The New ACC Commission

What Does the Future Hold?

originally published January 10, 2007

Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Commissioners had a light agenda at their first meeting of 2007 on Tuesday, Jan. 2. So light, in fact, that little distracted from the main business of the night: swearing in Mayor Heidi Davison for her second term, along with the commissioners holding the five seats that were up for election in 2006. Those include the two newly-elected commissioners, Doug Lowry and Kelly Girtz, plus three returning commissioners, Kathy Hoard, David Lynn and George Maxwell, who had no opposition in the election. The mood was made even lighter when those three veteran commissioners were joined behind the rail by their families for the swearing-in. Lynn held his young son Tommy with his right arm, which prevented him from raising said arm when prompted by Probate Judge Susan Tate so as to take his oath of office. Tommy raised his right arm, though, leading Judge Tate to remark on her way out of the commission chamber, “I’ve never sworn in a kid before.” All joking aside, it would seem that the Mayor and most of the members of the ACC Commission have reason to be happy: an election year is behind them, and it seems likely that the turnover of just two commission seats may have created the most like-minded group to assemble behind the rail in many years.

There are still 10 different individuals on the Commission, though, and the degree to which the body will solidify politically remains to be seen. Many observers have commented that replacing longtime District 9 Commissioner Tom Chasteen with Kelly Girtz will do a good deal to make the Commission as a whole lean more to the left, politically speaking, or help jell the movement toward progressive politics that’s been underway at City Hall for many years. “I think of it as part of an ongoing shift in the Commission stretching back to 2000,” Girtz says. That was the year that Carl Jordan was elected in District 6, joining John Barrow (now in Congress) in advocating for liberal and progressive policies. In each election since then, the Commission seems to have shifted bit by bit toward candidates who ran on platforms involving issues like neighborhood protection, smart growth and environmental protection as central planks.

That shift hasn’t happened all at once. There have still been swing voters behind the rail, like Hoard and Maxwell, both elected with Davison in 2002 in part out of support for stronger neighborhood protections. There have been some issues on which they’ve disappointed some of their more progressive constituents. An example would be the twin Prince Avenue votes in the fall of 2005, one to three-lane the road from downtown to Milledge Avenue and one to take over local control (from the Georgia Department of Transportation) from Milledge to the loop. Both measures lost on six-to-four votes despite being seen as ways to help make the Prince corridor calmer, safer, more attractive and generally healthier for neighborhoods.

There have been other aberrations, too. The Mayor and some of the commissioners will admit to having been surprised by Lynn on some votes. An example is last year’s decision to allot a large chunk of road-building money to building a four-lane Jennings Mill Parkway parallel to Atlanta Highway near the Loop, despite concerns about encouraging growth versus redeveloping parts of that area, and about saving some money for alternative transportation projects. Lynn stands by that vote today, and adds, “Every transportation issue isn’t a decisive vote for the future of alternative transportation in this community.” He goes on, “I get a little impatient with every issue being some kind of indictment on where you stand on alternative transportation.”

Most any City Hall veteran is quick to point out that exceptions tend to prove the rule: in local government especially, elected officials find that many factors unrelated to political philosophy carry weight in decision-making. District 2 Commissioner Harry Sims, now the self-described “elder statesman” of the group, says it can be “eye-opening” for a new commissioner to have his first experience getting large numbers of phone calls from constituents on a single issue. “It can be overwhelming sometimes,” he says. And, despite the great deal of attention that both Girtz and Lowry have paid to commission business before being elected and sworn in, they still have a lot to learn, Sims points out. “Basically, they’re getting new and more information now than they were getting when they were on the other side of the rail.”

Then there’s the fact that the majority of issues that come before the ACC Commission are not politicized to begin with, and never will be; they are simply the (sometimes mundane) work of government. According to former commissioner and mayor Doc Eldridge, “The reality is that they will handle hundreds or thousands of issues that nobody will pay any attention to…. The attention will come down to about two percent of their work, and that’s where their reputation in the community will be earned.”

On what kinds of issues will Girtz and Lowry earn their stripes? Will 2007 prove to be the starting point for a progressive agenda that is finally assured of majority votes? Oddly enough, Girtz and Lowry (in separate conversations) have the same way of saying yes-and-no. “We’re not going to have a socialist revolution in Clarke County!” Girtz says with a laugh. Lowry, who represents some of the county’s most conservative areas, jokingly mentions a broader goal of becoming recognized by the public as a new commissioner, by way of saying this: “Hopefully they can kind of get to know us, and know that we’re not out to socialize Athens, GA.”

Most veteran commissioners have similar, if more grounded, answers to the question of whether there is a strong new progressive majority on the Commission. Most say, like District Four Commissioner Alice Kinman, “It’s going to take time to see.” District 10 Commissioner Elton Dodson says, “It’s really hard to say right now.” Commissioner Lynn puts it this way: “You can never tell. It’s not as black and white as people would like to make it. I’ve certainly surprised people on some of my votes.” Lynn continues, “Nobody really walks in lockstep… . We don’t really have a party apparatus.” And Kinman says she expects “more agreement, but not total agreement.”

Lynn - himself generally progressive, but with a clear independent streak - also points out that although Lowry’s replacement of Charles Carter tends to shift things to the left, the effect of that shift may or may not be dramatic. Lowry still represents a conservative district, “and his votes will have to respect that,” Lynn says. On the District 9 seat, he acknowledges that Chasteen was “a big vote to get around if he wasn’t supporting something.” On the other hand, Lynn admits, “certainly there are some overall themes to voting patterns on the Commission, and I think Kelly - certainly from my perspective - strengthens my positions on the Commission.”

What about the new guys? Says Girtz, “There’s no unified set of things. I think there are some comparable sensibilities that set us up to get things done.” Lowry, for his part, succinctly expresses the problem of using labels that may not do justice the complexity of politics, while at the same time admitting that there’s a new political reality that many in Athens-Clarke may see as obvious. “There is a more progressive majority - whatever that means, though. And I’m not being facetious,” Lowry says.

How does Mayor Davison feel? She says she feels like she and the Commission accomplished a good deal in the way of progressive-oriented issues during her first term in office. Increased neighborhood and environmental protections are examples. Now, she says, the time may be right to go deeper, tackling “harder, more complex” issues like affordable housing and a comprehensive approach to transportation. “We’ve got some big issues that need tending to,” Davison says, “and now’s a good time to do that.” Many of those “big issues,” she and others point out, will be fundamentally involved in the recommendations that are due to begin coming out of the Partners for a Prosperous Athens (PPA) anti-poverty effort by mid-2007. On that topic, Commissioner Dodson says, “It’s about time for us to start proving that this is not just dialogue.”

Davison’s supporters seem likely to feel the same way. Beth Gavrilles of Athens Grown Green Coalition, who is on the PPA steering committee, agrees it’s fair to see a significant change in political expectations of the Commission. “Things have kind of tended this way for a while now, so hopefully, they’ll feel like they can take on some these things that have been difficult, like implementing some of the recommendations of the poverty initiative.” And Grow Green, she says, plans to watch closely as the ACC Comprehensive Plan is updated in Davison’s second term. “We’re hoping that the Commission is going to be more willing to hold the line on the smart-growth aspects of the Guiding Principles,” she says. But advocacy work isn’t over, Gavrilles says, simply because the make-up of the Commission has changed. “It still means that we do a lot of work providing background information and all. I think that’s going to continue. We’re hoping there’s going to be a couple more receptive ears for that.” Still, she makes clear, “I certainly don’t expect every vote to go our way, and we never have.”

R.E.M. attorney Bertis Downs, a key supporter of many progressive and liberal candidates, says he feels “the right people are in place right now” given the “critical nature” of some of the issues that will be coming up - in particular, recommendations from PPA and decisions on redeveloping the Navy Supply Corps School - issues he sees as “turning point kind of stuff.” Says Downs, “I think having Heidi and this group of commissioners in place to implement the recommendations that are going to be coming and take the actions that will have to be taken is a good thing.” Perhaps more simply, Downs says, “It’s not going to be this contentious, standoff kind of gridlock.”

Is the issue simply that a commission with more shared goals works better together, and is therefore more productive? Eldridge notes the commission of the first half of his term as mayor could be seen as far more conservative than the current one, but that what mattered most was its consensus, and therefore its ability to accomplish things. “It was a very cohesive two years and we got a lot of good things done that went under the radar,” he says. (They must have been pretty far under the radar, as Mayor Davison says she doesn’t know what those things were.)

There are questions, too, about whether the existence of a less combative commission might dampen the complaints that will inevitably come from those citizens who feel they’re not well represented. Gavrilles offers this hope: “I guess in a way I hope that people who lobby the other sides of the issues will be able to see that our goals aren’t all that different. You know, everybody wants a good, healthy, stable Athens.” And she shares a hope voiced by some commissioners and the Mayor that the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce will become a more positive, productive participant in local affairs, rather than making difficult issues more contentious.

The Chamber itself appears to be in the midst of administrative and, potentially, political changes, but how those will shake out is yet to be determined. As for questions about the new ACC Commission, local Holiday Inn President Lewis Shropshire says, “I think that most of us in the business community have an open mind.” Shropshire adds, “There’s no question that we lost some folks that had a lot of practical experience and common sense, and I think that’s more of what we need, as opposed to whether we need more industry or less industry, more bike paths or less bike paths, more environmental protections or less environmental protections.”

Shropshire also serves on the PPA steering committee, and says it’s “critical” that the five co-conveners of the initiative (which include the local government and the Chamber of Commerce) accept their responsibilities when the time comes to implement PPA recommendations. “We have some very difficult decisions to make,” he says. “Change is going to be difficult because nobody wants their ox to be gored.” Shropshire says thick skins will be required on everyone’s part when the PPA’s time comes, “because otherwise we’ll do what we’ve always done and get what we’ve always gotten, which is unacceptable.”

What other issues might come up? Commissioner Sims says the Commission might need to revisit the three-laned portion of Hawthorne Avenue, but Davison doesn’t seem to have much interest in that. Lynn and Dodson admit that Hawthorne has problems, but both say the three-laning is not the problem. (Nor the bike lanes that were tacked onto that striping. Lynn says, in fact, that bike lanes on Hawthorne are “probably the worst thing that’s happened to alternative transportation in this community.”)

As far as transportation goes, Lynn and some others seem amenable to revisiting the question of taking over control of Milledge Avenue and the outer part of Prince Avenue from the state. Lynn says that if so, it would be wise to do so within a wider framework; the redevelopment plans for the Navy School come to mind. One reuse scenario presented by consultants late in 2006 incorporated pedestrian-scaled design elements for Prince inspired in part by the work done by the Community Approach to Prince Avenue (CAPPA). The scenario even included a roundabout on Prince at the site of the “Kissing Rocks” on the edge of the Navy School campus. That kind of change, though, would likely require either DOT approval or local control of the road.

Also, Lynn says the local control question might best be handled by a “slow, consensus approach” not unlike the three-year process he led to designate a core of downtown Athens as a local historic district. He says he realizes that local control was not well-presented to the public when it came to the Commission in the fall of 2005 (“I let the issue get away from me,” he says), but that he’d try to make good if given a second chance. “I flunked that on the first time, and I’ve got to do better the second time,” Lynn admits.

Meanwhile, Girtz is seen as occupying a key spot on the Commission vis-à-vis progressive political issues. It’s no secret that he supported three-laning “lower” Prince as a resident of Pulaski Heights, but that issue is unlikely to come back to a commission agenda. The local control question could be another matter. Girtz says he was skeptical about it in 2005 for the reason that state road funding would be lost if Athens-Clarke assumed control, but that he feels better about the issue now; he says he’d be “excited” to investigate it if it were to come up again. Certainly it’s safe to say that an issue like local control is an example where the replacement of a Chasteen vote with a Girtz vote could make a political world of difference.

What is the answer to questions about the new ACC Commission and whether or not it has a capital “A” Agenda? It seems to be yes and no. Even Eldridge says, “A lot of people think that they’ve all kind of gotten together in secret.…I don’t think there’s any hidden agenda.” Most people - Eldridge included - would seem to agree with Downs when he says, “I think it goes issue by issue.”

New Commissioner Lowry says, on the one hand, “The Commission has changed somewhat, let’s face it. Kelly and I are going to vote differently from Charles and Tom on some issues.” On the other hand, Lowry says, “It may be that they’ve replaced Charles with someone that’s much more progressive than Charles was. And in some ways I am, and in some ways I’m not.” (An example is the still-in-progress Transferable Development Rights, or TDRs, program. Lowry says he’s in substantial agreement with Carter that Athens-Clarke shouldn’t have been zoning for high density in town, as it’s done in the past few years, if there are going to be any “receiving zones” of value to make a TDRs program work, if and when one finally is developed.)

Lynn says he doesn’t want to take advantage of whatever new majority there may be, and he would hate an attitude wanting to do so. “I think we need to take a moderate, slow approach and do the things that people expect us to do,” he says. He adds this, though: “Obviously people wanted Heidi’s agenda more than they wanted a different agenda.” And is he more comfortable now about gaining support for his issues and those of a majority of his constituents? “Big time.”

For her part, Davison says “It would be nice in one context to come up with an agenda that works for all of us and that is a progressive agenda, but I haven’t broached that topic.” There are certainly no plans for any kind of “secret meetings,” she says. “The only time we’re all together is when everybody sees us all together,” at work sessions, agenda-setting meetings, voting meetings. There is no forum, Davison says, for the kind of “freewheeling discussion” among commissioners as a group that can make for creative solutions to complex problems.

Lynn agrees, saying, “Sometimes I wish we were that organized.” One wonders if questions about that level of organization would have even been relevant questions to ask, prior to the existence of this new commission. Dodson says yes, they would have been. Mayor and Commission retreats have typically taken place annually, although there was not one last year, and it’s unclear if one will be held this year. Planning sessions of the sort Davison mentions still may not be realized, but if they were, there would be a crucial difference over any that may or may not have taken place among commissions of the past. Dodson points out that if it were to happen, any kind of team-building effort this time around would be “a team-building effort that would consist of a voting majority.”

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com