By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, May 10, 2013
The nonprofit All About Developmental Disabilities (AADD) has named a new executive director just in time for Mother’s Day.
The new director is Kathy Keeley, who has been serving as interim executive director since last August of the 50-year-old nonprofit. AADD provides support services, advocacy and training to more than 2,000 individuals and families living with developmental disabilities.
Georgia’s timber industry launched a campaign Tuesday to raise awareness of its efforts to promote sustainable practices.
The campaign is led by the Georgia Forestry Association and includes a speakers bureau that is to take the message to Rotary Clubs, chambers of commerce and other such groups around the state.
The effort is unfolding as the state’s struggling timber industry has been promoted over the past nine months by parties ranging from Gov. Nathan Deal to the University of Georgia to Rolling Stones keyboardist and Georgia tree farmer Chuck Leavell.
State transportation Commissioner Keith Golden says his department is committed to the Complete Streets policy adopted by the board in September.
“It doesn’t mean that we stop all projects and adapt them to fit that mode,” Golden said. “It does mean that we start all projects with that concept in place.”
GDOT’s commitment was questioned earlier this year, until bike lanes were added to plans for a replacement bridge across Ga. 400. Less attention was paid to GDOT’s inclusion of bike lanes and a tunnel for pedestrians at a replacement bridge over Lake Lanier.
There has recently been a man-bites-dog story about a newspaper, although it has received scant attention in the newspapers, which cover nothing so poorly as they cover themselves.
Last year the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced that it was cutting back to three print editions a week and would focus henceforth on “new and innovative ways” to cover the news online. That was a dog-bites-man story. The idea of cutting back circulation days has been kicked around in newspaper circles for several years, and Detroit and a few smaller papers have already done it. It’s in line with a larger narrative about the demise of newspapers at the hands of the internet.
Last month, however, the Times-Pic announced a change in strategy. This summer it will begin publication of a tabloid edition, to be called TPStreet, which it will sell for 75 cents a copy on the three weekdays — Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays — when it isn’t printing the old paper.
It’s the same old story.
When government budgets get tighter, one of the first items to get cut is in the parks and recreation department. While parks and recreation centers are vitally important to a city’s quality of life, when it comes to choosing between police officers and park maintenance, public safety usually wins out.
Two metro Atlanta governments provide alternative approaches that show different approaches on how to fund park acquisition and maintenance — the City of Atlanta and Gwinnett County.
Margaret Connelly, executive director of the advocacy organization Park Pride, sent out an “Alert” on May 10 saying that the proposed City of Atlanta budget by Mayor Kasim Reed would shift about $3 million from trust funds to help cover an operating budget gap for fiscal year 2014.
After building more than 180 miles of trails in Georgia, the PATH Foundation is now memorialized in the name of a future trail in Atlanta – PATH400 is the name of the trail that’s to run alongside and beneath Ga. 400.
When the trail’s complete, it will join a trail network valued at $55.5 million that PATH has completed and transferred to local governments, according to PATH’s most recent Form 990, the IRS tax return filed by non-profit organizations.
Despite the size of this contribution to public greenways, or perhaps because of it, the PATH Foundation has become such a fixture in metro Atlanta since it was formed in 1991 that it’s possible to forget that it is still a relatively small organization in the big world of non-profits.
By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, May 10, 2013
Now that the new Atlanta Falcons stadium has been given a green light from the various governmental entities and now that an architect has been selected, the next step is finalizing the site.
Active discussions are underway to get that issue settled as soon as possible, so work can start on the $1 billion retractable-roof stadium.
According to official agreements, there’s an Aug. 1 deadline to determine if the preferred stadium location known as the “South site,” which is the land that sits between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Georgia Dome, is feasible for the project.
By Guest Columnist TERRY LAWLER, executive director of the Regional Business Coalition of Metropolitan Atlanta
Last month metro Atlanta’s primary source of water reached a milestone: Lake Lanier is back to full pool and rising.
Not only is Lake Lanier full, Lake Allatoona is also full, and every lake on the Chattahoochee, Etowah, Coosa, Ocmulgee, Flint and Oconee rivers are either full or within a foot of being full.
But before we start to celebrate, let’s not forget that our presently abundant water resources can change quickly.
Things were a lot different last year. Last year at this time Lake Lanier was five feet lower and dropping.
You could say Hushpuppy meets Huck Finn in ‘Mud,” a remarkably fine film written and directed by Jeff Nichols.
Set a little ways up-water from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” in a soggy Arkansas tributary, “Mud” mixes the hard-scrabble reality of the Piggly Wiggly South with what’s left (barely) of the semi-mythic legacy of, say, Mark Twain.
The title character is a charming drifter played with exquisite rattlesnake charm by Matthew McConaughey. Mud isn’t a bad guy, but he’s capable of bad things — especially when he’s caught up in his blinkered romantic pursuit of a redneck temptress named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon, perfect as a sleazy angel in cut-offs).
Mud will — and has — do anything for her. Including murder.
A proposal to shut down the adult shops and clubs by 2018 along Cheshire Bridge Road in Atlanta was rejected Thursday by Atlanta’s Zoning Review Board.
The vote is not binding and doesn’t end the debate. The battle continues to the Atlanta City Council, where the area’s representative, Alex Wan, had introduced the measure with strong support from an array of neighborhood groups.
The opposition that gathered at the ZRB meeting included a mix of gays, strippers and Atlanta’s real estate interests – including Scott Selig, whose family has developed in Atlanta since 1918. Their protests centered on issues including free expression and property rights.
GRTA’s board offered a warm welcome Wednesday to Chris Tomlinson, the newest leader of metro Atlanta’s transportation system.
Tomlinson, executive director of the State Road and Tollway Authority, responded with a message that emphasized themes of communication and transparency.
The message could go a long way for a state entity that wields tremendous power over Georgia’s transportation system, but operates largely out of the public spotlight. SRTA is chaired by the governor and has the power to plan, develop and build roads funded by federal and state sources – in addition to tolls.
When a meteor slammed into Russia in February, the infrasound signals were captured by a listening station in Lilburn and analyzed by a Georgia Tech researcher.
The signals from the meteor were compared to seismic signals associated with North Korea’s nuclear test in February, and an earthquake in Nevada.
If nothing else, the results speak to the sort of “gee whiz” research underway in metro Atlanta, much of it based out of Georgia Tech. The sounds of the meteor and two other events are now available on YouTube.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, May 3, 2013
A new corporate foundation is solidifying its place on Atlanta’s landscape.
In the past couple of years, the Chick-fil-A Foundation has a hired a new director, adopted a new name, and most recently, appointed an impressive advisory board to help it support youth and education in the community.
Rodney Bullard, who became executive director of the foundation in 2011, said he has been studying other corporate foundations in Atlanta to adopt best practices and be as effective as possible.
Those who are desperately straining to see improvements in Atlanta’s local economy may want to skip Mayor Kasim Reed’s budget proposal, or at least limit their view to a few bright spots.
Reed’s budget is based on some grim predictions: Property tax revenues will decline; sales tax revenues will stagnate; lease payments for city-owned properties will decline, according to revenue overviews scattered throughout the budget book.
Bright spots include revenue from business licenses, which is forecast to rise a bit as business income increases. The hotel/motel tax is expected to rise modestly as the business and tourism trade holds on. In addition, Atlanta expects to hire rather than lay off employees, with a third of the new positions to be located in the executive offices that report directly to the mayor.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, May 3, 2013
The local thread of leadership that has run through several of Atlanta’s key companies has become thinner during the 2013 annual meeting season.
In late April, the annual meetings of shareholders were held for Genuine Parts Co., Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc., Marine Products Corp., Rollins Inc. and The Coca-Cola Co., among others.
These are legacy Atlanta-based companies that have had long-term relationships with complementary and crossover ties with each other for decades.
Don’t get me wrong: I like Reese Witherspoon. A few years ago I was asked to suggest names for a list of outstanding young Southerners, and I included the Nashville native, as much for her business smarts as a movie producer as for her acting ability.
But allow me to vent. After all, I’m a citizen of the City of Atlanta.
As practically everyone must know by now, Witherspoon was a passenger in a car driven by her husband, Jim Toth, when they were pulled over last April 19 by one of Atlanta’s Finest. As she has since acknowledged, the couple had consumed “one too many glasses of wine” at an Atlanta restaurant.
The officer was in the process of arresting Toth after the breathalyzer and coordination-test routine when Witherspoon hung her head out the window of the car and told him she didn’t believe he was a real police officer.
At first glance, one might question why 110 leaders from metro Atlanta would pick Houston, Texas as the city to study for its 17th annual LINK trip from May 15 to May 18.
But consider the following facts.
Forbes has named Houston, Texas as the “coolest” city to live in the United States. Atlanta didn’t make the top 20 list.
Between 2007 and 2012, Houston gained nearly 175,000 new jobs while Atlanta lost 178,000 during that same period.
Houston is the fifth largest metro area in the United States compared to metro Atlanta, which is ninth.
Sixteen years ago, the traffic on Johnson Ferry Road between Cobb and Fulton counties was so bad that someone fired two slugs into the control box of a traffic signal, evidently to make a green light last longer.
Last week, Sen. Johnny Isakson cut a ribbon to open the newly improved Johnson Ferry Road. Hardly anyone paid heed.
It’s anyone’s guess as to why the improved road has garnered such little comment. But it does suggest some degree of weariness when a $26 million project that was nearly 30 years is the making doesn’t trigger a buzz.
By Guest Columnist HATTIE B. DORSEY, president of HBDorsey & Associates and founding past president of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership
“A city of aspiration embraces the fundamental principal that one of the historic roles of cities has been to nurture and grow a middle class.” — Joel Koplin, lecturer in 2007 for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation lecture series
“The neighborhoods of Vine City and English Avenue have suffered too long, mistakes were made in the past, but we can fix this – we can do this.” — Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed
Let me start off by stating I am elated the Falcons will stay in Atlanta. I applaud Arthur Blank, the Mayor Kasim Reed, and the Atlanta City Council for working together to keep them here. Now it is imperative that the new stadium has a sustainable benefit on the neighborhoods that surround it – Vine City, English Avenue and Castleberry Hill.
Atlanta is on pace to have 2,000 sworn police officers this year.
Atlanta now has 1,983 officers, counting 23 who were added after a police academy graduation Tuesday, according to police Chief George Turner. The recruits needed to reach the target are in the police academy or waiting to attend, Turner said. The money to pay the officers is in the budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts July 1, which Mayor Kasim Reed released Wednesday.
While the number of officers is important, the crime rate is the number that matters to those in the city. The rate of serious crimes is 2 percent higher than at this time last year, but is 18 percent lower than in 2009, the last year reported on the police department’s website.
