir level reaches an historic low, as it did last year.
Recalculating would reduce the available water yield for all the counties. But it might not actually affect Jackson County, which hasn’t been using a large portion of its allotment of reservoir water. Jackson officials worry about other counties dipping into its allotment - a practice that’s allowed under Bear Creek’s rules, but which makes Jackson officials nervous that, if push came to shove, there may not be enough water in the reservoir to go around.
“It’s a long-term issue, and kind of indicates the need for future water planning among all parties,” says Hunter Bicknell, who’ll become Jackson County Commission chair in January. As for the potential suit, he says, “The bottom line is, paying to have the capacity there, and not utilizing a higher percentage of its capacity,” creates a financial situation in which other counties may dip into Jackson’s share - legally, but not without leaving questions of compensation for that water potentially unresolved.
Air-Quality Regs Get Real for Athens
originally published October 1, 2008
In the language of air pollution control, “non-attainment” areas have air dirty enough for the federal government to impose special measures - as it has on the Atlanta area - requiring car emission tests, “vapor recovery systems” for gas station storage tanks, and tighter standards for industrial polluters. Athens will undoubtedly become a non-attainment area too, in 2010, Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Environmental Coordinator Dick Field told local transportation planners last week.
“The bottom line is that this is going to happen,” Field told a Madison/ Clarke/ Oconee County transportation committee, partly because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reducing acceptable levels of ozone - a byproduct of burning fossil fuels - by about 6 percent. “We were already borderline,” he said. Most local air pollution comes either from cars and trucks, or blows here from power plants located elsewhere, Field said. “There’s not a whole lot that we can do here that’s really going to reduce that total,” he said, but EPA is “working hard” to reduce pollution from power plants (typically, coal-burning), and the agency wants local governments to try to reduce pollution from local sources as well.
“There’s a whole list of things that we have done, and other communities have done,” he said, like Athens’ ban on open burning (which creates fine-particle pollution) and the school district’s no-idling policy for school buses. Field would like to see a no-idling policy extended to the private sector (and is working with ACC Solid Waste Director Jim Corley on a possible statewide standard). Truck drivers sometimes “leave their truck running and go to lunch” or when waiting in line to load or unload, he said. “Often it’s not the drivers who are paying the cost for fuel.”
And local businesses including Athens Regional Medical Center and animal-vaccine maker Merial are voluntarily encouraging employees to carpool, Field added. (Anyone can earn up to $180 - $3 a day - by carpooling, from the Clean Air Campaign, www.cleanaircampaign.com, a government-sponsored nonprofit.) But improved vehicle standards - cleaner, more efficient engines that burn less fuel - and tighter power plant regulations would make the biggest difference for clean air, Field told Flagpole.
While EPA pressures locals to cut air pollution, the state transportation agency - GDOT - seems almost to be working in the opposite direction. “They don’t model anything except cars,” ACC Transportation Planner Sherry Moore told the MACORTS committee. But bus ridership is up 15 percent over last year, Athens Transit Director Butch McDuffie argued, and that “needs to be reflected in the model” for choosing and funding transportation projects. Even the engineering of intersections is affected when more people use crosswalks, he added. GDOT has heard such suggestions in the past - especially from Mayor Heidi Davison, who has pressed for at least one non-auto project among the millions of dollars the state allocates - and “this was the first time that we haven’t just been told ’no,’” ACC Planning Director Brad Griffin said, “which I think is a positive.” When you combine county bus riders with UGA student riders, “it’s big numbers” he said: over 10 million trips a year.
Bus ridership has been “going through the roof,” McDuffie said. “More and more people are packing on these buses,” especially during morning rush hours, he said, and more are using the informal park-and-ride lots at the Eastside Wal-Mart, Georgia Square Mall, and Bi-Lo on North Avenue. But ridership increases on campus routes are only “Monday through Thursday” he said. “People don’t go to school on Fridays anymore.”
Task Force Makes Progress on County Jail’s Problems
originally published October 1, 2008
Athens’ Lexington Road jail continues to be overcrowded (with jail populations higher, even as crime rates have gone down over the years), and leaking roofs that cause mold and possible health problems. The 1981 building is “a liability in terms of staff and inmate safety,” and jail computer systems can’t interact with the ones at the courthouse, making it hard to know “who we should let out, and who we should keep in,” say participants in a county task force that has been evaluating the need for a new jail. The eight-person panel - including local attorneys, UGA law school professors and two county commissioners - backed a study by criminal-justice-consultant Carter Goble Associates that is now complete.
Since 1998, Athens’ crime rate has “declined significantly,” that report says; but still on an average day the jail houses 65 more inmates than it did in 2001. That’s because “you’re catching more,” consultant Bob Goble told the task force earlier this month. The worst offenders are already in prison, he said, which “has enabled law enforcement to focus down” and arrest people for less-serious offenses. And with strict “mandatory minimum” laws (which remove sentencing discretion from judges), “a lot of criminal offenders know that they have a lot more to lose,” and may refuse to plea-bargain, he said. That can complicate court cases.
ACC Commissioners have shown interest in reducing jail needs by using more “alternative sentencing” programs - typically, work-release programs that closely oversee selected offenders without keeping them in jail. A local “DUI/misdemeanor drug court” is a national model, one committee participant said; a felony “drug court” for defendants whose crimes relate to drug use (dealers don’t qualify) allows work-release and requires 12-step counseling. These two programs are saving $393,000 in costs that would otherwise be spent to jail these offenders, the report said. A “mental health court” is also being planned.
And the report recommends building a 50-bed “diversion center that would operate a day reporting program, electronic monitoring program, and work-release program, and would offer customized counseling and programs for offenders.” Such a center would cost over $4 million to build (the recommended new jail will cost $70 million) - but adding such alternative programs would allow the county to build a smaller jail than would otherwise be required, and overall costs would be less. Gauging what the community will accept in terms of allowing offenders - even nonviolent ones - to go free must be a factor in planning such programs, Goble told the task force.
The report also suggests that defendants are waiting in jail too long before trial. If felony cases were decided within 120 days (and misdemeanors within 30) as recommended by the American Bar Association, then jail beds could be reduced by 17 percent. Athens-Clarke has already hired a court administrator to try to speed up the handling of cases; better coordination might require more staff time, plus new scheduling software. Typically, over half the jail’s some 450 inmates are waiting for trial. Reducing that number “is going to take time and effort from all those involved from the judiciary,” Goble said. In some jurisdictions, prosecutors work with jail staff when a defendant is arrested to determine the viability of charges (and sometimes reduce them), the report said. The typical Clarke County jail inmate has been booked before, Goble said - on average, ten times over the years.
A suggestion to include a small courtroom in the new jail - where a judge could hold routine hearings without having to transport inmates securely to the courthouse - is unpopular with local judges, task force participants said. But “this sort of thing is going to have to be considered,” ACC Manager Alan Reddish said. “We can’t afford to bring all of our inmates downtown.”
Criminal Justice Task Force chair Elton Dodson told Flagpole the consultants had done a thorough job and said many of his task force’s recommendations will be based on the report. ACC Commissioners will hear recommendations on Oct. 14. At present, the county is paying up to $2 million a year to house inmates in other county jails. “We could be taking $2 million every year and paying on [a new] jail,” ACC Commissioner Harry Sims said last year. And if the county fails to act, a federal judge might force the county to build a jail to relieve crowded conditions, he added. Voters could be asked in 2010 to approve a sales-tax funded new jail; the original 1981 jail needs to be torn down because it’s not practical to renovate it. But the parts that were added later could be incorporated into a new facility, the report said. A new jail could be completed in 2014.
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