CUTTING CULTURE
The Athens-Clarke County Orchestra Program has been canceled from the elementary schools here in Clarke County due to "budget cuts." There is at present only one orchestra in one of four middle schools.
What is particularly sad and ironic is that Athens is known to be a cultural haven, especially in the music arena. By cutting out this essential program that correlates with increased academic achievements as well as improved motivation and behavior on the part of students, ACC school system is creating a generation of culturally deprived students and a potential cultural vacuum. The commencement of musical instrument studies early on in a child's life is a wonderful opportunity. How was this decision to cancel this vital program made? Piece by piece the Board of Education is dismembering the body of educational opportunities for the students here in Athens-Clarke County with no apparent accountability. Fundamental academic subjects, basic arts, crucial paraprofessionals - are all slotted to be down-sized or eliminated. What is not clear is why the money isn't siphoned from the bureaucratic arena and put to use in the classroom front where it is crucial for carrying on these basic programs.
Common sense would dictate that the money exists. It is a matter of how this money is appropriated and who actually makes the decisions.
Donna Bar-Peled
Athens

SPOT REMOVAL
I'd hate to see additional envisioning without government commitment. Today's article [Addison Godel's "No More Ugly Battles Over Ugly Buildings?" April 28] seemed to suggest that we, the people, desperately need charettes because we have no way of envisioning development, just the means to object and battle over each individual parcel. While the charette process would create a visionary document that we could use for guidance, we already have one of those - the Future Land Use Plan. Together with our zoning laws, it creates the framework through which development should occur.
Unfortunately, those sets of documents have been inconsistently applied over the years. Several years ago, spot zoning seemed more the rule than the exception. This created the precedent for more weak application of the guidelines (especially if the only opposition came from relatively undercapitalized and/ or disorganized local citizens, or the applicant had tons of money or was aggressively litigious).
In the ongoing Prince Rondavel case, the public is allowed to comment solely because the development is grossly inappropriate to our land use laws. (Boy, is it - though, if the developer had bothered to plan a building that would fit entirely within lots that are appropriately zoned, and/ or had engaged in communication with locals, excluding his potential tenants, there'd be very little reason for discussion.) Likewise, the volume of public discourse on local development is due primarily to the volume of inappropriate requests. Bad development is not cheap. It takes a great deal of effort, time and money for all involved parties - including ACC staff - to complete a rezoning or variance request, regardless of the outcome. So this large volume of inappropriate requests represents a great deal of money being spent to undermine the citizens of Athens-Clarke County. Why? Because spot zoning creates the potential for land owners to essentially game the system. The price of land is based on what it can be sold for, and if a landowner has a reasonable chance of rezoning his or her property to a more lucrative zoning (in most cases, millions of dollars in increased value), then it makes sense for him or her to do so.
ACC authorities must fully support our existing laws or we're going to continue to experience costly, protracted battles over land use, regardless of our collective vision. By stopping inappropriate spot zoning, these authorities would destroy both the legal precedent for overriding our land use laws and the impression that with enough resources, anyone can build anything they please anywhere in Athens-Clarke County.
Nicki Hendrix
Athens

RE: PRINCE
You aren't alone! [John Seroff's "The Complications Of A Lifelong Relationship With Prince" April 28] I, too, was struck by the sexual persuasion Prince's music had over women. It was 1982. 1999 was still months away, but the short purple guy had released four excellent albums already, and I'd never heard of him. Being white, in the 9th grade at Cedar Shoals and living in suburbia didn't leave me exposed to much else outside of Q105 and all the hellish pop music you could stand. One night at a girl's house that I had tried to get freaky with but just couldn't find the way, a strange song came on the radio. I'd never heard it before. It sounded like a girl at first. My ears twisted themselves into knots. But then the girl was closer to me than ever before. She whispered into my ear, "I loooooove this song!!" She threw her body onto mine and the rest was history.
The song was "I Wanna Be Your Lover." From that day on, I was hooked. I found out who was singing the song, and I've been a huge fan ever since.
A Fan
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GREAT SERIES
Thanks, Flagpole, for running Steve Scurry's work on the Oconee War. It is a boon to have an insightful local historian here in the community and to have his work so accessible. The history of the settlement of our area is, after all, a significant part of our local culture. Scurry's perspective on that history makes his a voice well worth listening to, and we look forward to the rest of his series. We would also encourage the Flagpole to solicit and accept more articles with such cultural and historical relevance - they provide a much-needed context and make a fine complement to the paper's regular consideration of current affairs.
Ben Emanuel & Bryan Nuse
Athens

RHETORIC VS. REALITY
Rhetoric: "John Kerry's backward-looking approach would return us to the failed policies of treating terror as a law-enforcement matter."
(Bush campaign statement, March 27, 2004. www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115415,00.html)
Reality: "This was a domestic airplane that was operated by people who were in the United States against a United States target, which makes it a law enforcement [issue]... We'll leave [terrorism] to the FBI and the FBI was basically law enforcement. They're the people who when someone breaks the law they go out and stop them."
(Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 25, 2004. www.dod.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040325-secdef0567.html)
Matthew Murphy
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