Category: Sections

By Maria Saporta

It is an incredible “man bites dog” story.

A Cobb County pedestrian’s four-year-old son is killed by a hit-and-run driver who admittedly had been drinking. But it’s the mother who gets charged and convicted with vehicular homicide.

The mother, Raquel Nelson, was guilty of walking across Austell Road from the bus stop to her apartment complex with her three children. She had no car, yet she is charged with vehicular homicide.

Sally Flocks, founder of PEDS, a pedestrian advocacy organization, had told me a couple of weeks ago that this case was coming up and that she was going to testify in support of the mother.

By Maria Saporta

At the Atlanta Region Summit of Georgia’s Competitiveness Initiative, Gov. Nathan Deal highlighted the unprecedented cooperation between the state and the City of Atlanta.

Specifically, both Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed spoke of their recent joint trip to Washington, D.C. to try to secure federal dollars and support to Georgia.

“I do believe you are going to see this week that we are going to be announcing the results of that trip to Washington,” Deal told the group of more than 200 metro leaders.

Reed did his own tease when he addressed the audience, thanking the governor for being willing to work together on that trip to Washington on June 1 when they met with a multitude of federal officials.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Regional Commission has received a federal grant to embark on a year-long effort to put together an “economic development” framework for metro Atlanta.

The initiative was announced Monday morning at the Atlanta Region Summit of the Georgia Competitiveness Initiative that is being held at Georgia Tech’s Conference Center.

The $318,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration us part of a three-year effort to create a strategic plan for innovation and growth for the whole region.

By Maria Saporta

For more than 20 years, a regional leadership program has been preparing current and up-and-coming leaders for moments just like this.

The week-long Regional Leadership Institute (RLI), which had its first class in 1991, brings people together from all corners of the region where they can take a deep look at the issues facing metro Atlanta — from transportation, water, education, aging and leadership.

The program, which takes place at St. Simons Island, has become a neutral ground where a diverse group of leaders can get to know each other and find areas of consensus when they return to metro Atlanta to work on its various challenges.

By Maria Saporta

Georgia State University President Mark Becker is taking on a major community role.

As of July 1, Becker became board chair of the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE), an organization of 20 colleges and universities in the greater metro area.

Becker succeeds Beheruz Sethna, the president of the University of West Georgia, who has chaired the board for the past two years. Sethna will remain on ARCHE’s executive committee.

By Maria Saporta

The City of Atlanta is reviewing its festival ordinance and policies, according to George Dusenbury, commissioner of the City of Atlanta Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs.

A particular focus is Piedmont Park, the most popular gathering spot in Atlanta and usually the favored choice for any organization wanting to hold an event or festival in a city park.

Now that Music Midtown has announced that it will be resurrecting its festival at Piedmont Park, questions about the park’s use or over-use are resurfacing.

Music Midtown will make its comeback on Sept. 24 wit Coldplay as its headlining act. There also is a chance that a major artist will come the night before — turning the “new” Music Midtown in a two-day, two–stage event.

By Maria Saporta

Ever since the popular Music Midtown festival disappeared after the 2005 season, Alex Cooley wanted to bring it back.

Cooley, who was the inspiration and founder of the “legacy” Music Midtown, believed Atlanta’s music scene would never be complete without an annual festival that attracted both known and unknown artists.

“It’s very important for Atlanta to have a music festival,” Cooley said in a telephone interview on the same day that plans for a “new” Music Midtown was unveiled. “If you go back, I wanted this to be a festival that lasted for 20, 30, 40 years.”

Cooley is the true godfather of concerts and music performances in Atlanta. He literally introduced Atlanta to the national music scene, and vice versa.

By Maria Saporta

Could it be? Music Midtown is coming back?

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s office issued a media advisory today that smells an awful lot like a return of Music Midtown. The title of the advisory: “Mayor Kasim Reed and Live Nation’s Peter Conlon to Make Major Music Announcement.”

A press conference is planned for noon at the W Atlanta Downtown, and the people involved will be: Mayor Reed; Conlon; president of Live Nation Atlanta; William Pate, president of the Atlanta Convention & Visitor’s Bureau; and Atlanta City Councilmen Alex Wan and Kwanza Hall.

Music Midtown was a popular Atlanta institution from 1994 to 2005 when it was discontinued because of losses it had incurred due to inclement weather and the scheduling of major expensive acts.

By Maria Saporta

The next six weeks are the make or break time for the regional transportation sales tax.

On Aug. 15, the executive committee of the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable will release its draft list of transportation projects to be included as part of the 2012 referendum.

For transit advocates, the critical issue will be whether a large portion of those projects will be for non-road and bridges transportation options. In short, they will be looking to see if the project list will include significant funding for transit, bicycle paths and sidewalks.

By Maria Saporta

The mood was somber at the Fair Share for Transit reception — held Thursday evening at the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown on the 75th anniversary of “Gone with the Wind.”

The coalition of 67 local organizations and groups is hoping that the region will invest in transit as part of the one-cent transportation sales tax that will go before voters in 2012.

“We are coming to a very critical juncture in this process,” said Ray Christman, executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition, the lead organization behind the Fair Share for Transit initiative.

Christman explained that by law, by Aug. 15, the region will have to issue a draft list of all the transportation projects that is to be included in the referendum.

By Maria Saporta

Some things just don’t make sense.

Georgia seems determined to stab itself in the back.

On Monday, the Georgia Ports Authority re-elected Alec Poitevint II of Bainbridge to serve a second term as chairman.

That would not be an issue if the Georgia Ports Authority weren’t seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government and the Obama administration to deepen the Savannah port so it can accommodate the mega container ships that will be hitting the seas in 2014.

Georgia has made the deepening of the Savannah port one of its top economic development authorities — some even comparing it to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

But Georgia is not helping its case in Washington by re-electing Poitevint as its