By Maria Saporta
Elected leaders in the Atlanta region are becoming increasingly concerned in the direction of a Regional Transit Governance Task Force established by Gov. Nathan Deal.
“There’s no question that the state is still struggling with wanting to control everything,” said Mike Bodker, mayor of Johns Creek, adding that “you have every right to control what you pay for.”
By Guest Columnist VERNON JONES, former CEO of DeKalb County
As a young state representative in the Georgia General Assembly, I predicted white Democrats would become an endangered species in the South.
In 1991 when re-apportionment occurred in Georgia and other Southern states, there was a major push to have more seats created for African-Americans in local, state and congressional districts.
For decades, Atlantans have felt that they have had a secret formula to resolve differences among disparate folks and to create an economy where people can prosper.
A champion of this mindset is none other than former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young — a Civil Rights leader who went to Congress and later became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter. He then came back to Atlanta and served two terms as mayor.
Young was awarded the 2011 Ethics Advocate Award by the Center for Ethics
By Guest Columnist KWANZA HALL, Atlanta City Councilman — District 2
Atlanta’s street food movement is gaining traction. Positive media coverage, support from private land owners, legislative solutions from the Atlanta City Council, and imaginative cooking have combined to make 2011 the Year of the Food Truck.
We still have work to do to make it easier for food trucks to operate. The permitting process can seem mysterious and subjective. Existing city contracts limit our ability to open streets and sidewalks to this new group of mobile entrepreneurs.
All in all, though, we are moving in the right direction.
By David Pendered
An Atlanta official who was deeply involved in the airport concessions contracting program left her job with the city two weeks before Atlanta announced its decision to cancel the initial process and start anew, a city official confirmed Wednesday.
Contracting Officer Carla Cail left her city job on Aug. 17. On Sept 2, Atlanta COO Peter Aman announced the city was cancelling the concessions procurement process and would issue new requests for proposals. Aman didn’t mention Cail’s departure, although her name arose in conversation.
“She left city employment on Aug. 17, 2011 to accept a better opportunity,” Sonji Jacobs, Mayor Kasim Reed’s spokeswoman, said in an email Wednesday. There was no elaboration.
By Michelle Hiskey
Friday is 11-11-11. If that’s just trivia to you, read on. There’s much more to this number 11 than meets the eye.
Eleven is a powerful number on my family calendar. Both my children were born (unscheduled) on the 11th. On that day of the month, my husband was diagnosed with diabetes, and his mother died. And then there’s Sept. 11, and the Japan earthquake on March 11.
So yes, when it comes to the number 11, I do have confirmation bias.
“That’s when you start to notice something you think is special and then you notice more of it,” said Emory University mathematician Michelangelo
By David Pendered
By osmosis, Atlanta has absorbed Savannah’s port.
Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed, has become the local face of the proposed deepening of the Savannah Harbor. Atlanta’s media seems to pay more attention to the latest twists in the two-decade process of deepening the harbor than to progress on the new international terminal at Atlanta’s airport.
The main news out of last week’s State of the Ports luncheon was the number of jobs the ports created in the metro Atlanta area. Meanwhile, one of Gov. Nathan Deal’s comments – concerning the transportation sales tax referendum – barely registered.
By Maria Saporta
The Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s annual “Numbers Too Big to Ignore” luncheon on Thursday was exactly that.
The keynote speaker was Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., who spoke about women being the economic drivers of the 21st Century.
And then in a most dramatic fashion, at the end of his talk, Kent announced that the Coca-Cola was giving $500,000 to the Atlanta Women’s Foundation — half as a grant to help empower women and girls and the other half as a challenge grant — a challenge that the hundreds of women attending the lunch at the Georgia World Congress Center seemed more than willing to meet.
By David Pendered
All bets are off when it comes to guessing what entity state lawmakers will select or create to run metro Atlanta’s assortment of transit systems, as ordered by Gov. Nathan Deal.
GRTA would be a logical starting point, as some lawmakers suggested last week. On Monday, Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Marietta), who co-sponsored the bill that created GRTA in 1999 for then-Gov. Roy Barnes, said that role was part of the original vision for the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.
The state Department of Transportation shouldn’t be ruled out as a contender. State law provides for GDOT to own – and operate – transit systems.
By Michelle Hiskey
The “Occupy Atlanta” protesters have set up in a downtown green space they call “Troy Davis Park.” For them, the recently executed Georgia man symbolizes how the strong oppress the weak.
But for a more creative, stronger message, they should play up their site’s name. Woodruff Park was named for a rich, powerful Georgia man who used his wealth to empower the weak – and the rich and powerful today could use a role model like Robert Winship Woodruff.
Robert Winship Woodruff’s name is on our main arts center, all over Emory University (including the main library and the Health Sciences Center) and his money seeded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By David Pendered
No one thought they could do it.
Reaching concensus on a plan to build roads and transit across 10 counties in metro Atlanta was just too tough a task.
In the end, a retired Georgia Tech band director got 21 elected officials to play the same song. The region now has a 10-year plan to spend $6.14 billion to improve mobility. Voters next year will decide its fate.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, Sept. 30, 2011
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has a long-term plan to shore up the city’s finances.
The first step was pension reform — a plan that passed in July after the mayor made it priority as soon as he took office in January 2010.
Now the mayor wants to take on the city’s rising health-care costs.
“It’s the next step in stabilizing the city’s finances,” Reed said. “We are going to be asking for help again in a similar model that we used in the past.”
The formula Reed used with pensions was to put together a blue-ribbon
By Guest Columnist MIKE DOBBINS, professor of planning at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture and a former commissioner of planning and community development for the City of Atlanta.
Citizens in the metro area face a vote next year to tax themselves a penny on every dollar spent to build transportation projects aimed at improving the ability for citizens to get where they need to go more effectively than is now the case.
To make progress toward that goal, the state Transportation Investment Act calls for the vote to be tied to a list of projects developed by a “Roundtable” of regional
By Michelle Hiskey
On fall Saturdays in the South, yard sales start early and end before afternoon football games. That makes Saturdays full of compelling narratives.
What’s inside the rest of the week – the clutter, the loyalty, the vision of something better — gets a stage for full public view. Saturday is the South’s big peephole.
Tom Zarrilli spent six years of Saturdays photographing and blogging yard sales around Atlanta (and some Friday afternoons for estate sales). As part of a citywide photographic exhibit, 19 of his color photographs are on display through Nov. 11 at the Callanwolde Arts Center.
“Faces of the Yards of Clutter” captures
By David Pendered
More than 40 homes and businesses across metro Atlanta will open their doors Saturday to display their solar energy devices.
The self-guided tour will provide a rare, up-close glimpse of the technology that is expected to contribute to the nation’s response to providing energy through renewable resources.
The Georgia Solar Energy Association sponsored a preview tour Friday, giving about 25 persons a sneak peak at the technology that ranges from rooftop devices at a downtown residential condo building to the solar powered vehicle chargers at Atlantic Station.
By Michelle Hiskey
Isn’t watching a fall football or softball game always more about the players on the field than the ones on the sideline?
Unless you’re Peyton Manning (the only 4-time Most Valuable Player in the NFL), few fans will give attention to an injured athlete.
A hobbled player, though, can still demonstrate the power of desire to shape a team – and herself.
Meet Sarah Grace Stafford of Decatur, and find out how coaches like Vince Dooley (of University of Georgia football) and Marynell Meadors (WNBA Atlanta Dream) harness the spirit of injured players to keep their team on track and boosted.
The Atlanta region is like Rodney Dangerfield. It don’t get no respect.
For decades, efforts to create a regional mindset have had mixed results.
Barriers are torn down just to be rebuilt — creating divisions between the inner urban core, the closer-in suburban counties and the exurban counties; between cities and counties; between the northern and southern parts of the region.
And while elected officials in all the various cities and counties in the 10-county area that makes up the Atlanta Regional Commission all agree that our problems cross over the borders of their jurisdictions, they all understand that when it comes to decision-making time they must take care of their voters first.
By Michelle Hiskey
University of Georgia football fans, what do you know about your first opponent, Boise State? Don’t say their No. 5 ranking, or their famous blue field. Everyone knows that.
Teams are like people – you can’t truly know them unless you know where they’re from.
We in Atlanta with roots in Idaho know that Boise State represents a culture as solid as their famous vegetable and as wacky as their indie star Napoleon Dynamite.
Take Frank Zang’s invitation to “go beyond the blue” field at Bronco Stadium. Zang used to work in Georgia Tech’s athletic department, and now serves as Boise State’s communications and marketing director.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, August 19, 2011
MedShare, one of Atlanta’s nonprofit gems in the field of global health, hopes to become a model of how an organization can transition from an entrepreneurial founder to a management-savvy CEO.
A.B. Short, a serial nonprofit entrepreneur, co-founded MedShare in 1998. About a year ago, he decided it would be best to hand the reins to someone who could lead the organization in its next phase.
“I have seen more than once when a founder stayed too long and lost their vision,” Short said. “I wanted to leave while I was very successful and while I was still loved.”
By Michelle Hiskey
One connection, 20 years, 30 million tons of food for the hungry.
John Smoltz couldn’t remember the full name of the guy he met on a golf practice range in the early 1990s, who set him on a course to help Atlanta feed its hungry.
“Scott, and I don’t remember his last name!” he said, looking down with a scowl you might remember not so long ago when Smoltz was on the mound for the Atlanta Braves. “I do know it was almost like, weird, because I didn’t know him that well and I had so many of these causes thrown at me. I didn’t have anything like cancer that affected my family, and I wanted to get behind something that would make a great difference.”
