Category: Guest Column

By Guest Columnist JAMES SHEPHERD, co-founder and chairman of the Atlanta-based Shepherd Center, one of the nation’s largest spinal cord injury, brain injury and disease rehabilitation facilities.

The 2010 election is a critical one. Like the rest of the nation, Georgia is facing the most challenging economic time in its history.

The citizens whose votes you are seeking deserve specifics, not rhetoric. It is not enough to be articulate, look good and tell me you can do the job. You need to tell me what you believe, what options you would advance to create jobs and tell me what options you will consider to fund the programs you talk about supporting.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber produced a study of the top

By Guest Columnist ALLISON KELLY, senior vice president of the Georgia Conservancy.

For decades, Georgia’s environmental community has urged the state’s top elected officials to take water issues seriously.

In the 2009 state legislature, water yet again took a back seat to matters deemed more critical, such as the economy, education and immigration.

All that changed last summer, when federal judge Paul Magnuson ruled that metro Atlanta has no legal authority to draw drinking water from Lake Lanier. It was a shot across the bow that catapulted water from the sidelines to center stage among those now running to replace Sonny Perdue for governor.

By Guest Columnist CLARA HAYLEY AXAM, former director of the Atlanta Office Enterprise Community Partners who currently is president of Clarification & Mediation Inc., a management consulting firm.

There is a well-quoted adage that implies that if something is free, it is probably not worth having. Whether you believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that is yours for the taking or in working hard, spending judiciously and saving for a rainy day, dreams of pots of someone else’s money to fix all of our woes are just that – dreams.

In 2002 Atlanta was designated as a federal Renewal Community (RC) in accordance with the 2000 Community Renewal Tax Relief Act targeting revitalization in designated census tracts with pervasive

By Guest Columnist ANGEL LUIS POVENTUD, a renegade community activist and believer in Atlanta.

Community. I’ve always had it. I was born in 1971 in a Miami neighborhood where my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents all lived just three blocks apart, and my elementary school was just down the street. My parents are Puerto Rican who grew up in New York City.

My mom worked as an executive secretary, and my dad worked as a printer for Eastern Airlines, so we were able to travel the world until about the time I turned 15.

After I graduated from high school, I tried going to college for architecture and toyed with the idea of becoming a city planner. But then I left school to go

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL DAILEY, a business litigation attorney who is active with several environmental organizations in Georgia.

Lost in the uproar which followed Rep. Joe Barton’s now-famous apology to British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, for what Barton alleged was a White House “shakedown” of his company leading to the establishment of a $20 Billion escrow fund, was the original Republican scriptwriter for Barton’s ire – Representative Tom Price M.D. of Georgia.

Only hours before Barton unleashed his surprising outpouring of sympathy for the company responsible for delivering America’s foremost environmental disaster, Rep. Price, speaking as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, issued a statement

By Guest Columnist JACKIE ECHOLS, an environmentalist and citizen acitivist.

Second a two-part series on the state of the City of Atlanta’s water and sewer plans.

The Atlanta Department of Watershed Management (DWM) needs to give top priority to demonstrating that the combined sewer overflow (CSO) tunnels and treatment investments already in place will bring Atlanta into compliance by the current 2014 deadline. No time extension should be granted.

However, a time extension to rebuild sewer infrastructure in the combined sewer areas is appropriate. These areas are served by the CSO tunnel and treatment systems. Because water quality

By Guest Columnist JACKIE ECHOLS, an environmentalist and citizen acitivist.

First in a two-part series on the state of the City of Atlanta’s water and sewer plans.

With another 12.5 percent water and sewer rate increase due in July 2010, the question that should be at the forefront of the minds of City of Atlanta residents is: Are we getting what we’re paying for?

Almost 13 years into two federal consent decrees, the City of Atlanta has asked the court for an additional 15 years, until 2029, to complete wastewater fixes that are supposed to finally bring it into compliance with the 1972 Clean Water Act.

By Guest Columnist CHARISSE M. WILLIAMS, director of Posse Atlanta — the local arm of the Posse Foundation, a national non-profit that recruits young leaders in urban public high schools and helps them enroll and excel in college.

As we look ahead to the upcoming college season, there are many high school students in metro Atlanta and throughout the country without any post-secondary education plans.

The earning potential of these young people is bleak. A person without a college degree is more than twice as likely to be unemployed as someone with a college degree.

For minorities, the outlook is even more dramatic. At a

By Guest Columnist MIKE DOBBINS: a Georgia Tech professor of architecture and planning who also served as the city of Atlanta’s commissioner of planning, development and neighborhood conservation from 1996 to 2002. Dobbins also is author of a new book: ‘Urban Design and People.

Parking is about a lot more than storing cars and generating revenue.

Parking, and in the current situation on-street parking, is about access and walkability, retail, restaurant and residential viability, and altogether the character – the attractiveness and functionality – of the more intense parts of town.

Various studies have confirmed the common sense that cars parked at on-street parking spaces provide a

By Guest Columnist JOHN MATTHEWS, a commercial real estate investor and an MBA graduate of Goizueta Business School

Atlanta’s public employee pension system is a structurally flawed retirement program that does not serve taxpayers, does not serve city workers and puts our city at risk of financial insolvency.

Significant changes will have to be made to the pension plan in order to prevent the city from entering either permanent economic decline or outright failure. If the city wants to put itself and its employees on a permanent path to long-term fiscal security, our city

By Guest Columnist RAY CHRISTMAN, executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition

After a three year debate, the Georgia General Assembly passed last month HB 277, The Transportation Investment Act of 2010, which provides the opportunity for the Atlanta region (and other regions of the state) to pass a one percent sales tax dedicated to transportation improvements.

The bill’s passage generated much celebration among transportation advocates of all stripes who had worked for years on this goal. And it induced a good bit of teeth gnashing as well, particularly by those who felt the legislation unnecessarily penalized MARTA.

But with the bill passed and the rules and processes in place for moving forward, it is now time to turn

By Guest Columnist REBECCA SERNA, executive director of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and key organizer of Atlanta Streets Alive!

Streets take up almost one-third of the average U.S. city and represent the majority of our public space.

Yet the streets in car-dominated cities like Atlanta are not entirely public, at least not yet. Owning a car is widely viewed as a requirement for life in Atlanta. Those of us who choose to use bicycles to get around are often made to feel marginalized, as if our time and safety are less valuable than those who have made other choices.

Far from being a space only for cars, our streets — paid for with property taxes and public dollars — could be

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL GERBER, president of the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education.

During the recent LINK trip of regional leaders to Phoenix, Arizona State University professor Grady Gammage, referring to Atlanta-area colleges and universities, observed “You have got us beat on every turn. We talk a good game… But we would kill for the quality of institutions that you have.”

Accolades aside, the good professor probably gave Atlanta leaders something to think about. Just what does our region have in higher education? And are we using it to our full advantage?

What we have here is nothing short of phenomenal. Few metro areas enjoy such a concentrated and diverse

By Guest Columnist W. IMARA CANADY, vice president of programming and strategic partnerships for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights

Last month, as a result of an invitation by the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, I was able to experience one of the most powerful and transforming moments of my life.

Through a program called “Celebrating Success”, I joined a small, but diverse group of concerned Atlantans for a lunch-time session, where, broken up into small groups, we listened to formerly homeless individuals tell the story of their successful, but difficult road to self-sufficiency.

This moment in time transformed my life. As a young, middle class African-American male that grew up in

By Guest Columnist WILL WINGATE, vice president of advocacy and land conservation for the Georgia Conservancy

As the 2010 Georgia General Assembly draws to a close, one of the success stories of the session is the near unanimous passage of the Senate Bill 370, also known as the “Water Stewardship Act.”

This groundbreaking legislation sets forth a “culture of conservation” when dealing with Georgia’s water resources.

While the conservation measures set forth in the legislation are important, the willingness of the environmental and business communities to sit down and work together towards a common purpose will set

By Guest Columnist BETH BOND, editor and managing partner of Southeast Green.

There is a vortex of activity revolving around renewable energy here in the state of Georgia. Can you feel it?

These past couple of weeks have been monumental for Atlanta. We had two of the leading minds on carbon and renewable energy in the country, if not the world, speak separately and yet with the same voice several times to local audiences.

Who were they? Dr. Richard Sandor the chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange; and Jigar Shah the chief executive director of the Carbon War Room, a non-profit started by Sir Richard Branson to help produce solutions for businesses that are interested in reducing

By Guest Columnist BRIAN LEARY, president and CEO of Atlanta BeltLine Inc.

On a rural highway outside one of the South’s busiest ports, the largest German investment ever in the United States is on schedule and on budget to employ 2,700 employees by 2012.

ThyssenKrupp’s $3.7 billion investment is further proof that our agreeable weather and hospitality; expansive interstate, rail network and long-term prospects for growth are positive factors contributing to the ongoing interest and investment of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

Where ThyssenKrup chose to build their new steel mill shouldn’t come as a surprise. The team that brought this technologically-advanced plant from an old world

By Guest Columnist SAM A. Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber

A recent SaportaReport column accused the business community of neglecting transit.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, no one has pushed harder for improving transportation – including transit – than the business community.

For years, the Metro Atlanta Chamber and its board of top business leaders have pushed aggressively inside and outside the Capitol for transportation funding.

We created one of the largest and most diverse transportation coalitions in the history of this state,

By Guest Columnist BILL FLOYD, Mayor of the City of Decatur and president of the Georgia Municipal Association

There are a number of interesting conversations going on nationally about the role of cities.

The common theme among the various discussions is that cities matter. They are seen as critical elements in our economic recovery, and they are considered to be core components in tackling any number of critical issues facing our society.

But in Georgia the discussion about cities doesn’t reflect the national conversation. Too often cities are painted, along with counties and local schools, as ineffective and not representing the needs of their citizens.

By Guest Columnist JAMES OXENDINE, CEO of the Oxendine Group, a public policy consulting firm specializing in economic and transit-oriented development.

Noted author, Malcolm Gladwell, has characterized the potentially massive implications of small scale events known as tipping points: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.”

After 13 years of sitting around unused, the federal funds that U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Atlanta) secured for the commuter rail line to Lovejoy have emerged as not only a linchpin for Atlanta and Georgia’s future federal