Budget Passes
SPLOST Coming

Last week the mayor and commission, in passing next year's budget, held off hiring a new county staffer who might serve as a link between neighborhoods and developers. They also declined to hire additional jail staffers requested by the sheriff, apparently wanting to look more closely at the jail's organization. Indeed the commissioners voted a small tax decrease - about two percent of the property tax rate - although homeowners and others could still get higher tax bills if the resale value of their property rises. Despite pleas by the sheriff and his staff that deputies are getting "burned out" by mandatory overtime, commissioners dropped eight new jailers from the budget while funding 15 new county staffers in various departments (including seven police officers). Some commissioners appear skeptical that the sheriff's department is utilizing resources as efficiently as it might.
Several citizens congratulated the commission for holding the line on the budget. The proposal to hire an "urban design planner" was supported by the mayor and some homeowners and environmentalists, but some commissioners apparently felt the role needed to be better-defined. Commissioner States McCarter thinks there is still "good support on the commission" for the position, and that it might be funded next year. Commissioners also voted to extend the time limits that home garbage carts are allowed to remain at the curb; they may now be placed for pickup at 6 p.m. the day before pickup, and removed no later than noon the day after pickup. They also accepted a federal grant for $185,000 to begin buying right-of-way for the rail-trail that will lead from downtown to Barnett Shoals Rd. (near Carmike Cinemas). Rail-trail committee chairman Carl Jordan thinks ("we hope") the money might buy all the needed right-of-way land.
Additional rail-trail funding may come from future sales tax money, if voters approve extending the one-cent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) in November for another five years. The citizens committee that has been studying the various proposals from community groups and county departments made the first cut of projects last week; the rail-trail survived. The list must still be whittled down by a third by early August, but other projects making the first cut include additions to the library, a fire station for northern Clarke County, a theater for the Classic Center and renovated warehouses on Foundry Street. Funds are also included for East Athens Park and Rocksprings Park, new sidewalks, Sandy Creek Nature Center's ENSAT building, new buses and bus stop improvements, a downtown parking deck, Pulaski Creek greenway and park, restoration of the old Gospel Pilgrim cemetery, a prisoner diversion center, a commercial terminal for the airport, a new tennis center, and Athens Land Trust to protect land from development, along with various utility and road improvements.
What did not make the cut was a proposed new jail, an expensive project which would have required over half the available sales tax money. Clarke County's present jail is 23 years old and overcrowded; but the proposed new jail would cost at least $50 million, and the plan called for tearing down most of the old one. Some committee members felt that voters might not extend the tax if the jail were included.
Committee members also expressed concerns that too much money is going toward jailing people, as opposed to alternative incarceration programs like drug treatment, work-release, or mental health facilities, or that spending so much on a jail will "send a bad message" to young people about the community's priorities. Sheriff Edwards countered that prisoners must be assigned to alternative residence programs by judges, not by the sheriff, and that the jail does run drug-rehab and education programs for its prisoners. Many repeat offenders "come here from other counties" he said, in order to victimize UGA students. For criminals, he said, "this is where the money is." Edwards described a typical inmate as being between 18 and 20 years old who is arrested for burglary or theft, gets out on probation, and then is jailed again after failing a drug test. Inmates are often abusers of alcohol, crack or other forms of cocaine, he said.

John Huie

John Huie pleads nolo contendre.

Rain Retained
Mud Gets Makeover

Students at Cedar Shoals High School (CSHS) wanted to better manage the stormwater detention pond near the entrance of their school. Wenjie Sun and Lenae Stansky were among those students concerned about how the community viewed their new facility. The big dirt area created a negative sight for visitors on their way into the new school building. Yet, with reduced school budgets and lack of expertise, how could anyone change this "ugly mud puddle" into something more attractive?
Help arrived from UGA landscape architecture students. The UGA students created landscape designs, and the CSHS students, faculty and staff voted on them. Those designs provided the inspiration for the final design developed by Adjunct Professor Ann English and others.
Sun and Stansky describe how this design became known as "The Rain Garden." Sun explains, "We wanted to create a wetland area to benefit the environment as well as our school. It would attract wildlife - such as birds and butterflies - and students, such as those taking art and/or science classes."
Stansky adds, "It's actually a detention pond in that it holds all the stormwater running off the nearby parking lot. The water doesn't flow out. Instead, it seeps back into the earth or just evaporates away."
Members of the UGA and CSHS community along with other volunteers worked together to plant wetland plants and trees which thrive in wet conditions, easily absorb the water and serve to beautify the "ugly mud puddle." Plants requiring drier conditions were included in the upper areas of the sloping ground to help stabilize the soil and prevent erosion.
English explains how the design incorporates the shape of a living spiral or "Fibonacci" spiral as found in nature.
"This project transforms an area that was dismal in appearance into a landscape useful to the school, nice to look at and easy to maintain." She points out how the plant spiral widens outward from the center of the detention basin to create an edge habitat for birds. "As soon as we planted the trees in this area, the birds flew in and perched. It was like they were just waiting for us to finish planting what they needed."
Other schools are also planning and building strategically placed rain gardens and wetland areas to allow stormwater runoff to pond, percolate down into the ground and be absorbed by plants which take in nutrients and filter the dirty water.
Athens Montessori Middle School students Anne Saunders and Hannah Berle took charge in the creation of a water catchment area to absorb stormwater runoff around their new school building. Berle notes, "It's kind of cool because we are bringing back to the land the plants which belong here. We're planting mostly native species which work well here and will benefit the environment. Since so much was destroyed in the recent construction, we want to replace as much as possible."
Currently, there is a three-part focus involving a stormwater retention pond, a big swale (a long, sloping, grassy area of ground to slow stormwater runoff) and a "fedge," a fruit hedge of blueberry, red mulberry, muscadine and other plants which will provide food for animals (including the students). Saunders points out, "The reason this is a retention pond is because, at times, stormwater will flow out of it into an overflow area. That water will be used for our other plants. I also want to mention that Carl Lindberg, a permaculture design consultant, helped us a lot."
Rain gardens, wetland areas and swales perform the same functions as forested riparian buffer areas, resulting in improved water quality. They absorb excess stormwater so that it goes into the earth as groundwater recharge, rather than rushing over the surface as sheet flow causing erosion and flooding. These areas also serve as wildlife habitats and beautify the area. The plants and trees clean the air of pollutants while at the same time filtering the water by nutrient uptake. In economic terms, this is known as "positive externalities."

Liz Conroy

Liz Conroy is a local freelance writer interested in the environment.

G-8 Begins
Protestors in Savannah

The city of Savannah is famous for possessing a certain ease and genteel graciousness in its chosen role as hostess. Even General Sherman, after cutting a swath of destruction through Georgia, found himself charmed by this elegant belle. He gave the town to Lincoln as a Christmas gift instead of burning her to the ground.
One would have to look back to 1864 to find a time when an occupying force of this magnitude has taken control of Savannah. Overhead, the percussive thump of helicopter blades reverberates as a low-flying phalanx of black steel makes lazy ellipticals in the airspace above the city. Their shadows slide and play dark shapes across the sunbright streets of downtown. As far as shade goes, this meager contribution is the extent of it. Every day this week has seen the heat index break 90 degrees. On a scale of annoyance, the notorious sand gnats of South Georgia (so notorious, in fact, the local baseball team sports a well-muscled sand gnat as their mascot) are much more in-your-face. However, all that is about to change.
Heat, humidity, bugs and high-alert military security - welcome to summer in Savannah, Georgia, a summer unlike any this sleepy, coastal city has ever seen. This state of occupation is the simple by-product from the annual summit of the leaders of the world's eight largest economies.
Along with security precautions that have made the Coastal Empire as tight as the sphincter of the afore-mentioned sand gnat, there are other guests arriving who do not carry badges or clearance. They are the citizens who have come to Savannah to exercise the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in protest and dissent of government policy. Right now these visitors are about as welcome as the sand gnat.
These citizens have come to point out that increasingly large multi-national corporations who claim no nation-state, and have no accountability to a constituency other than shareholders, exercise a staggering sway in shaping world events. The policies set at the G8 summit have an impact that reaches from the roots to the shoots of the world body politic. While many people are oblivious to the effect that movers and shakers like Exxon, Halliburton, and Betchel have on world events, others are beginning to wake up to their enormous influence. These individuals have decided to raise a concerned voice that asks the question: "Why not think of people over profits." They hope the renowned hospitality of Savannah will hold out on the ground long enough for them to engage the democratic process, and present their alternative views, while overhead the machines of globalization turn and turn indifferently.

Jonathan Robert

Jonathan Robert is a writer at large.

Animal Control
This Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 61 calls.

6 complaints of animal cruelty
2 bite cases
3 complaints of barking dogs
10 citations for ordinance violations
27 animals impounded
17 dogs
5 cats
3 black ratsnakes
2 chickens
20 dogs placed
9 adopted
10 reclaimed
1 turned over to another agency

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of May 27 to June 2.