Build It
And They Will Bike

Apparently responding to concerns raised by local residents, the $15 million widening of Jefferson Road (US 129) north of Athens will include a wide paved shoulder that can accommodate bicyclists. The four-mile stretch (between Lavender Road and Georgia 330) is the only portion of the highway this side of Interstate 85 that isn't already four lanes wide. The new roadway, like the existing portions, will include "rumble strips" to alert motorists who drift off the road; however, the new portion will also have four additional feet of paved shoulder outside the rumble grooves.

The new construction will tie into bike paths in the town of Arcade (between Athens and Jefferson), and the state Department of Transportation is willing to put bike signs on the route, according to staffers at a recent transportation planning meeting.

Originally, BikeAthens advocates were told the project couldn't include bike lanes because it isn't listed on the state bike route network, which comprises lesser-used roads designated by Georgia's Department of Transportation. Such roads are slated for "share-the-road" signage and perhaps eventually bike lanes. (One east-west route passes through Athens and links to other routes in Elbert County and Gwinnett County).

Although the Jefferson Road widening project has been planned for years, additional public comments were taken recently because $4 million in additional funds were added to the project. Many of the comments received questioned why bike lanes were not included, and some questioned the need for the project altogether, according to Dick Field, who serves on the Madison Athens-Clarke County Oglethorpe Regional Transportation System technical committee. MACORTS is a body made up of local officials that helps plan state-funded transportation projects.

Field also suggested to the committee that the local school system be represented in making transportation decisions.

In response to a recent vote by ACC Commissioners, the technical committee discussed where $50,000 might be cut from road projects in order to fund a study of right-of-way acquisition for the proposed rail-trail from downtown Athens. Commissioners hope to get federal funds for the actual construction of the project, according to Commissioner Carl Jordan, who attended the meeting. The most immediate source of federal funding, however, the transportation enhancement funds, has gone to another project, a park and ride facility on east campus at the University of Georgia (see City Dope).

John Huie

John Huie lives in the country but attends meetings in town.

Build It
And They Will Live

Despite a close vote by the Planning Commission to recommend denial, ACC Commissioners seem inclined to rezone 18 acres off North Avenue for a mobile home park for the "People of Hope," who lost their homes to new student apartments two year ago. If Commissioners grant the rezoning at their December 2 meeting, the 40-unit park will be built on Freeman Drive, just across the Loop 10 bypass from the former Garden Springs Trailer Park, where some of the same residents once lived.

Trailer parks have become almost rare in Athens-Clarke County as Athens has grown and land has become more valuable for apartments and other uses. The eviction of 500 residents from Garden Springs became a focus of community concern and press coverage about affordable housing, and many pitched in to help them find places to live, including the possibility of building their own trailer park. To that end, the ACC Commission voted $242,500 in Community Development Block Grant money to help purchase the Freeman Road land.

If built, the People of Hope park will be a first for Georgia in that residents will not only own their own trailers, they will also own the land. The park includes a community center and ballfield, and over half the land will be left in open space. The trailers will be screened from the road by a 50-foot buffer of trees. The five citizens on the Planning Commission who earlier this month recommended against the rezoning, judged it incompatible with the county's land use plan, partly because it would require multi-family zoning in a "single-family" district. But defenders of the plan, like the Athens Grow Green Coalition, argue that the park would fulfill the spirit if not the letter of the land use plan. It doesn't increase the permitted housing density, they say, and promotes home ownership and affordable housing.

At the Nov. 21 Commission "agenda-setting" meeting, Planning Director Brad Griffin told commissioners that only one citizen had spoken against the trailer park proposal during public hearings. Commissioner States McCarter commented that he was "very much impressed" with the People of Hope plan, and "didn't see problems I see in some stick-built areas" of conventional homes. Mobile homes are "an important component of our affordable housing stock," he added.

Commissioner Chasteen urged approval, asking, "If not now, then when? If not here, then where?"

"Some folk don't think mobile homes belong in Athens," complained Commissioner George Maxwell, adding, "Let's quit making excuses."

Commissioner John Barrow wanted to "make room for" the development, but warned that the county faces "more and more unaffordable housing" and "the problem that's caused by zoning can only be solved by zoning." Barrow suggested looking at unused industrial areas for possible residential development.

Commissioner Kathy Hoard said she was "overwhelmed by support" from people who had contacted her about the project.

Commissioners questioned the Planning Director as to the likelihood of other affordable mobile home parks being built in the county in the future. He replied that suitable land with sewage available is usually cost-prohibitive for a trailer park.

John Huie

John Huie can be reached at jphuie@athens.net.

Animal Control
Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 57 calls.
7 complaints of animal cruelty
3 bite cases
3 complaints of barking dogs
4 ordinance violations
33 animals impounded:
29 dogs
1 cat
1 goat
1 black rat snake
1 skunk
29 dogs placed:
10 adopted
12 reclaimed
7 turned over to other agencies

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control press release for the week of Nov. 13 to Nov. 20.

Dean For President
Anybody But Bush

I don't regret voting for Ralph Nader in 2000. Given the information we had at the time, Al Gore looked like a lukewarm version of Bill Clinton: another southern New Democrat into free trade and welfare reform, albeit with a genuine passion for long-ignored environmental issues. I figured George W. Bush for a meaner, stupider version of his dad, another linguistically challenged, harmless centrist with little agenda aside from paying off his contributors with, say, a cut in the capital gains tax.

Boy, was I wrong. To paraphrase National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who could have imagined back then that a dozen maniacs would hijack our democracy, bankrupt the treasury and subvert our basic values?

Heretofore I have opposed strategic voting tactics. When citizens vote for candidates because they seem likely to win, it creates a winner-takes-all aggregation of support. That subverts democracy's underlying assumption: that people vote for the man or woman they'd most like to see win. At its worst, pick-the-winner voting elevates any candidate lucky enough to enjoy an early jump in the polls to premature, and possibly undeserved victory. Let the electorate vote for politicians whose ideas they like best and let the chads hang where they may.

This year is different.

Even if his only crime had been the despicable way he seized power, using a rogue Supreme Court to have himself appointed to office, Bush would be the most poisonous leader in U.S. history. He treasonously undermined the constitutional separation of powers, savaged the right of the states to conduct elections, and brutalized faith in the principle that, rich or poor, black or white, every vote counts.

Only after 9/11, however, did Bush begin acting like a dictator: jailing innocent people solely because they were Muslim, authorizing the FBI and CIA to spy on political opponents, converting Guantánamo Bay into a concentration camp for 12-year-old prisoners seized in Afghanistan. Thanks to tax cuts diabolically devised to minimize the possibility of economic stimulus, a 10-year $4 trillion surplus has become a $6 trillion deficit. Now he has us stuck in a unilateral, losing war in Iraq, a vicious quagmire that has given us neither preemption from WMDs nor cheap oil - just $500 billion wasted along with 350 dead soldiers and more than a thousand who will never walk again. Bush is nothing like his dad, except in his casual disregard for the problems of the unemployed.

America is under attack, and Bush is enemy number one.

When you're at war for your future, you can no longer enjoy the luxury of picking the ideal candidate or the perfect party. Under normal circumstances, third parties like the Greens and Libertarians deserve the support of like-minded voters. But, the fact is, only the Democratic Party can defeat Bush next year. Democratic contenders like Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton have brought common sense, progressive perspectives on the war in Iraq and what we should expect from government into the conversation, but they suffer from, respectively, lack of money, lack of testosterone, and a surplus of melanin. They won't win the Democratic nomination.

I'm a charter member of the 2004 ABB (Anybody But Bush) society. Whether the nominee turns out to be a right-winger (Clark, Lieberman) or a colorless bore (Edwards, Kerry, Gephardt), I'll vote for him over Bush, in the same spirit with which the late Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud reportedly toasted a meeting of anti-Soviet factions during the '80s occupation: "First we kill the Russians. Then we kill each other." But I have a preference: Howard Dean has the best chance to beat Bush.

Brilliant, aggressive and moneyed (that's Dean Witter to you, pal), Dr. Dean has a corner on the single most important issue to Americans: health care. His politics are surprisingly centrist, in both the refreshing sense (he's pro-Second Amendment and he came out for class-based, rather than race-based affirmative action) and in the disappointing, Clintonian sense (he opposed invading Iraq, but not Afghanistan). He's got traditional Democratic constituents (he just stole the biggest AFL-CIO union's endorsement away from Gephardt) and fresh new ones (twentysomething bloggers have mailed him $25 million in crisp twenties).

Dean's got lots more going for him, not the least of which is running as an insurgent small-state governor disliked by his own party's top leaders (the ex-governor thing casts him as even more of an outsider). Polls show Dean leading his nearest rival, John Kerry, 33 percent to 19 percent in the crucial New Hampshire primary. Coming out early and hard against the war in Iraq wins him major props with the liberal base and makes him seem ahead-of-the-curve to everyone else. Most importantly, he's his own man. "He doesn't really owe his current standing to any of them, not to labor, not to minority groups, not environmental organizations, so he'll have more leeway as a nominee to follow his own course," says Darrel West, a political science professor at Cornell.

But the rubber would really tear up the road at the presidential debates, where Dean's dry, sardonic Long Island wit would devastate the hapless Bush - and charm television viewers. His natural pugnacity could help Dems deal more aggressively than usual with the nasty attack ads they can expect in the campaign ahead. Frankly, the other Democratic contenders don't have what it takes to stand up to Karl Rove's brutal war machine.

Maybe it's premature to endorse Gov. Dean. But right now, given the information we have available, he's the preferred candidate of us Anybody But Bushies.

Ted Rall

Syndicated columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back.