Category: Columns

Maybe the second time will be the charm.

The City of Atlanta hopes the federal government will give its streetcar plan a green light during the second round of TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants.

City leaders are presenting their revised streetcar proposal to the Atlanta City Council this week and need the full council’s approval before July 16 when pre-applications are to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Atlanta and Georgia did not fare well during the first round of TIGER grants — when $1.5 billion were distributed to transportation projects across the nation. In the first round, the federal government was offering 100 percent of the funding.

This round is not quite as generous. Only $600 million will be

A transit evolution is underway in metro Atlanta.

But what form it will take is still a mystery.

What key regional leaders do know is that the status quo is no longer acceptable.

The incremental progress for transit is literally running on parallel tracks.

On one track is the state legislature and the state government. After several years of inaction, the state legislature passed a transportation bill that will permit regions to vote on a penny sales tax two years from now.

The bill was flawed, however, because it singled out MARTA — stipulating that none of those sales tax revenues could go to existing MARTA operations. The bill also mandated a new governance structure for the MARTA board and established a

What’s a socially- and environmentally-conscious consumer supposed to do?

I haven’t bought gas at an Exxon station since 1989 following the disastrous oil spill of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit a reef in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989.

It was a matter of principle. Exxon’s response to the oil spill was slow, defensive and insensitive. All these years, I have not wanted to spend my money on a company like Exxon.

On the other hand, I truly believed BP was worthy of my money.

I really got to see what BP was made of back in 2000 when I was working on a column about our upcoming smog season.

At the time, the state of Georgia had passed requirements for

Something was wrong.

Walking along Auburn Avenue during the Sweet Auburn Festival, we stopped by the crypts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — one of the most sacred spots in Atlanta.

We sat next to the eternal flame and realized that the coals were cold and the eternal flame had been extinguished.

How could that be? Wasn’t an eternal flame supposed to burn forever?

Underneath the flame, there was a plaque saying that the eternal flame had recently been refurbished by the Atlanta Gas Light Co., the keeper of our city’s Shining Light Awards.

So sitting there, I sent an email to John Somerhalder, CEO of

If Atlanta feels a bit more flush with lofy ideas this week, credit the Congress for the New Urbanism.

The 18th annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU18) will bring more than 1,000 architects, planners and related professionals to Atlanta from Wednesday through Saturday.

The theme of CNU18 is “New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places.”

Two of Atlanta’s bright lights — Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham-Jones and architect Laura Heery Prozes — have been the local organizers of CNU18. They have explored every avenue to find ways for the Atlanta region to benefit from this influx of urban leaders.

They are partnering with a host of local organizations — from Central Atlanta Progress, the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta

It’s just not good enough.

There’s a lot of self-congratulatory back patting going on in this town. After years of failed attempts, the Georgia legislature finally passed a bill that will allow 12 different regions in the state to pass a one-penny sales tax for their transportation needs.

But this bill is flawed. And patting ourselves on the back is premature at best.

The flaw? The bill falls short in helping the Atlanta region pay for its transit needs — arguably the greatest need that we have.

Then there’s the maliciousness of this bill against MARTA — the largest transit agency in the state and the one that is the backbone for all the other transit systems in the region.

What a disappointment House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones (R-Alpharetta) has turned out to be.

Thanks to her insistence, MARTA got screwed — plain and

Not so long ago, Arizona State University had a mediocre reputation mainly known as being a top party school.

And then in 2003, Dr. Michael Crowe was tapped to become ASU’s president, and all of that changed.

Today there are a total of nearly 70,000 students on ASU’s four campuses in the Tempe and Phoenix urban area, and Crowe has garnered a national reputation as a transformative leader.

But to the Atlanta delegation that was visiting Phoenix as part of the annual LINK trip put on by the Atlanta Regional Commission, the most important contribution that has occurred under Crowe’s leadership is the relationship between the university and the metro area, particularly downtown Phoenix.

The result is the New American University — a bold declaration designed to make a national splash, according to Grady Gammage, an attorney and an ASU faculty member at the

If it’s 2010, it must be Phoenix.

About 110 leaders from throughout the Atlanta region will leave Wednesday morning to spend three days in Phoenix as part of the annual LINK trip.

This is the 14th annual LINK (Leadership, Involvement, Networking, Knowledge) trip where regional leaders visit a city to learn about how that metro area is handling its challenges.

In Phoenix, the major topics the group will explore will be water, higher education, immigration and transportation.

LINK is organized by the Atlanta Regional Commission, and the decision to go to Phoenix was made shortly after U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson ruled last July that the Atlanta region has no legal right to rely on Lake Lanier for most of its water supply.

The judge gave the Atlanta region three years to come up with a way to resolve the issue, possibly by reaching an agreement

Update: Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee restored funding for the Georgia Council for the Arts on Tuesday. The budget now has to be approved by the full Senate and by the House-Senate conference committee before going to Gov. Sonny Perdue for his signature.

“Georgia is in a race for the bottom.”

So said a community leader during a panel discussion this past week.

Although the topic of the discussion was not the arts, it might as well have been.

Last week, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a $17.8 billion state budget that would totally eliminate the Georgia Council for the Arts. That would give Georgia the dubious distinction of being the only state in the country without a council for the arts.

Few institutions are more important to Atlanta than the King Center.

And few families are more important to our city’s legacy than the family of Martin Luther King Jr.

Unfortunately, for the past several years, the three living children of the late Civil Rights leader have been at odds — saddled with legal and financial disagreements that threatened to destroy their parents’ legacy and the future of the King Center.

But now that three children have laid down their swords, partly due to the involvement of an outside mediator, the opportunity exists for each of them to follow their own paths by working in roles where they excel.

But a danger also exists that the three children will take on challenges where they could fail or give in to their own