Category: Columns

By Guest Columnist HARRY WEST, professor of Practice for Georgia Tech’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.

Appropriately so, both the term and measurement “shovel ready” has been applied to the selection of projects funded in the first round of federal stimulus spending. Getting the program underway with projects that could be implemented quickly had to be a priority.

As additional projects and programs are taken into account, time is available to consider other measurements in establishing selection priority. I am compelled to advocate funding the steps necessary to bring other needed projects to the point of being “shovel ready”.

By Guest Columnist CHARLEY ENGLISH, director of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security

Thirty percent of your employees don’t show up for work one day. What would you do? Would you close for business? Try to make it with a skeleton staff? And how would either of these choices impact your bottom line? Now imagine that those same employees – or more – were unable to get to work for three days or more.

It’s a scenario that most business owners don’t think will happen to them, and, if you are fortunate, it won’t. But it’s an understatement to say that when a tornado struck downtown Atlanta in March 2008 that people were a bit surprised. Most had never expected a tornado to follow a path down some of the city’s major thoroughfares. But that’s exactly what happened.

By Guest Columnist JOHN SIBLEY, program director of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance and former president of the Georgia Conservancy

Last week, the Georgia Public Service Commission, by unanimous vote, tripled the amount of solar power in Georgia Power’s green energy program. This very positive action enables developers of solar energy to take advantage of federal stimulus incentives that must be claimed in the next several months. The state’s solar industry just got a big booster shot.

The PSC’s action also helps Georgia get ready for pending federal policies. It’s a near certainty that federal legislation will require utilities to sell more renewable energy.

By Guest Columnist STEVE VOGEL, president of the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers

It’s like trying to jump on a train that’s already pulling out of the station.

Georgia is seeking a share of $8 billion in federal stimulus money earmarked for the development of a national high-speed passenger train network. At first glance, it might look like there’s a good chance of getting some of that money. Georgia is on two of the proposed corridors: the Southeast Corridor from Washington, D.C. to Florida, and the Gulf Coast Corridor from Atlanta to Houston.

But here’s the problem: There’s a long line of states trying to climb aboard this train, and Georgia is at the end of the ticket line, asking for a free ride.

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.