Category: Latest News

By Maria Saporta

Mayor-elect Kasim Reed reached out to the Atlanta business community Monday morning at the quarterly meeting of the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a blue-ribbon advisory group set up six years ago by outgoing Mayor Shirley Franklin.

Reed, accompanied by City Council President Lisa Borders, had to leave directly after the meeting at SunTrust Plaza and wasn’t available to answer questions.

But ACP Chairman Jim Wells, CEO of SunTrust Banks, said the meeting between the business leaders and the

By Jeanne Bonner

Hope tinged with realism marked Friday’s Sustainable Roundtable on the future of transit in Atlanta held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Midtown.

Or was it realism softened ever so slightly by a bit of a hope?

Speakers Erik Steavens, director of the Georgia Department of Transportation’s Intermodal Programs, and Lee Biola, president of Citizens For Progressive Transit, sketched out the current status of transit in Atlanta and Georgia.

They both made a case for why one

By Maria Saporta

For the first time ever, the Atlanta Regional Commission has elected a citizen member as its next chairman.

Tad Leithead, a consultant who used to be an executive with Cousins Properties Inc. (NYSE: CUZ), was elected chairman on the third round.

He will succeed Sam Olens, chairman of the Cobb County Commission, who decided to step down as ARC chair so he could run for state Attorney General next year.

By Maria Saporta

Whose bright idea was it to hold city council committee meetings on run-off election day?

It took nearly four hours for the Atlanta City Council’s Committee for Human Resources and Community Development on Tuesday to finally take some kind of action on the proposed Sustainable Building Ordinance.

The ordinance, introduced to council in July, has been held in committee for months as environmentalists and

By Maria Saporta

Foreclosure on the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter has been averted, at least for now.

Two lenders had filed for foreclosure notices that was supposed to go forward on Dec. 1.

But on Monday, the Metropolitan Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless was able to reach a temporary agreement with the lenders to keep the shelter open for at least another three months.

William “B” Wardlaw, who has been the

By Maria Saporta

The Metropolitan Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless has been at odds with the downtown business community and others — ever since it purchased the Peachtree-Pine building 12 years ago and turned into the city’s largest shelter.

Now William “B” Wardlaw, the Task Force’s top benefactor and supporter, acknowledges that the shelter’s days are numbered.

Two of the Task Force’s lenders — the Denver-based Mercy Loan Fund and the Institute for Community Economics —

By Maria Saporta

Mayoral candidate Mary Norwood has received a significant endorsement from State Rep. Margaret Kaiser, a Democrat who represents House District 59.

In a telephone interview late Wednesday afternoon, Kaiser said that her first inclination had been to remain neutral in the mayor’s race.

But as the race has entered its closing stretch, Kaiser felt it was important for Norwood to be recognized for her leadership style.

“It was time for more pro-active

By Maria Saporta

It was a first for me.

For three hours this afternoon, I interviewed the eight candidates currently in run-offs in key City of Atlanta races in a novel format that included video streaming to the web world through the use of social media.

The forum was organized by the Committee for a Better Atlanta, a coalition of several business and civic organizations interested in electing the most qualified people to elected offices.

The interviews, which took place at the

By Maria Saporta

When students return to Morehouse College in January after the holidays, their ranks will be down by between 60 and 80 fellow classmates.

Morehouse College President Robert Franklin told the Atlanta Kiwanis Club today that the economy is taking its toll on some of the historically-black college’s most financially vulnerable students.

“Many of our students can’t afford to come back,” Franklin said.

Morehouse College is only one of three

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Community Food Bank has received a $100,000 grant to help it serve more than 400,000 residents in Atlanta and North Georgia.

Humana Inc. and its Humana Foundation provided the $100,000 grant as part of its fifth annual Atlanta Benefits program. Humana is a leading provider of health benefits in Atlanta.

Bill Bolling, executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said those funds will go towards creating a new Food Co-op that will go towards helping hundreds of thousands Georgians

By Maria Saporta

The board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber this morning adopted its 2010 legislative agenda calling for renewed initiatives related to water, transportation, education and economic development.

In the past several years, the Chamber’s legislative agenda has fared poorly in the General Assembly. And the fact that 2010 is an election year for virtually all of the state’s elected officials adds yet another complexity to the Chamber’s agenda this coming year.

John Yates, a partner of the Morris, Manning & Martin law firm who chairs the

By Maria Saporta

The wooing between the Atlanta business community and the two mayoral candidates is in full swing.

Although the business community can’t produce the number of votes to get a candidate elected (partly because many executives live outside the city), their financial contributions are critical in financing campaigns in a close election.

A week ago, both mayoral candidates had back-to-back meetings with the executive committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber and the executive committee of Central Atlanta Progress.

By Maria Saporta

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation has a new president.

Rogers Wade, who has been president of the conservative think-tank for 16 years, announced today that he is becoming chairman of the policy foundation’s board of trustees.

The new president of the foundation is Kelly McCutchen, who has been serving as its executive vice president. McCutchen has been with the foundation since 1993. The organization was founded in 1991.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta’s shining lights have been gracing our city streets since 1963, and today, we added a new shining light to our city — Bill Bolling.

Bill Bolling, founder and executive director of the Atlanta Commuity Food Bank, was honored this morning at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church — site of where Bolling started his career feeding the hungry and empowering those in need.

The Atlanta Gas Light Co. and WSB-Radio News/Talk 750 co-sponsor the Shining Light Award nearly every year. An actual gas light with an eternal flame is erected

By Maria Saporta

What a day for women.

At lunch Thursday, the Atlanta Women’s Foundation held its 13th annual Numbers Too Big to Ignore event at the Georgia World Congress Center with Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and author, as the keynote speaker.

Kristof was the first man to serve as keynote speak for the event.

And then, Thursday evening, state Rep. Kathy Ashe hosted a cocktail conversation with Lilly Ledbetter, a heroine for women across the country and beyond. She was the inspiration for

By Maria Saporta

Five Republican candidates for governor have signed off on Georgia Right to Life’s core principles, a pledge that would put a freeze on embryonic stem cell research in the state.

Those five gubernatorial candidates are: Rep. Austin Scott of Tifton, Jeff Chapman of Brunswick, Sen. Eric Johnson of Savannah, Ray McBerry of Henry County and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine of Gwinnett County.

“Maybe these gubernatorial candidates did not know what they were signing,”

By Maria Saporta

Give Atlanta a year or two and James Weldon Johnson will become part of the city’s vocabulary of legends.

Johnson, who lived from 1871 to 1939, was one of the pivotal black leaders in American history. He was an author, song writer, a poet, a Civil Rights leader, a journalist, an teacher and a diplomat.

Although he was born in Jacksonville, Fla., Johnson attended Atlanta University. He later became executive director of the NAACP and then became a professor of creative writing at New York University, becoming its first African American

By Maria Saporta

It’s time to move on.

That message is directed to state Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Dunwoody), who chairs the legislature’s MARTA Oversight Committee (MARTOC).

Chambers has turned beating up on MARTA an intramural sport, calling on a host of investigations of the agency and accusing MARTA of mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility.

Chambers had asked the state auditors to do a thorough investigation into MARTA’s finances, hoping to find evidence to back her accusations.

By Maria Saporta

As we enter the closing stretch of Atlanta’s mayoral campaign, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on how unique this election has been.

Its uniqueness goes way beyond the fact that there’s a white woman who is the odds-on favorite to win the election — either on Tuesday without a run-off, or on Dec. 1.

It goes way beyond the demographic changes underway in our city. And it goes way beyond whether the candidates pass the test of being Democrats, Republicans or Independents. (In fact, pollster Matt Towery said this has been

By Maria Saporta

For those of you who don’t mind watching movies on TV, two films that shouldn’t be missed will air early this week.

The first is: “The People v. Leo Frank,” which will air at 9 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 2 on PBS — Georgia Public Broadcasting — which is also Channel 8.

And the second movie is: “By the People, the Election of Barack Obama.” Fittingly, it will air on Election night — Tuesday, Nov. 3 — from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on HBO. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since the historic election.

I’ve had the good fortune to see both