HAZARDOUS TO TREES

The Athens-Clarke County Community Tree Council members have grave concerns over the methods being used by the Georgia Department of Transportation in clearing the rights-of-way along our roads. By removing trees within 50 feet of the roadside to diminish potential ice and snow damage, other problems with greater hazards have been created.

New potential hazards includes large trees falling onto the roads and onto private structures due to their adjacent support trees being removed, increased soil erosion from steep banks stripped of vegetation, and loss of remaining trees to insect and disease from improper trimming.

It is a concern to us and to many, many of our citizens when we see large trees removed from our landscape, especially as we continue to hear of the increasing dangers of air pollution, which will need trees and other vegetation for abatement. It is a concern to us when we see trees that were planned as visual buffers between the roadside and structures being removed and not replanted with lower growing species.

The Georgia DOT's representative stated that the clearing is part of a routine cycle, yet the severity of the cutting that is happening certainly is not part of routine maintenance. Not EVERY tree within 50 feet of the road edge could be hazardous!

Our recent Tree Canopy Study shows that the tree cover in Athens-Clarke County is declining at an alarming rate. We will need every tree available to keep our air clean, and our government agencies should always be supporting this goal, not impeding it.

We ask your help in requesting the DOT to review the methods and techniques they are condoning to clear our roadsides, and not mass cut.

Please contact Mr. Tim Knight, DOT Athens Area Engineer, 450 Old Hull Road, Athens, GA 30601, (706) 369-5628 and request that the DOT contractors cut and prune selectively, using approved arboricultural practices, with the goal of removing hazardous trees and leaving the healthy ones.

Maureen C. O'Brien, Chair
Athens

PUBLIC ENEMIES

My friends and I were coming out of a restaurant on Broad Street Saturday afternoon when three or four patrol cars sped by and were followed by a patrol car inching along with traffic backed up behind it. The officers were broadcasting on a loudspeaker that they were searching for a black, unarmed male wearing blue who had robbed a bank. The officer barked sharply at the driver of a car pulling alongside it and again at my friend who ran back to retrieve a package left at the restaurant.

We proceeded to our car at the parking deck on College Avenue. An attractive young black man opened the door to the stairwell for us with a smile. He was wearing a bright blue shirt and blue jeans. As we came into the stairwell, he zipped his black jacket up to the neck and craned his neck to see down the street from inside the door. As we walked up the steps, we noticed that he was extremely tense. Once out of earshot, we shared our perceptions and concluded that he was very likely the suspect.

The most interesting part of this story is that we all had cell phones but absolutely no inclination to notify the police. Two of us are middle-aged, law-abiding citizens and the third a teenager who has run up against the system's attempt to enforce absolute control over the youth in our community. We had all encountered the attitudes of local law enforcement and felt no urge to cooperate with them in any way. I made this choice not in avoidance of getting involved. At the time, I didn't even consider being an informant to the point of weighing the consequences to myself. I had no inclination toward that choice.

I think it is important for local law enforcement to realize the state of public opinion they have wrought. Have you alienated those whom you supposedly serve?

Name Withheld
Email

DISLIKES DEAN

I can't say that anybody disgusts me as much as Howard Dean, unless it could possibly be the other Democrats currently clawing for the nomination. How can anyone, especially allegedly intelligent people, possibly think that this man is a good choice for city dogcatcher, let alone President of the United States?

Of course, he does have something in common with the last Democratic President to get elected: his position on the issues changes depending on the time of day, the part of the country he's campaigning in, maybe even the direction the wind is blowing at the time; who knows? It's not like we'll notice, anyhow. Remember, according to him, we're all just a bunch of dumb white guys in pickup trucks with Confederate flags.

I mean, seriously, Howard Dean's supporters want to replace a rich white frat boy with a rich white frat boy because their rich white frat boy says he's a "man of the people" - despite being raised in a luxury apartment on Park Avenue. Says Dean's mother in The New York Times: "Howard didn't have the least bit of a glamorous upbringing. When he was growing up, we didn't even treat the servants like servants."

We didn't even treat the servants like servants. Well, that proves it. Dean is obviously a man of the people. Do these folks even have the tiniest sliver of a breath of a clue? Somebody should probably smack some sense into them with Dean's silver spoon.

Even that wouldn't be a problem for the Democrats. (They've always preferred candidates who are lying leeches and busybodies with no concept of individual freedom or property rights and who have drifted so far to the left that they should be waving sickle-and-hammer flags and display no capacity for individual thought or cohesive reasoning.) If it wasn't for the "I Hate Bush" mantra that makes them look like, well, pretty much what they are - bitter, raving maniacs. I am convinced that the 2004 candidate will be chosen by lining up the candidates on a stage and seeing which one looks best on TV saying, "Bush is stupid!"

Except that it won't work. It's not working. And while Dean spends his time slamming the people who should be his allies and saying, as John Kerry put it, things that are obviously not true or indefensible, George W. Bush is gaining steam. He's winning support. He's snatching victory from the jaws of defeat time and again. Is this the year that infighting and squabbling starts the Democratic Party's downward spiral into political irrelevance? Actually, I hope not. Because then we'd probably have to deal with something even worse: the Green Party. Better the devil you know...

Maurice Cobbs
Athens