Build Fire Station No. 5
I am a 14-year-old Millstone Circle resident writing from the year 2043 to advocate for the Fire Station No. 5 replacement to be built at the recommended location.
While at the Eastside Athens Library, I found a stack of old Flagpole magazines from 2025 in the archives. There I read about the push from a small number of vocal residents not to replace the aging fire station in my area.
Oh, how I wish they had not been successful! Oh, how I wish the ACC Commission would have done what is best for the whole community instead of bending to the demands of a few. You see, my house burned down due to one of the ever-increasing lightening storms that began sweeping across the area back in 2035. Then, of course, there is the delayed response to car accidents and medical emergencies that are common now, since the fire department is often the first to respond.
Now we have reduced emergency service coverage for a large chunk of Athens-Clarke County. How unfortunate it is that a small group of residents in 2025 were able to make this decision, not only for all of their neighbors, but also for the families, residents and children of the future who desperately wish they didn’t have to wait those extra few important minutes for a response to their emergencies.
I guess the positive side of it is that, as I sleep in the burned out shell of my home, I am not kept awake by the light pollution from the proposed fire station.
Trevor McDavis
Athens
Tell Congress to Regulate AI
Our glorious president, may he live for a thousand years, has once again decreed that he just hates us. I know that’s not news at this point, but giving the tech folks a blank check to do whatever they want with artificial intelligence until society realizes how screwed we are is once more on the docket. He can issue as many royal decrees as he wants, but this would require Congress to actually be set in stone, and we simply cannot let that happen. Its potential to control us is far too immense to let this moment slip away.
Mike Collins is running for higher office, so he might, for the first time in his political career, be open to listening to the will of the people. Believe it or not, Marjorie Taylor Green is on the right side of this one, and she’s also kicking around the idea of running for higher office. Our two U.S. senators will likely be against this one anyway. Write your representatives, and don’t let them slip this one in under the radar. The moment to make our voices heard on this one is now.
Bowen Craig
Athens
Frustration With Commission Decisions
A handful of Athens-Clarke County Commission decisions, neighborhood chatter and real physical changes to our landscape paint a frustrating picture of Athens. The commission voted against a plan to build townhomes in Five Points. These were well-designed homes that would have nested well in their neighborhood. Now the project will have fewer homes, or may not come to fruition at all. Our housing shortage is dire, yet the commission still blocks opportunities to build more homes.
Residents of the Eastside are decrying the location for a new fire station. Commissioner Patrick Davenport expressed that the new firehouse would lower the quality of life of residents. That stance begs the question: Does your house burning down or you dying from a heart attack while waiting for help improve your quality of life?
Vocal residents of Boulevard and Normaltown do not support the UGA President’s House proposed transformation into a hotel. The proposal is in good faith, preserving much of the building, limiting impacts on the neighborhood and adding assets to our community. Yet, wealthy homeowners of these neighborhoods gag at the whiff of change. The alternatives to the hotel proposal are quite dim. I am not sure what is more morally bankrupt: A building falling apart due to neglect, or a family calling a mansion and five acres home in a town crying out for more homes.
Athens First United Methodist Church has successfully knocked down a building and is in the process of replacing it with a parking lot—just as God intended. Much of the discussion about the Saye Building revolved around saving the building itself, rather than the unholiness of a parking lot. It is disappointing to see a tax-exempt organization tear down a building that could’ve been homes for businesses, community organizations or people, just to replace it with parking for cars. There are rumors that “this is just a parking lot for now, and the church will use that parcel in the future.” A church landbanking and speculating on real estate values in one of the most vibrant parts of our town seems pretty bad.
Local leader and business owner Rashe Malcom saw her plan for a teaching kitchen and community garden ridiculed by commissioners and residents alike. The threat of gentrification and displacement is real, but that cannot lead us to inaction. Gentrification can include many things, but it does not include the planting of 22 trees, improving a community garden, decreasing parking spots, or widening a sidewalk. This is a good project, and it’s sad to see the lack of support.
Taken as a whole, the thesis may be something like this: more parking, less housing and no change. Inspiring!
Ezra Schley
Athens
Georgia Is So Much Safer Now
There is an old adage: Ignorance is bliss. And I must say I have apparently been blissfully ignorant. I had no idea that there were 475 rapists and murderers working at the Hyundai plant in Georgia. I feel so much safer now knowing these felons have been apprehended. And to think they were posing as workers in a factory generally believed to be critical to Georgia’s future economic success. Who would have believed it?
Randy Norris
Statham
Stop Trump’s AI Death Panels
President Trump promised to protect Medicare. That’s not what his regime is doing. It launched a pilot project in six states (Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington) in which health care decisions for Medicare patients will be made, not by medical professionals, but by artificial intelligence algorithms from private, for-profit companies. AI will be used to determine whether Medicare patients would be covered for certain procedures. The AI companies will get a cut of the savings they generate, so they will have a strong financial incentive to deny care.
Requiring prior authorization and then denying medical procedures that doctors have deemed necessary so that private companies can profit is putting Medicare patients in serious, possibly mortal, danger. Whatever else this program does, it certainly breaks President Trump’s promise to protect Medicare.
Suzanne Sperling
Athens
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