Athens-Clarke County officials will start over on the process of finding a site for a new Eastside fire station after the commission unanimously voted down three options.
Rural Eastsiders, particularly those in the Shoals Creek Farm neighborhood, opposed all three sites—located around the Morton Road-Old Lexington Road intersection—because of concerns about sirens and traffic. “People move out to the agricultural zones because they like their peace and quiet,” Commissioner Patrick Davenport said at the Nov. 7 meeting. “They like the deer. They like to see the stars at night.”
In addition, commissioners said the owners of the three properties had contacted them and said they did not want to sell those parcels, raising the prospect of using eminent domain. “I’m 100% against that,” Davenport said.
While they went along with rejecting the three sites, Commissioner Carol Myers said the commission needs to decide whether a fire station should be located in an agricultural zone at all. Commissioner Allison Wright said no, but Commissioner Jesse Houle said rural residents deserve services, too—especially since a majority of calls the fire department responds to are medical in nature.
The current 50-year-old fire station that serves the area is on Whit Davis Road, but fire officials want to move it further east to better cover the eastern edge of the county and reduce overlap with other stations. ACC Manager Blaine Williams also noted that the station’s location could affect the county’s ISO rating, which in turn affects insurance rates.
In a more controversial move, commissioners Mike Hamby, John Culpepper and Dexter Fisher successfully raided a TSPLOST (Transportation Special Option Local Sales Tax) 2018 fund earmarked for Atlanta Highway to cover cost overruns for a multi-use path along part of Mitchell Bridge Road. A separate $6 million TSPLOST 2023 fund is only enough to cover the Timothy Road portion of the project, so the three commissioners proposed taking $2 million from Atlanta Highway.
Hamby said the Timothy Road/Mitchell Bridge project could be considered part of Atlanta Highway because both roads connect to it. “The language is written in such a way that it could help the streets that lead to Atlanta Highway,” he said.
Houle and several other commissioners disagreed. The Mitchell Bridge project is a mile and a half away from the Atlanta Highway corridor, as defined in ACC planning documents, Myers said. “You’d be depleting another project that was approved in a referendum by the voters of this county,” Commissioner Melissa Link said.
As Houle pointed out, the $2 million would only cover a portion of the Mitchell Bridge Road path between Westchester Drive and Ben Burton Park, ending about two miles from Atlanta Highway. To complete the rest of the path, ACC needs permission from the Georgia Department of Transportation and funding to replace a bridge, which could take years, Houle said.
Houle read off emails from various advisory board members involved with Atlanta Highway saying they always envisioned the Atlanta Highway funds going towards projects directly involving Atlanta Highway. “I don’t even know how we can justify that this is related to Atlanta Highway,” Houle said, accusing Hamby of having “selective amnesia” about previous discussions for using the Atlanta Highway funds.
The money is no longer needed for Atlanta Highway because private developers and GDOT are already building sidewalks along the corridor, Hamby said. Link disagreed. “Atlanta Highway is a mess,” she said. “I don’t want to wait for GDOT to fix it.”
Link proposed a three-month hold so that the TSPLOST and Athens in Motion committees could review the proposal to shift funds from Atlanta Highway to Timothy Road. Her motion was supported by Houle, Myers and Davenport. After it failed, Davenport supported Hamby, Culpepper and Fisher’s plan, along with commissioners Ovita Thornton and Tiffany Taylor.
Later in the meeting Fisher publicly confronted Houle about texts and emails they had sent to the rest of the commission, presumably about the Atlanta Highway/Mitchell Bridge Road issue. “I don’t appreciate your rhetoric,” Fisher said. “You want to talk to me, you call me on the phone, we’ll have a discussion man to man.”
“I would ask that you do the same when you’re introducing a commission-defined option,” Houle said.
“I didn’t think I needed your permission to do that,” Fisher responded.
“No permission, just a notice,” Houle said. “Just a heads up.”
It didn’t change the outcome of last month’s vote on winding down the First Step homeless camp off Barber Street, but Thornton made a motion to reconsider because she had changed her mind and wanted to vote no. “The money we spent [on the $2.5 million project], we could have directly helped a lot more people,” she said.
The second time around, the plan was approved by a 6–4 vote, with Davenport, Taylor, Wright, Culpepper, Hamby and Myers in favor, and Fisher, Houle, Thornton and Link opposed. The plan calls for closing the camp at the end of December and giving hotel vouchers to former residents. But it only includes enough funding for half the approximately 50 camp residents to stay in hotels, and the money would run out in April, with no plan in place for what to do after that. Houle called for county officials to come up with a better plan by the commission’s December meeting.
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