Budget Time
The Crunch Is On

As she presents a proposed budget to the commission, Mayor Heidi Davison is asking for a new staff position: an urban design planner. In a letter to commissioners, Davison made the case for a staffer who could "provide a crucial link" between neighborhoods and developers early in the design process to produce "more thoughtful" development. Such a person could prepare "guidelines and illustrations for community plans, zoning studies, streetscape studies and proactive development proposals," she wrote. The budget requests $57,000 for the position.
Developers who communicate early with neighbors often spend less money for designs that may eventually (and expensively) have to be changed in the face of opposition, say some local officials. In a recent letter to the Banner-Herald, Commissioner States McCarter described the "benefits of early involvement of neighborhood folks" by the developers of two eastside residential projects. "Not one person spoke against either development" once the final plans came up at public hearings, he wrote.
Local environmentalist Beth Gavrilles of Athens Grow Green Coalition spoke in favor of the mayor's proposal at last week's commission meeting. She said the commission has earned "an A" for "remarkable" environmental progress, and hoped that "proactive community planning" could replace battles over development as Athens grows.
Mayor Davison also emphasized the need for at least eight additional police officers and eight jail deputies.
The proposed budget is over 200 pages, and was developed by the mayor and county manager from department requests, according to Commission Clerk Jean Spratlin. It is available (along with a shorter summary) on the county website, at the library, and at City Hall. Department requests were based on the current year's budget plus two per cent, according to the document. Each department also had to submit a reduced budget - three percent lower - and describe how this would affect services. Public hearings will be held at several meetings this month. The budget includes most county services except schools.
Income from all sources equals expenditures, at $139 million - four percent higher than last year. Funds left over from last year's budget - $3.9 million - will be applied to next year's. About 25 percent of the revenue comes from property taxes, and 40 percent from other taxes. Fees paid by power, phone, gas and cable companies for using rights-of-way along public streets will total $6.5 million. The hotel-motel tax will produce about $1.4 million, most of it going to the Classic Center. Property taxes increased 5.8 percent overall compared to a year ago, half due to higher valuations of existing property and half to new properties (like new homes).
"The current construction 'boom' is anticipated to continue at a slower pace" next year. The tax rate has remained the same since 1998. Only about half of the budget increases requested by county departments were granted.
The budget proposes 25 new full-time county staffers, which would bring the total to 1,454. According to the document, the number of county staff has not been increasing any faster than the county's population has. The pension board's request for an early retirement program for county employees was not granted, but the budget proposes a 1.5 percent raise for all employees (costing $860,000) and another $915,000 to reward employees who "meet the highest levels of performance." It recommends a $20,000 energy audit to determine how the county might reduce energy consumption. It proposes installing 20 emergency call boxes in county parks, and a "paperless agenda distribution system" for the mayor and commissioners costing $35,000. Expansion of Saturday and weekend bus service was not granted.

John Huie

Figures don't lie, John Huie figures.

Gone Smokeless
Report From Lexington

Recently, a colleague and I drove to Lexington, Kentucky to deliver some items from an Athens institution to a Lexington institution. Our work completed and the night young, we opted to sample some local beverages at a pizzeria just off the University of Kentucky campus.
With its top-notch beer selection, the place was Lexington's answer to our Mellow Mushroom. I sampled a Kentucky Ale. Mmmm. Near the end of the pint I felt the predictable urge to light up a cigarette, and I just happened to be packing. Before I could strike the match, the bartender informed us that at midnight the previous night Lexington had gone "smokeless."
My disappointment quickly turned into excitement as I realized we could approach the evening to come as a kind of research mission. As a service to our Imminently Smokeless Athens, my associate and I agreed to tour the Lexington bar district and pay strict attention.
"I love it," said our first bartender, breathing deeply and blissfully.

citypages-smokelessstretch.jpg

She'd just quit smoking that morning, she said, and was using the new law as an opportunity. Her partner behind the bar, however, wasn't as upbeat. "When the hell am I going to get to duck out for a smoke?" he asked, darting his eyes from side to side.
I paused to ponder the mental picture of bartenders out on the sidewalk, creating a gauntlet of second-hand smoke as an entranceway for their customers. It didn't take long to understand his predicament.
McCarthy's, an Irish-style pub, was quiet at around 9 p.m. "We usually have about 50 people here this time of night," griped the barkeeper. She and the owner had just come in from the patio. My colleague and I began throwing darts, pausing for an occasional break at what turned out to be a very pleasant smoking area behind the building. We heard a lot of good-natured complaining, and had the sense that people were more amused than annoyed at the legislation.
Buster's, just around the corner, had no such area, and addicts were forced to hang out on the sidewalk - beerless, thanks to the local open-container ban. I asked the guy behind the bar what he thought about the new era. "I think lots of people will stay home," he said. "Others will quit smoking."
He told me that the fines are "complaint-based." On first complaint, the fine is $15 (levied on the establishment). On the second, it's $50, and then $100. "What about after that?" I asked. He didn't seem sure.
Though popular opinion seemed to hinge, predictably, on one's smoking status, we didn't witness any trouble. The novelty of a smokeless town seemed to eclipse any indignation over the loss of personal freedom.
Knowing that I'd be back in August, I wondered if I'd then find a more resigned Lexington or a town outraged and nostalgic for a more "sinful" past.

Greg Benson

Greg Benson is an Athens artist.

Bike Lanes Coming
Park & Ride, Too

ACC Commissioners met under a full moon last week, and gave the go-ahead to several bike lane projects. Bike lanes will be added to Hawthorne Ave. between Prince Ave. and Oglethorpe Ave., perhaps by next spring. That section of Hawthorne, presently four lanes, will be reduced to three lanes with five-foot bike lanes. ACC Public Works Director David Clark doesn't expect problems with the transition, although he thinks additional turn lanes may be needed at Prince. The other end of Hawthorne (ending at Broad) is already three lanes wide, and is marked with three-foot-wide bike lanes. Widening the street - as opposed to repainting lanes- - would be an expensive project, and there are no plans to change that section.
Also approved was a preliminary survey of Milledge Avenue, between Five Points and Riverbend Road, in hopes of adding bike lanes. Because Milledge is a state route, state approval will be required for any changes - which in itself could take a year. Long-term plans call for bike lanes along the rest of Milledge, too, but additional plans have not been funded, according to Clark. The county will also chip in $650 for printing 10,000 copies of a map of local bike routes which BikeAthens is preparing.
At last week's meeting, money for some proposed bike projects was transferred - with the blessing of BikeAthens - to the proposed rail-trail east of downtown. A planned study of adding bike lanes to North Avenue (between downtown and the bypass) was postponed. So was a proposal to paint share-the-road arrows on Westlake Drive and parts of Chase Street and Sunset. There were suggestions from citizens (as well as Commissioner Carl Jordan) to eventually expand the North Avenue proposal to include planted medians in the wider portion of that street near the bypass.
Postponing these projects added $150,000 to the proposal for a level "rail-trail" leading from the east side of downtown to Barnett Shoals Rd. near Carmike Cinemas. According to BikeAthens president Dorothy O'Niell, the rail-trail project has been estimated at $3 million, and the project has recently "moved light-years ahead" with $185,000 in federal funding and the possibility of more. The rail-trail committee also has requested $1.9 million in sales tax money, but funds for completion remain uncertain.
Meanwhile planning for on- and off-road paths for bikes and pedestrians in the wider Athens region is moving forward, according to planner Chris Ulmer who represents the Georgia Department of Transportation. A local citizens' board is accepting comments on planning recreational or travel paths in Northeast Georgia, to eventually link up with others in the state. A bike and pedestrian questionnaire is at www.negrdc.org/departments/planning/bikeform.asp. Ulmer says "close to a hundred" citizen comments have been received; safety has been a big concern. Some users want better bicycle access on major roads, while others would like paths along country roads, he said. The committee will also consider off-road paths, and Ulmer expects the eventual proposal will include both on- and off-road paths. He noted that Braselton, Jackson County and Newton County have all begun plans for trails along rivers.
Commissioners also discussed whether the "park-and-ride" lot planned for College Station Rd. at the Bypass might better be located somewhere else. The lot is intended to encourage people to ride buses, but several commissioners wondered if it wouldn't attract too much car traffic to an already-busy area. College Station is backed up for an hour every day as it is, Commissioner Tom Chasteen said. He suggested it might be located farther out. Commissioner David Lynn noted that UGA is already building a big parking garage nearby. But Transit Director Butch McDuffie said College Station Rd. is the "best location in town" because of the large number of UGA and ACC buses that already run through the area. Putting it somewhere else, he said, would require running more buses, because a park-and-ride lot needs buses every 10 minutes to attract users. He said an additional 750 cars a day would make little difference on College Station Rd. The road currently carries some 38,000 cars per day. Commissioners decided to go ahead with the federally-funded project, provided the location might later be changed.

John Huie

John Huie pedals faster than he types.

Animal Control
This Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 65 calls.
4 complaints of animal cruelty
2 bite cases
1 complaint of barking dog
4 citations for ordinance violations
28 animals impounded
23 dogs
1 cat
2 ducks
1 bird
1 raccoon
17 dogs placed
5 adopted
7 reclaimed
5 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of April 29 to May 5.

More Scandal
Torturing Iraqis

Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS. Like the Germans during World War II, they cordon off and bomb civilian villages to retaliate for guerrilla attacks on their convoys. Like the blackshirts who terrorized Europe, America's victims disappear into hellish prisons ruled by sadists and murderers. The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers.
"Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees" by soldiers, freelance mercenaries and professional torturers under the command of CIA intelligence officers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, according to an internal government report. The detainees, about 60 percent of them assumed to be innocent by the Americans themselves, were routinely beaten, sodomized "with a chemical light or broomstick," urinated upon, tied to electrified wires and threatened with death, stripped and forced to perform homosexual sex acts on each other and U.S. troops. Don't be fooled by military apologists who insist that these American SS are nothing more than a few bad apples. Seymour Hersh, who has read the army's internal report, quotes Major General Antonio Taguba as saying that U.S.-committed atrocities are "systemic, endemic throughout the command structure... [The soldier-torturers] were being told what to do and told it was OK."
True, most soldiers probably don't condone torture. But all soldiers have been tarnished by it. George W. Bush's new gulag archipelago, a string of concentration camps, military and INS prisons that span the globe from North Carolina to Iraq to Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to New York City, has been designed to give torturers the veil of secrecy they require to carry out their hideous acts as well as the tacit understanding that they won't be held accountable. The Red Cross, defense lawyers and relatives of the victims, few of whom are charged with a crime, are denied access to the detainees or even the simple confirmation that they're being held by our government.
Some soldiers, like Sergeant Ivan Frederick II, "questioned some of the things I saw," such as "leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door." But when he discussed these abuses with his superiors, he says they brushed him off: "This is how military intelligence wants it done."
As proven by the classic psychological experiments of the '50s, people put in a position of total power over another human being find it hard to resist abusing their charges. Prison guards mistreat inmates for a simple reason: they can. Wherever one controls another, sadism is inevitable. However, this tragic truism can be mitigated by creating mechanisms to ensure transparency behind bars. Granting prisoners access to attorneys, journalists and other members of the outside world, unannounced inspections by human rights agencies, recognizing their rights under the Geneva Conventions and rigorous prosecutions of criminal guards can never entirely eliminate abuse, but they're essential to prisons run by democratic societies.
We know about Abu Ghraib only because the inbred psychos who forced nude Iraqi men to pile up in pyramids were dumb enough to snap photographs as mementos of their time liberating the nation from Saddam. It's like the Rodney King video: cops beat up blacks every day, but there usually isn't a camera around.
Abu Ghraib, you can bet your bottom dollar, is merely the tip of the iceberg. Our military is structurally corrupt. Beginning in Afghanistan during the weeks after 9/11, civilian command yielded to the amoral gangster mentality of the arrogant intelligence officers of Army Special Forces and the CIA, who stand accused of massacring thousands of captured Taliban prisoners yet have never faced a real investigation. The new tone of lawlessness comes all the way from the White House, directed by a commander-in-chief who starts illegal wars without justification, strips captured prisoners of their rights under the Geneva Convention and whose smirky fingers-crossed response to the prisoner abuse scandal - "I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated... Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people" - sends a wink and a nudge to our uniformed torturers. Keep it up, boys. Keep those broomsticks busy.
Even our coalition partners are getting the message. British soldiers running a coalition gulag in Basra reported smashing the jaw and teeth of an Iraqi accused of stealing, then dumping the broken body of the accused thief off the back of a moving truck. "They did not know whether he survived," writes The New York Times.
One more Iraqi, it seems, who won't be tossing roses at his liberators.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the author of Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right, out this week.