It’s now or never for MARTA rail in South DeKalb

I must commend Commissioner Larry Johnson. He has taken the rail for South DeKalb issue and brought it front and center. The AJC which tends to only report about crime, corruption and the horrible schools in South DeKalb has had no less than three stories in the last month or so that talks directly about the rail issue in South DeKalb.( here, here and here) I think this is a testament to the power that South DeKalb wields in the upcoming vote for a penny sales tax to cover various transportation projects around the metro. It is a common belief that without Atlanta, Fulton and Dekalb this thing is dead on arrival. If South DeKalb feels it is getting slighted in all of this, which would not be surprising, then you might see a backlash with few voters willing to pay an additional penny on top of the one we already pay. For many of us in South DeKalb, it is a slap in the face to ask us to pay another penny in sales tax only to see other areas get transportation options and we remain gridlocked with 20th century options. I have previously written in support of the 1 cent, mainly because it was my belief that transit options would come to South DeKalb. Now I have become a fence sitter. I still believe the penny will help push transportation options for hundreds of thousands of residents all over metro Atlanta, but what disturbs me is that of those hundreds of thousands, few will live near or south of I-20. I fear that my lack of political influence and lack of money will ultimately have me paying an extra cent for goods and services and that money will go straight to Cobb or Gwinnett or one of the other far flung areas that do not have any of my interests at heart.

 

With all of that said, I must respectfully disagree with how some want to fund a rail line to South DeKalb. CEO Burrell Ellis, who sits on the roundtable that will decide the fate of rail in South DeKlab, wants to yank money from a GA 400 project. That idea won’t fly. GA 400 is a main artery between the wealthy and powerful North Fulton suburbs and the city of Atlanta. Polticians and business leaders who saturate that area will never allow that to happen. And a proposal by Lee May to strip some funding from the Clifton Corridor line is less likely to happen though it is more feasible than the GA 400 idea. I don’t like this idea because it would hurt residents throughout DeKalb. A third option floated by Decatur mayor and roundtable member Bill Floyd is to make the Clifton rail and South DeKalb rail one big project. This is less likely to happen given the price tag, but it has merits. If the Clifton segment is built to hook into the Avoondale station, and the blues line is extendided to Wesley Chapel, you would not have to travel all the way downtown to go to Sandy Springs or Dunwoody. That would make the Wesley Chapel idea much more attractive than one that only sends you to downtown.

 

So where does that leave South DeKalb? Well I think it leaves us in a sticky situation. If we vote for the tax without rail to South DeKalb it is highly likely that South DeKalb will be paying for improvements in transportation that will not directly improve our transit options. In fact we could be one of only a handful of geographic regions in the 10 county area to get little or no improvements for the 1 cent sales tax. On the other hand, I fear that if the referendum fails not only will we not get anything now or in the future, those areas that are clamoring for road inprovements and wider freeways will eventually get what they want through some other means. It’s the old classic damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The only win for South DeKalb would be a sales tax approved and a rail line.

 

Competent service from Commissioner Johnson’s office

I was busy searching for some information on a rezoning request that came before the commission recently when I noticed that several documents related to public meetings were missing from the county’s website. Well, being the pessimist that I am, I immediately thought our local government was trying to hide something. Well I was wrong. Turns out, the BOC and ZBOA minutes have to be approved before they can be made public. the missing documents had not been approved by the CEO or the board and until they are they are not released to the public. How did I find this out? It was a lady who worked in Commissioner Johnson’s office by the name of Ingrid Butler. I called Mr. Johnson’s office because the issue that I was interested in fell in his district, and he voted against the rezone so this was a natural place to start. Ms. Butler was a breath of fresh air. She was polite, knowledgeable and showed a genuine concern for issue. In fact she called me back twice. Once to tell me how to navigate the documents repository that holds the documents for the public to see, which I already knew, and the second call was to explain to me why the documents were not in the repository. I was thoroughly impressed, but was not surprised as she works in Commissioner Johnson’s office and he is one commissioner that actually votes for what is best for his constituents. It seems most of the time when you deal with government employees, local or otherwise, you walk away with a bad taste in your mouth. It is nice to deal with people who are competent, and are not just working a job to draw a paycheck. We need more of these types of people in DeKalb government.