I’m a long way from Doraville, but I can hear this mess all the way across the Atlantic. It’s sad that Rep Chambers has to live through this, but it’s nice to see that Doraville doesn’t have the entire market cornered on irrelevant personal attacks. Here is some more information on it. If Rep Chambers has a personal interest in this matter, it seems to be not wanting to pay higher taxes for the same or worse services, which is an admirable goal.
What effect will this have on Doraville incorporation? Are the two issues inseparably on the same bill? I wonder if they’ve spread the rumors that she’s both Chief King’s mother and having an affair with him? Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of “Perimeter Madness.” (Okay I seriously would like answers to the first two questions.)
Rusty Tanton, co-founder of the Georgia Podcast Network, was on hand this week to record the Dekalb County CEO debate. He was kind enough to upload the videos to You Tube, so that people who were not able to attend the debates will be able to view them. Although the debate is not specific to Doraville, the outcome is something that will affect all Doraville residents — so I’ve embedded the clips Rusty made below. To improve viewing, they have been split into multiple parts. You will probably notice that candidate Stan Watson did not participate in the debate.
Opening statements:
Question 1
“Police Chief Terrell Bolton has put forth a road map for success plan for the DeKalb County Police Department, which does have a $100 million price tag if implemented. Do you support the plan, and if so how do you intend to pay for it?”
Question 2
“As CEO, leading by example, how do you intend to improve relations between the county government and the DeKalb County school board? If elected, what plans will you put forth which are not just lip service, but action?”
Question 3
“In terms of water resource planning and conservation, what plans do you have as CEO?”
Question 4
“DeKalb County taxpayers are extremely concerned regarding how our tax dollars are allocated and spent. Why should the taxpayers trust you to handle this multi-billion dollar responsibility? How will you ensure accountability? And what experiences do you have in the area of financial management to rise to this role?”
Question 5
“What as CEO will you do to improve overall service delivery so that the kind of frustration felt by the residents and citizens of Dunwoody does not lead other unincorporated municipalities in the county to secede from the county?”
Question 6
“As Commissioner Ellis pointed out, DeKalb County has a $3 billion budget. There are numerous programs that are not entirely fully funded. As Joe Bembry mentioned, we have 800 vacancies in the police department. In light of the fact that there is a property tax freeze on homestead exemption on a number of homes, seniors have their property assessments frozen, are you willing to call for or support a tax hike while you are CEO?”
Question 7
“Two independent audits in the county’s finance department have concluded millions of dollars were spent on technology consultants from 2004 to 2008, circumventing county law. Do you support the DeKalb County district attorney convening a special grand jury to look into this matter or not, and why?”
Question 8
“Unemployment insurance claims are up 25 percent in DeKalb County over the past year. During the month of May, 3,000 people filed their first-time claims for unemployment. As CEO of DeKalb County, how will you promote the creation of jobs and economic development in our county?”
Question 9
“As CEO, how will you better inform citizens in the event of an emergencies or crises such as the recent water main break or the tornado which touched down along DeKalb Avenue and the alarms did not go off?”
Check out the video clip below of a recent newscast that discusses the GM site and its redevelopment. Vernon Jones, with Mayor Jenkins standing to his left, speaks at length about the county’s commitment to get this project right. I heard on the radio yesterday that GM has received over 1000 inquiries about the site from all over the world. This has the opportunity to be something very special.
A huge thank you to the Dunwoody North Civic Association blog for putting this video out there. That site is one of the best sources for news about North Dekalb County — whether online or off.
The city has finally launched it’s re-designed website, and it’s an incredible improvement over the old one. While I still don’t see the ability to pay sanitation and other bills online, there is a wealth of other information that you don’t have to dig around in too much in order to find something. Definitely worth checking out and browsing through. The new address is “www.doravilleonline.com“. Kudos go out to the mayor, city council & Luke Howe for getting this done after such a long wait.
While reading through this month’s Doraville newsletter, I saw the following small blurb:
The City of Doraville will begin curbside recycling on July 1, 2008. All ciizens interested in this program should sign-up for the Recycling Program at Doraville City Hall by Monday, June 16th.
Intriguing, but not a lot of information!
In an effort to get more details, I e-mailed my two representatives on City Council - Bob Roche and Brian Bates, asking about this new program. Bob sent a response directing me to Donna Pittman as the city’s resident “recycling expert.” He must have been right, because she has answered a lot of my questions about this program - although there are still some unknowns that won’t be clear until we know how many people sign up for the curbside recycling.
First of all, if you sign up for recycling, there is no way to know how much you will end up paying on your sanitation bill for the service. There was a large segment of residents who did not want to pay anything extra for recycling on their sanitation bill, so the city has made this program completely voluntary. Because of this, the costs for this program will be shared by a smaller group of citizens, and the city will not know how much the final charge will be until they know how many people sign up.
There will be a single 18 gallon curbside bin. All recyclable items (paper, plastic, aluminum cans, cardboard, glass, etc) will be placed in that bin and sorted at the recycling center. It will be picked up each week on the regular garbage day. For now, you need to sign up for this at city hall.
I’m going to sign up. I hope some of you do, too. I kind of wish they’d made this program opt-out, rather than opt-in. It would also be nice if we had access to sign up for this directly from the city website (as well as pay our sanitation bills!). All things said, however, this is a big step for Doraville, so let’s celebrate those small victories. Thank you, Donna Pittman, for championing this!
Update: According to reports on the message board, you do not need to go to city hall to get signed up for recycling. You can call them at 770-451-8745 and give your name, address and phone number to sign up. A better option for those of us who work than driving back into the city in the middle of the day.
These are the pix I took of the front and back of the Hmart. Front faces the parking lot of Brandsmart and the back faces Ptree Ind. Pretty grand looking. I think it rivals Walmart in Chamblee. Counted about 75 trees (average heighth 24ft) that have been planted in the Hmart parking area. Looks like Pear, Oak and another unidentified species of tree that are part of the design. A nice tree lined sidewalk welcomes shoppers to Hmart’s main entrance. My understanding is that Hmart grocery store is the anchor and will include an up-scale Japanese restaurant, Verizon Wireless store, Dentist and Doctor office and some yet to be named vendors. I believe, from another Hmart I have seen in Johns Creek area, that this will be very competitive with Walmart both in merchandise and prices. Can’t wait for the Grand Opening!
1 – After posting a suggestion to that effect some time ago, I was glad to learn from Brian Bates (NNA?) posting that Doraville had initiated the removal of old Buford Highway streetlights (in my opinion unaesthetic and an unnecessary expense). Brian reported the adequacy of the lighting if the old lights were removed must be confirmed before they were removed. One can only assume the review/confirmation is perfunctory in that not being able to remove the old lights warrants corrective action by GDOT. Surely the firm that prepared the lighting plans, installation contractor, and inspectors didn’t design, install and accept a multi-million dollar all new lighting system that doesn’t meet GDOT standards.
2 – The Georgia Environmental Protection Division stepped up and advised me it is enforcing environment regulations in the storage of waste on property not licensed for the activity. Sorry Chief Bolton, but I don’t support higher taxes to provide resources for DeKalb County code enforcement personnel to address more subjective/less public health-related things like the enforcement of the lengths of lawns when DeKalb County code enforcement couldn’t/wouldn’t handle enforcement of basic black and white environmental regulation.
3 – A prior Dorablog posting lamented the lack of sidewalks on Central Avenue. That’s a cue for me to advocate for installation of a short section of sidewalk on the south side of Park Avenue (and adjacent to Café 101?) at Buford Highway. A new approximately 100 foot long section of sidewalk would connect Buford Highway to an excellent existing Park Avenue sidewalk, provide at least one way on one side of the three streets between the MARTA station and Buford Highway for pedestrians to walk in downtown Doraville between from Buford Highway and the MARTA station without walking in the street or on a lawn.
The city ought to do nominal work like this sidewalk for itself. Save political capital for going to the County for a bigger job—like the a sidewalk on at least one side of Central Avenue. Also, the County is more likely to be receptive to such projects if the city is making sidewalk improvements on its own.
The last 10% of a job always seems to require 20% of the effort. What’s up with completion of the Chestnut Street sidewalk? I’ll chip in a couple of hours if I’m made aware of the time there will be some sort of effort to complete it.
It looks like the state ethics commission has fined Mayor Ray Jenkins for an ethics violation during last year’s campaign. It is a $500 fine, and the violation was that he had a city employee use a city computer to e-mail partisan campaign information to a local newspaper. You can read about the fine here or look case 2007-0032 up on the state ethics commission website.
What comments or thoughts do you have? Is this an example of “business as usual” at city hall, or is it a one-time slip up and no big deal?
The following is a press release from Councilwoman Donna Pittman:
On Saturday May 31, the City of Doraville will be honoring slain Detective Hugo Fernando Arango with a 10:00 AM tree planting followed by a plaque dedication ceremony slated for noon at the Hugo F. Arango Bridge on Oakcliff Road. On hand, will be City and County officials, law enforcement representatives, business leaders, other dignitaries and, of coarse, the family of Detective Arango. All citizens and members of the media are encouraged to attend.
Ceremony organizer and Doraville councilmember, Donna Pittman, said the ceremony was supposed to be held last year, but the event was hampered by the drought’s water restrictions. Pittman said that it was important that the tree planting went along with the plaque dedication in order to “enhance and beautify the area.” DeKalb County has donated 30 trees of various types, and Advanced Disposal Services have offered to water them. Pittman said the goal is to ultimately plant 75, but the drought has taken a toll on local tree farm supplies.
At the end of September, the Doraville GM plant will finally close its doors for good. In preparation, the auto maker has put the property up for sale and has submitted Requests for Proposals to various developers. According to the AJC, GM hopes to have the property sold by the end of the year.
The way this site is redeveloped will be a “make or break” moment for Doraville. CB Richard Ellis, the real estate broker that GM has brought on to help them with the sale, has set up a website called The Doraville Project that explains the site to potential developers. Here’s what they say:
Located along I-285 northern arc, on the inside of the loop
165+ generally level acres
Dramatic I-285 frontage with unobstructed visibility at grade
Drive-by traffic counts of over 270,000 cars per day
Full-motion expressway interchanges flanking the site east and west at major four-lane North/South regional surface highways, which connect Atlanta’s CBD with its outer suburbs
Expressway on/off-ramps and dedicated site access road sized for major facility “rush hours”
Adjacent to MARTA rail station at the northeastern line’s point of origination
In-place utilities robust enough for a small city and included redundancies
A line-up of city, county and regional governments supportive of dense redevelopment
Potential for public sponsored financing that would substantially offset infrastructure costs
Dramatic good-will potential for “going green”
Situated along Peachtree Road, metro Atlanta’s most celebrated street
It’s obvious from all of this that what the GM site really has going for it is its close proximity to transportation — right off 285, Buford Highway and Peachtree Industrial Blvd, it is also adjacent to the Doraville MARTA station. Definitely prime real estate that is currently not living up to its full potential. In fact, the Atlanta Business Chronicle quotes Dan Reuter from the Atlanta Regional Commission as saying:
“Its access to MARTA is such an advantage [...] if you look at development trends in the coming decades, and gas prices that are likely going to keep rising during that time, this site’s access to mass transit is a tremendous opportunity, and that’s what makes it such an important site for Doraville.”
I hope the current credit crisis doesn’t affect what gets developed. It would be a shame if the current (hopefully temporary) economic situation ends up having a negative effect on our city for the next 30 years.
Edit (3:44pm) - I just received the following press release from the Mayor’s office regarding the GM Plant:
Statement from Mayor Ray Jenkins on GM plant redevelopment
In 1947, General Motors opened its 165 acre assembly plant, transforming Doraville from a sleepy community into a formidable industrial center. Since that time, the City and GM have forged a strong bond and an even stronger friendship. GM made Doraville and it will be sad to see them leave. Much like their arrival, GM’s departure will signal a defining moment for the City.
Our partnership with GM is as strong as ever and we will continue to work closely together throughout the post closing process. We share a common vision with GM, a vision for a transit oriented, mixed-use development complete with office complexes, a new town center and much more.
Doraville is a major gateway into the heart of Atlanta. It is a city teeming with redevelopment opportunities, and we are gearing up for major work throughout the City. At the center of our redevelopment activity, of course, will be the GM property.
Its redevelopment presents many opportunities and it will certainly have a ripple effect throughout the New Peachtree/ Shallowford corridor, an area that is also ripe for revitalization.
We look forward to an upcoming meeting with representatives from GM, at which time we will discuss all the details reflecting our common vision. After the property changes hands, we fully intend to work as closely with the new owners as we have with our friends at GM.
As developments happen, the area news agencies will be the first to know.
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