Build It
And They Will Walk

Following decades of expanding roads without including sidewalks, ACC Public Works Director David Clark says ACC policies now require building sidewalks with "every single new development and new roadway project" unless a variance is granted. In fact, short stretches of sidewalk are being built in front of new developments where there are no existing sidewalks for them to connect to. Such segments are "often the first ones on a certain stretch of road," says county planner Rick Cowick, but "we've got to start building them or we'll never get them done."

In addition, the county itself is slowly building new stretches of sidewalk along existing roads. ACC's Transportation Department has received 287 requests from citizens for new sidewalks. Each request is evaluated and ranked, Clark says, based on factors that include evidence that pedestrians already use the route, nearness to schools and bus stops and availability of land to accommodate the sidewalk.

Sidewalks along major roads get priority. Most new sidewalks require the county to purchase land. Landowners must be willing to sell, he said, or the sidewalk usually won't be built. The county can "condemn" land - that is, force the owner to sell - but that decision can only be made by the mayor and commission.

If all the sidewalks requested were built, they would total 100 miles, county documents say. Current funding levels provide about a mile of new sidewalks each year. Sidewalks typically cost around $60 per running foot, including design and land acquisition. According to Clark, current funds come from the county's SPLOST tax, and if voters renew that tax in November, the rate of funding for sidewalks will be doubled to $500,000 a year. Federal gas-tax money that is returned to state and, to some extent, local governments for road building and maintenance gives less help for sidewalks. According to Georgia Department of Transportation spokesperson Teri Pope, sidewalks are included in some road widening projects where speed limits are 45 mph or lower; however, no money is available to Clarke County for adding sidewalks to existing roads. GDOT does have a program that helps build sidewalks in "non-attainment" areas with polluted air, but Athens has not yet been designated as one of those areas. Asked why GDOT doesn't fund more sidewalks, Pope said that building a sidewalk without widening a road at the same time would "cost too much."

Several new sidewalks were recently approved by the mayor and commission to be built in the next year: along Old Hull Rd. (from North Avenue to Fourth St. near the bypass) and shorter stretches along College Station Rd., Whitehall Rd., Kathwood Dr., Freeman Dr., Boulevard, and Fowler Drive. Others with high priority (but not yet scheduled) include sections along Danielsville Rd., New Jimmy Daniel Rd., Epps Bridge Rd., Tallassee Rd. and Ruth Street.

John Huie
John Huie lives beyond where the sidewalk ends.

Woodman!
Spare That Tree

ACC's government began moving to write a tree protection ordinance last week, following years of inaction. A committee of the Community Tree Council - a board of citizens and county staff - has studied other Georgia tree ordinances and sent its recommendations to Mayor Heidi Davison. She forwarded them to the five commissioners who serve on the Legislative Review Committee; last week that group met and discussed a possible ordinance.

This is the beginning of a process that might put a tree ordinance before the full commission for a February vote. No ordinance has yet been written - that will eventually be done by county staffers with input from the public, the planning commission and a group of interested "stakeholders" that will include developers and environmentalists.

Most commissioners at last week's meeting seemed eager to curb what many see as abusive development practices like clearcutting and "mass grading" large areas of land. Along with the tree council's recommendations, the commissioners forwarded to the planning commission some suggestions made by local landscape architect Rex Gonnsen. Last month Gonnsen told commissioners that mass grading is a "big change" in construction practices that should not be allowed. "We're allowing people to do site construction without a building permit for a house," he said, urging that house sites be cleared separately lot by lot, rather than by flattening large areas of land. The practice is being driven by out-of-town developers, Gonnsen said, who sometimes resell the graded land even before houses are built.

Commissioner Charles Carter agreed. "People used to build houses to fit the land, and now they fit the land to the house… and its got to stop," he said.

"The sense in the community is overwhelming that something's long overdue" to limit tree clearing, Commissioner John Barrow said. There must be, he added, a compromise between the density of allowed development and the "quality" of development. Commissioner Kathy Hoard Maxwell brought photos of large trees on a Macon Highway tract that the developer is planning to remove, despite regulations saying that "preservable" trees over 18-inch diameter must be saved. But the word "preservable" is open to interpretation, Planning Director Brad Griffin told the commissioners. His staff, he said, has had "a lot of discussions" about strengthening the language in current ordinances. Griffin said after the meeting that he doesn't feel that the present ordinance is strong enough for him to send a plan back for redesign, for example, if a developer argues that a utility line has to go where the trees are.

Since 2000, ACC has required some trees to be saved - or else new ones planted - in new commercial and apartment developments (but not single-family home sites). Trees must also be included in new parking lots - one for every seven parking spaces. In many cases, developers have not kept the existing trees, but planted young trees instead. (At present, developers get no bonus for saving existing trees.) The Community Tree Council recommended that leaving some amount of existing trees should be a requirement, and that new single-family subdivisions should be included. It also suggested requiring builders to post a bond (to ensure, for example, that newly planted trees will be replaced if they die), and developing standards to minimize damage to trees when they are pruned near power lines.

County landscape manager Roger Cauthen, representing the Community Tree Council, told commissioners, "If you can save the topography, you can save the trees" and said changes in ordinances not directly concerned with trees can "go a long way" toward saving trees. He noted that the tree council has documented the decline of the county's tree canopy. Using satellite and aerial photos, the council has reported an accelerating rate of tree loss over the past few years. Cauthen said enforcing a tree ordinance might require some additional staff.

"I'm wondering where the money's going to come from," said Commissioner George Maxwell. But Commissioner Tom Chasteen countered that "this community and the elected officials" want to see tree protections, and said he thinks the need for additional staffing would be minimal.

Athens has had a citizens' tree commission since 1980. In 1990, amid the controversy over unifying city and county governments, a detailed tree ordinance drawn up by the Athens Tree Commission was rejected out of hand by the mayor and city council. That decision so embittered some members of the tree commission that even today they will not discuss it. "We had these same discussions in 1989," remembered Commissioner Kathy Hoard. "Much of what is occurring now was occurring then."

John Huie
John Huie lives surrounded by trees.

Urban Forest
Not All Bad News

Athens residents see clear-cut areas these days all around this town. For many, it's a dismal sight to behold. It is ironic to travel from Barnett Shoals toward Whitehall, view the clear-cut areas, then turn onto Milledge heading into town and spot the prominent "Tree City, USA" sign.

Fortunately, there are a couple of pieces of good news for concerned citizens. First, the ACC Legislative Review Committee met Sept. 21 to discuss the Tree Ordinance Recommendations developed by Community Tree Council (CTC) member Maureen O'Brien and others. This committee gave the go ahead for the planning commission to begin reviewing and rewriting these recommendations. Final approval of a tree ordinance by the ACC Mayor and Commission now has a good chance of happening in early 2005.

Second, CTC Coordinator, Bob Barker is promoting the work that he has undertaken to map out the distribution and condition of the community forest we still have remaining in Athens.

On Oct. 5, Barker will be in Nebraska City, Nebraska to present his paper, "Building a Community Forest Information System (CFIS)" to the National Arbor Day Foundation at its annual conference.

There, Barker will explain how community forest concerns have evolved from a social movement into an actual forestry discipline. In communities such as Athens, the focus is not only on street trees, but also on suburban wood lots and rural forests. Barker says, "It doesn't make sense to study only the urban trees, especially in Athens, where county and city governments are merged."

Community forestry is actually multi-disciplinary since it involves areas such as horticulture, arborculture and forestry skills. A community forester must be able to understand individual tree care, such as proper tree planting /pruning, and be able to step back and understand the health and needs of the entire forest. This latter part is where Barker's project is particularly important.

Through Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) grants, he has been able to map out the tree canopy of this area using satellite imagery. Barker describes the CFIS as a "decision support tool" which he (as a CTC representative) uses in discussions with a diverse working group.

Local government is represented by Leisure Services, Central Services, the Environmental Coordinator, Landscape Management, Planning and Keep ACC Beautiful. Local/ state institutions are represented by The North Oconee Greenways Commission, UGA Warnell School of Forest Resources, UGA Cooperative Extension Service and the GFC. The private sector is represented by Beall and Gonnsen (a landscape planning and design company). Together these groups are known as the Community Forest Information System Working Group (CFISWG.)

This working group is able to address such questions as where is our community forest, what trees make up this forest, what is the health of our community forest and how can this forest be made more effective in cleaning our air and water and preserving our soils (eg., which areas can be planted with more and better species of trees).

This working group also represents a major input vehicle for the CTC, which helps recommend to the ACC government and citizens means to protect and manage the community forest.

By sharing this mapping strategy with National Arbor Day Foundation members, Barker hopes to inspire other communities to realize the importance of tree and forest resource information.

"Hopefully, they'll begin mapping and defining their own community forests," he says, "in order to make wiser decisions about forest care, conservation and connectivity for wildlife corridors." And when Barker returns to Athens, there will still be plenty of challenges for him, the CTC and other organizations regarding the management of our own community forest and its ongoing decline.

Liz Conroy
Liz Conroy is a local writer and a current member of the Community Tree Council.

On The Edge
Rogues Push Boundaries

I've always thought of a rogue as a nasty, devious person until I read a definition from George B. Leonard's Education and Ecstasy. In those pages Leonard describes a rogue as a free-roaming adventurer. Then I quickly realized what a poor state the world would be in had there not been a rogue or two to dance across the pages of history.

Where would we be had there not been those women and men who danced to the beat of a different drummer, who saw the world around them and dreamed of a different way to live together, who dreamed dreams and were held captive by a different vision?

To have some rogues now! Into this toxic environment in which our world exists, where war has killed and maimed thousands and remains justified - at least in the minds of the architects of such a war - where no WMDs, no connection to terrorists, no nuclear capability existed… a war where young women and men have had their lives taken from them and a culture that enriched life itself has all be been destroyed: if only some rogues would emerge that would expand our universe and bridge our differences.

Would the rogues be welcomed or abandoned to the edge of the community where they would be a voice crying out in the wilderness?

They would certainly have to operate outside civilization's accepted norms. For the vision they've caught sight of would turn the world upside down. It would critique our cherished notions of who's "in" and who's "out." Their vision would bring about new laws and push the limits of our sanctioned ways of doing business in the world and relating to one another. These dregs of the community, these rogues, have become so transfixed by a different world, a new order, they are willing to be pushed to the outside. Forsaking their vision is not an option. They simply refuse to have their madness controlled.

I'm thinking here, of course, of people like Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth, Lao Taz, Vincent Van Gogh.

Each followed the vision all the way to the end. The changes they advocated would have unglued the fragile structures of their day. They realized the conditioning their civilization had embraced robbed people of the chance to be all they could be, so they preached, fought, marched and witnessed to a new way, a new day.

Perhaps we do have some rogues in our midst. They have let go of inherited identities and the blessing of the community. They're honoring what they understand to be truth, for they have looked within and found it to be alive and pulsating. They've been forced to the edge of the community and by their works of poetry, art and music are calling out to a depressed and desperate culture to embrace a new way and take up a new dance. They've reached a depth of prophetic imagination that may be misunderstood by the majority but would yield a world with more color, richness and ecstasy without violence and war.

Anthony DeMello writes about a neophyte at the monastery. Said a disciple to a newcomer at the monastery, "I must warn you that you will not understand a word of what the Master says if you do not have the proper disposition."

"What is the proper disposition?"

"Be like the student eager to learn a foreign language. The words he speaks sound familiar, but don't be taken in; they have an altogether foreign meaning."

Mike Marsingill
Mike Marsingill is pastor of Young Harris Methodist Church.

Animal Control
Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 61 calls.

       2 complaints of animal cruelty
       6 bite cases
       5 complaints of barking dogs
       10 citations for ordinance violations

40 animals impounded
       29 dogs
       2 cats
       5 bats
       2 raccoons
       2 squirrels

35 dogs placed
       14 adopted
       9 reclaimed
       12 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of Sept. 16 to Sept. 22.

The Stultocracy
Know Nothings Rule

Kerry doesn't know what the working-class people do; he hasn't done any physical labor all his life," Sharon Alfman, a 51-year-old cook in New Lexington, Ohio, told a New York Times reporter. It's true. Kerry is a rich boy. But then she added: "Bush's values are middle-class family values."

George W. Bush earned $727,000 last year. Estimates of his net worth range between $9 and $26 million. Middle class he most assuredly is not. Working class he never has been. Like fellow Skull and Bones member John Kerry, man of the people he never will be. But it matters that Sharon Altman thinks he is. Unless you, too, are a voter living in a swing state like Ohio, her vote counts more than yours.

Demonstrating that stupefying ignorance can be bipartisan: another Ohioan interviewed for the same article said she is against the war in Iraq because, like 42 percent of her fellow Americans, she thinks Iraq was behind 9/11: "We shouldn't be over there building them back up because they didn't build our towers back up." She is wrong on so many levels that it makes my brain hurt.

Both women are entitled to their unawareness. We can't pass a law to force them to read the paper. But neither of these people ought to force their fellow citizens to suffer the consequences of their being so uninformed. Voting should be a privilege earned by an intellectually engaged citizen, not a right given to any adult with a pulse.

All men are created equal, declared the Founders. But as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, universal suffrage counts upon the existence of a responsible, well-educated citizenry in order to result in political equality. If you give the vote to morons, you get the "tyranny of the masses" - a lumpen proletariat prone to manipulation by demagogues and fools - such as that which created chaos and bloodshed in post-revolutionary France. We're all equal at birth, but what we do later determines whether or not our opinions are worthwhile.

At this writing, the world's greatest nation flails under the rule of buffoons and madmen, bogged down in two optional wars we're actually losing. The world's richest economy is shedding jobs, running up debts and building nothing for the future. Voters, offered an election year alternative to the subliterate idiot who single-handedly created this mess, spurn him for a leader even dumber than they are. America has become a stultocracy: government by morons, for morons.

A 2002 poll found that 64 percent of Americans - people whose votes help determine how much you pay in taxes - could not name a single Supreme Court justice. In 2003, 58 percent - people whose votes could elect someone who starts a nuclear war - couldn't identify a single department of the president's cabinet. Voters aged 18 to 24, whose recent schooling ought to inspire confidence in their knowledge of basic facts, are especially ignorant. National Geographic says that 85 percent of young American adults can't find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a map.

The fact that these yahoos are allowed to vote is an abomination. Their ill-considered ballots cancel or dilute those cast by people who do the heavy lifting that makes them good citizens: keeping abreast of current events, researching issues, studying candidates' positions.

In the old South, literacy tests were used to disenfranchise blacks. Alternatively, a basic political literacy test should be used to ensure that anyone who picks ESPN over CNN - regardless of race or creed - stays home on Election Day. Prospective voters should be required to answer at least three of the following questions correctly; to give people a fair shot, the test should be published in newspapers a week before an election:

1. Who is the vice president?

2. What is your state capital?

3. Name one of the following: your governor, congressman or one senator.

4. What is the capital of the United States?

5. Name one federal cabinet-level department.

Of course, such a political literacy test would drastically reduce voter turnout. On the other hand, those who pass could take comfort in knowing that they're not competing against the 60 percent of Americans who think we've found Iraq's imaginary WMDs, or the 22 percent who "believe" that Saddam Hussein used such weapons against U.S. troops during the 2003 invasion.

Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of two new books, Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back From the Right and Generalissimo El Busho: Essays and Cartoons on the Bush Years.