ACC Stays Green

Commission Goes For 5-to-1

A long-awaited revision to ACC's two-year-old conservation subdivision ordinance, passed by Commissioners Oct. 7, will reduce potential density in the "greenbelt" zone and provide innovative open-space protections in certain types of subdivisions. The new regulations allow builders in the AR zone to cluster homes on smaller lots if they preserve at least half of the buildable area as open space. The lots may vary in size, but for each home built, five acres of open space must be preserved.

Commissioners argued that the clustering would reduce costs to the county of maintaining roads, sewers and water lines, while open space would be preserved.

The new ordinance is not without its critics. Addressing the commission, landscape architect Rex Gonnsen predicted that instead of encouraging conservation subdivisions, the ordinance would discourage them. Gonnsen, who frequently works with developers, said the mandated planning and application process is costly and does not guarantee approval. "I don't think anybody's going to go thru that process at that low a density," he said.

The process requires a would-be developer to carefully map (but not necessarily protect) many natural and historical features of the land before a final plan is submitted. It requires some planning commissioners and the site designer to meet on the site with the developer, and to invite local land trust representatives and the district's commissioner. Adjacent property owners must also be notified. Plans must then be approved by ACC commissioners before the subdivision can be built.

Another unprecedented requirement of the new ordinance limits grading and tree clearing to the immediate area where houses are to be built. Two-hundred-foot deep "undisturbed or replanted" buffers are required along roads adjacent to the subdivision. However, developers in the AR zone also have the choice of building a traditional subdivision (to which none of these protections apply) if the lots are 10 acres each or larger.

Landowners in the AR ("greenbelt") zone spoke on both sides of the issue, some saying it would reduce their land values, others saying it could increase them and asking for even less density. Beth Gavrilles of Athens Grow Green Coalition also argued for an average density of one house per 10 acres in conservation subdivisions.

Several speakers accused the government of violating their property rights, since the ordinance moves from allowing one house per acre on average, to one house per five acres.

A Banner-Herald editorial appeared on the day of the vote, written by the president of the Athens Area Association of Realtors and predicting "a court will have to determine" the ordinance's legality. However, according to planning commissioner Lucy Rowland, such opponents were scarce when the planning commission was considering the ordinance in public meetings. She said that Hank Joiner, a local Realtor who also serves on the planning commission, "provided a lot of pertinent information" as the ordinance was being developed. The planning commission unanimously recommended the ordinance's adoption.

Speaking to commissioners, greenway pioneer Walter Cook praised the plan's protections and asked, "Why do developers have to clear every living thing?" He agreed with opponents, however, that their AR land will probably lose value. "I don't have any solution to that problem," he said. Cook also told commissioners that banning mobile homes would be "the worst thing you could do" for affordable housing.

After some 25 citizens had spoken about the proposal, commissioners began making the case for one or another version of the ordinance. Commissioner Chasteen suggested that building on large lots (the traditional subdivision option) could "do damage to affordable housing," while arguing that in the end, conservation subdivisions would increase property values in the AR zone.

Commissioner Jordan supported the one-house-per-five-acres average for conservation subdivisions over one-per-10, saying it was worth trading "a little more density in order to get the additional quality."

John Huie

John Huie always cuts his grass eventually.

Bikes Rule

New Standards Clarify

The conflict over solid vs. striped lines for bike lanes was resolved at last week's commission meeting by a compromise that will favor a solid lane marking in most cases. Under pressure from bike advocates and some commissioners, ACC Public Works has proposed a set of "local standards" for width and markings on bike lanes. These new standards were approved by commissioners along with upcoming bike lane projects on several Athens streets.

Under the new standards, the widths of car lanes and bike lanes - and their markings - will vary according to the speed of car traffic on a given street. For example, when most traffic is under 45 m.p.h. (as measured by a specific formula), four-foot wide bike lanes will be standard, marked off by a solid white line. Five-foot lanes are specified for higher speeds, marked the same way.

Where there is not enough street width for separate vehicle and bike lanes, a shared lane will be marked with "sharrow" or share-the-lane pavement markings.

For many of ACC's upcoming bike-lane projects, the new standards will mean five-foot instead of four-foot lanes, marked off with a solid stripe. These projects include parts of Oglethorpe Avenue and Alps Road. Lumpkin Street lanes will go from four to four-and-a-half feet, except possibly on the crowded section from Legion Pool uphill to Broad, where there may be a shared lane with vehicles. Bike lanes on Williams Street will remain four feet wide. The multi-use trail planned for East Campus Road will not change.

The standards also require that consideration be given to three-laning (with bike lanes) "all four-lane primary roadways" carrying fewer than 20,000 cars per day. This would be done whenever the road is scheduled for regular resurfacing or major construction. Commissioner John Barrow called the new bike lane standards "a good starting point," and said they would make it unnecessary to re-evaluate every new situation.

As Commissioners discussed the planned three-laning of Lumpkin Street, it emerged that Pat Allen, UGA's Community Relations Director, had offered to work with the county on the project. Given the critical narrowness of Lumpkin, several Commissioners considered it worth investigating whether UGA might allow the county an additional foot or two of road width from Baxter to Baldwin St. Despite staff warnings about the time and possibly money involved in delay, commissioners decided to follow up on the University's offer while proceeding with construction at the other end of Lumpkin (between Bloomfield and Baxter streets).



John Huie

Write the author at jphuie@athens.net.

Animal Control

Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 89 calls:

6 complaints of animal cruelty

2 complaints of barking dogs

4 citations for dogs running loose

52 animals impounded

1 cat

1 black rat snake

1 copperhead snake

10 chickens

1 squirrel

1 pigeon

1 opossum

2 raccoons

33 dogs placed

11 adopted

9 reclaimed

13 turned over to other agencies

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control press release for the week of Thursday, Oct. 2 to Wednesday, Oct. 8.

Gotcha Politics

Why Issues Get Ignored

More than at any time since the '60s, our country's destiny now hangs in the balance. Monumental questions loom, the answers to which will determine whether our future is one of war or peace, tyranny or freedom, want or plenty. As the American republic approaches a fork in the road, it's particularly regrettable that these historic outcomes hinge on the picayune inanities of "gotcha" politics.

During the past few weeks, three stories have dominated the news: the California gubernatorial recall, allegations of drug use and racist remarks by Rush Limbaugh, and the leaked outing of a CIA agent. In each case, a cacophony of sensationalistic BS has drowned out any possibility of discussion of serious issues. All are examples of how ends-justifies-the-means tactics hurt us as a nation.

The recall of Gov. Gray Davis less than a year into his term ought to have sparked a national debate about direct democracy. Like the outraged citizens of Network, Californians were "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," but shouldn't we amend a state constitution that lets voters remove their governor for raising the car tax? Given Schwarzenegger's refusal to hold press conferences or debate the other candidates, shouldn't politicians be legally required to face tough questions before election day? Other states have recall provisions, but Davis' removal shone a spotlight on California's referendum system. Decades after Proposition 13 began starving schools of property tax revenues, isn't it time to admit that direct democracy doesn't work?

As for the recall's principal beneficiary, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the real case against him was straightforward. The man has no political experience, doesn't enjoy a strong base within his own party and has yet to come up with practical solutions to the state's problems.

Unfortunately, Democrats didn't focus on the recall itself or the good reasons to oppose their Republican opponent. It was easier to just dig up dirt from his past.

First the Los Angeles Times revealed that Arnold was (shock!) a serial breast grabber. Sexual harassment is serious business, but evidently not to the 16 women involved - none filed charges. Then, after the smear that his dad had joined the Nazi party during World War II failed to stick, they went after him for this '70s-era quote: "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker."

So silly. So stupid. Historians have marveled at Hitler's rise from homelessness to absolute dictator, as well as his oratorical skills. That hardly makes them Nazis.

Granted, the Times further accused the Austrian-American of playing "Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home" and said that he "frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an SS officer." Sounds to me like the boy had a tad too much schnapps: either that or he was plotting a West Coast Reich. But I don't know, you don't know, and neither did the Times.

The Rush Limbaugh takedown is even more of an embarrassment to self-styled progressives. As the nation's most widely syndicated talk radio host, he helped elevate the noxious Newt Gingrich to his 1994-5 co-presidency with President Clinton. Now he's defending the policies of George W. Bush, a non-elected imposter hell-bent on unprovoked war and bankrupting the treasury. But since nailing the guy on his nasty politics takes hard work, lefties zeroed in on a comment he made about football player Donald McNabb, an African-American: "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve."

Yawwwwwn. By Limbaughian standards, this wee jab at what he saw as journalistic affirmative action is but a paper cut. The sly racist and sexist slurs Limbaugh unleashes on his daily right-wing radio show are infinitely more egregious than his McNabb remark, and his all-white audience of flyover-country "dittoheads" are complicit. Rather than use the McNabb one-off to attack Rush, Democrats might have asked: Why is this bigot so popular? Why does Clear Channel Communications tolerate his venom? Why did ESPN hire one of the most politically polarizing figures in American media to comment on sports? Limbaugh, after all, was just being himself. Here was a chance to document right-wing bias in corporate media, but Dems blew it to go after one man.

Lefties are also crowing over the news that Rush is under investigation for buying painkillers illegally. Had the same story appeared about Michael Moore, they'd express sympathy and urge him to enter rehab. But compassion goes out the window while trashing your nemesis. As ideologues work to undermine Rush's sports-announcing career (!), questions of far greater importance to liberals - Can we do a better job fighting drug addiction? Should certain medications be easier to obtain? - go unaddressed.

Finally, SpyLeakGate "has cracked the illusion that the Bush Administration is invincible," reports England's The Guardian newspaper. "For Democrats, stunned by the turnaround in fortune, there is now a strong smell of blood in the political waters."

God knows the Bushies have it coming. They're a despicable, dangerous bunch of demagogues, and the damage they've done since 9/11 will take years to repair. But there's something tacky, something underwhelming, about watching them suffer defeat for this - just for this.

In the greater scheme of things, after all, the retaliatory outing of a CIA agent whose husband wrote an unpleasant op-ed piece is mere fluff next to the colossal crimes committed by this administration's top officials: using hired goons to end the Florida ballot recount, corrupting the U.S. Supreme Court by asking it to endorse a judicial coup d'état, turning a $6 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit, attacking Afghanistan without cause, then inviting warlords to take over; attacking Iraq without cause, then allowing bandits to take over; offending our allies, killing thousands of innocents, curtailing the Bill of Rights, opening the Gitmo concentration camp, doing nothing to catch the perpetrators of 9/11, tolerating North Korean nukes.

If Bush goes down over the Joe Wilson scandal, those heinous crimes will not only go unpunished, many Americans will never recognize that they were crimes.

"Bush is in a lot of trouble," says Mel Goodman of the Center for International Policy. "They know that now. They could lose this election." That would be good for America. But it would miss the point.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall, author of To Afghanistan and Back, has started the Rallblog at www.tedrall.com.