Category: Columns

By Guest Columnist MATTHEW HICKS, associate legislative director for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia on economic development and transportation policy.

In 2003, a goal was set by those working on the BeltLine to have transit started on the corridor within ten years. It was a lofty target considering that every day brought obstacles and looming doubts about the overall project’s viability.

Yet every hurdle was overcome and soon problems

By Guest Columnist KIM ANDERSON, CEO of Families First

Virtually every measure of individual success begins with a loving and supportive family. Yet on any given day, approximately 13,000 children in Georgia’s foster care system have lost the family connections essential for them to succeed in life.

The national and state trends are grim: 60 percent of children placed into foster care are there because of neglect, 10 percent because of physical abuse and 8 percent are victims of sexual abuse.

By Guest Columnist JIM MARAN, president and CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce

In Jim Collins best-selling book Good to Great, he says visionary companies don’t ask “How well are we doing?” or “How can we do well?” or “How well do we have to perform to meet the competition?”

According to Collins, they institutionalize this question as a way of life–a habit of mind and action. Superb execution and performance naturally come to the

By Guest Columnist DICK ANDERSON, executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.

When Gov. Sonny Perdue asked me over a year ago to join his administration and take look at our transportation challenges from an executive perspective, I am not exactly sure what I expected to encounter.

I had experienced congestion as a daily commuter and heard about our funding challenges, but my experience in transportation was limited to being a flagman and mower operator for Kentucky Department of Transportation during college summers.

What I found was a set of business problems very similar to ones we faced at BellSouth, where I worked for 28 years.

Our transportation network (highways, rail, transit, ports), much like the telecommunications network, is a shared network used for many different purposes. Capital for investment in the network is always a scarce resource. Success demands a clear, targeted strategy for improved performance that includes a focus on execution and measurable results.

By Guest Columnist RAY CHRISTMAN, retired CEO of the FHLBank of Atlanta who
currently is involved in a variety of housing/banking-related consulting and civic activities, including the Peachtree Corridor Partnership, the ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing, and the Livable Communities Coalition.

While there are reasons to be optimistic that an economic recovery is beginning to take hold, both locally and nationally, the housing industry remains mired in a deep depression.

Despite the conventional wisdom that housing will rebound ahead of other sectors, it’s possible that the industry’s comeback will be protracted and anemic and, indeed, will be a drag on the overall recovery.

Moreover, it’s a sure bet that as the economy stabilizes, the housing industry – and the mortgage financing system that supports it – will function much differently than they have in the recent past.

It has become painfully obvious that the problems facing the housing and banking systems are deeply intertwined. And the changes affecting these symbiotic sectors aren’t merely cyclical, but are structural in nature, and will have long-lasting effects.

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.

The long way around might turn out to be the shortest – and the best. Maybe the state’s transportation program ought to first be based on a statewide strategy.

Then it ought to focus on where people do their most traveling – in and around cities and towns, where more and more of the state’s population lives; where congestion is highest and air quality lowest; in centers large and small, most of which have some kind of a transit system; places where a growing majority of the people – and thus votes – are concentrated, even in rural counties.

Markets are changing, and many of the state’s towns have historic and cultural charms that haven’t yet been destroyed, the kinds of bones that can attract the flesh of growing markets for closer in living, working, and shopping. These are features that most all of the state’s towns and cities share.

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

Muhtar Kent, President and CEO of the Coca Cola Company, recently suggested “the current global economic crisis gripping much of the world is not, in fact, an insurmountable setback for local leaders but rather an opportunity to be seized.”

Today, Atlanta’s leadership is ardently searching for an opportunity to solve our transportation issues and jump start our economy. Indeed, some proposed changes in Federal transit policy present just such an opportunity.

The Obama administration has recently allocated $13 billion dollars for a national high speed rail initiative which has Atlanta centered at the confluence of two major corridors.

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL ROBISON, founder, chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Lanier Parking Holdings.

I grew up attending Atlanta public schools, so I can appreciate the value of renovating aging schools and building new ones. At Morningside Elementary, I recall distractions such as peeling paint, noisy plumbing, and sweltering late summer heat due to a lack of central air conditioning.

So there would seem to be cause for celebration two years ago when 80 percent of voters supported extending the extra one-penny sales tax “for educational purposes” for another five years.

The problem is the Atlanta Public Schools Special Option Local Sales Tax (SPLOST), first approved in 1997, has sent the system more than $1 billion, and it should have long since solved the capital needs at Morningside and everywhere else. For that amount, APS literally could have torn down every building in the school system and rebuilt them.

By Guest Columnist JIM GEIGER, CEO of Cbeyond who serves
on the boards of the Points of Light Institute (formerly HandsOn Network), Marist School and Southern Methodist Cox School of Business.

I’m a proud business owner and entrepreneur, but I know the world is bigger than me and bigger than my business. I must give back to the communities in which my business operates and encourage my employees to do the same.

Because I believe volunteerism is essential, I built my company on that foundation.

When we founded Cbeyond 10 years ago, we strived to create a culture that supported our entrepreneurial spirit, reflected our passion for volunteer service and supported employees’ personal volunteer interests.

By Guest Columnist JANICE MCKENZIE-CRAYTON, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta

For the last several years, I have had the opportunity to talk with and also hire a number of professionals who have made the decision to transition out of corporate America and into my world of non-profit management.

Many exchanges begin with, “I want to give back and make a difference. I am ready to get out of the rat race.” The economic climate and changes in social norms have instigated a fascinating migration of corporate executives to the public sector.

This phenomenon is having an interesting and for the most part positive impact on the non-profit sector. Subject matter experts with years of invaluable training and varied experiences are migrating to the non-profit world, excited and passionate about helping the community while being truly valued by the organizations they