Fresh Loaf

CEO Vernon Jones Sally Bethea DeKalb Retrofit Drought

CEO COMMODE: DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones signs the retrofit ordinance as the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Sally Bethea, Georgia Conservancy’s Shana Udvardy, and Francis Kung’u of the DeKalb Department of Watershed Management look on. In the foreground is Jones’ prized brontosaurus tooth/low-flow shower head.

Nothing says progress like toilet legislation. After months of rewrites, negotiations and deferments, the DeKalb County Commission finally approved a controversial ordinance — one DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones calls the first in the state — that would require homeowners in the county to retrofit antiquated plumbing fixtures before they receive water service. The commission approved the ordinance Feb. 26, and Jones signed it this afternoon. If all pre-1993 plumbing fixtures in DeKalb are retrofit, Jones said, 6 million gallons of water per day could be conserved.

The Realtor industry attacked the measure, known as the Retro Plumbing Fixtures Act, when it was first introduced by Jones in November, because it placed the burden of retrofit compliance on their shoulders. With the rewritten and approved ordinance, it is now the homebuyer’s responsibility to replace fixtures. About 165,000 homes will be affected by the ordinance. If your home was built after 1993, you have nothing to worry about, as the law already requires that all homes built after this date be outfitted with low-flow fixtures. The ordinance takes effect June 1, 2008, for residential properties. Commercial properties have until Jan. 1, 2009, to comply with the measure.

Properties exempt from the ordinance include:

• Properties advertised for foreclosure

• Homes that are slated to be torn down after purchase

• Homes that are conveyed between spouses and children, either by sale or through wills

• Homes in which, because of historic or architectural limitations, retrofitting would cost more than $1,000 per toilet. For commercial properties, the limit is $2,000 per toilet.

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AP:

Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie company that introduced the Very Sexy bra, the Fantasy Bra, and the Internet server-crashing fashion show, has become “too sexy” for its own good, its top executive said.

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Remember those Jekyll Island bills I wrote about just the other day? Well, they’re dead, killed in a committee yesterday afternoon. In a packed hearing held in the catacombs of the state Capitol — in a room that is literally no larger or accommodating than an airport chapel — members of the state Senate Economic Development Committee voted to scrap the bills of state Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, which would have limited development and ensured availability of affordable units to visitors. The legislators who voted against the committee’s chucking of the bills were Democrats.

The meeting started off awkwardly enough when Sen. Chip Pearson, R-Dawsonville, coldly asked several anti-Linger Longer ladies to move from the first two rows in the tiny committee room to allow members of the Jekyll Island Authority, the governor-appointed board that oversees the state-protected barrier island, to sit down. “Is this the only room?” asked one of the ladies wearing “Save Jekyll Island” buttons. “This is all we got,” Pearson replied. “If you want to wait until next week, we can do that.” Not the best way to get things rolling.

Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City, has several bills speeding their way through the state House that are related to Jekyll Island. We’ll be following those.

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Read between the lines.

When Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, says it’s harder for him to switch his superdelegate support from Clinton to Obama than it was for him to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Dr. King in segregated Selma, Alabama over 40 years ago, what he’s really saying is:

Don’t get it twisted white America, the possibility that a black man could actually be nominated President of the Free World is harder for me to swallow than it is for you.

Lewis isn’t the only one among the graying generation of Civil Rights leaders who finds himself at a crossroads. For those who have spent a lifetime relying on alliances with the white liberal establishment to help promote civic change, a potential Obama victory represents a mind-boggling paradigm shift.

It’s probably a lot for a sharecropper’s son to grasp — especially one as politically indebted to the status quo, i.e. the Clintons, as Lewis.

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(Image courtesy of Cartoon Network)It seemed like it was only yesterday (actually, it was Tuesday) that I said “Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf are the two plays of August Wilson’s 20th-century play cycle that have not yet received Atlanta productions.” Turns out that both plays will receive high-profile productions during the Alliance Theatre’s newly announced 2008-2009 season.

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(Sony Pictures Classics)

It feels like it’s been a decade since “The West Wing” went off the air, and I’m still waiting for a TV show that matches its blend of wonkish politics and lofty idealism whipped into a compelling and witty dramatic narrative. Maybe that’s because, in 2008, I’m pining for Jed Bartlet as my president, because Martin Sheen portrayed a greatest-hits/composite president that was one part John F. Kennedy, one (small) part Bill Clinton and bits of other Democrats who deserved a closer look but never made it to the White House.

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The big world-premiere musical of the Alliance Theatre’s 2008-2009 season will mark a collaboration between a pair of all-American icons, rock star John Mellencamp and horror novelist Stephen King. Ghost Brothers of Darkland County takes place in 1957 Mississippi and dramatizes an old legend about the deaths of two brothers and a young girl. The Alliance Theatre officially announces the rest of its season Feb. 29.

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I’m supposed to be concentrating on a feature story I have to turn in tomorrow.

But I can’t stop reading Garfield Minus Garfield, a website that makes Garfield comics funny by simply removing the titular cat.

Garfield Minus Garfield

(Tip of the lasagna tray to Andrew Sullivan)

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The blog Save The Library! reports the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System board has rejected developer Ben Carter’s offer to buy the Buckhead Library.

Carter reportedly planned to demolish the library and incorporate its two-acre site into The Streets of Buckhead, his company’s $1.2 billion mixed-use luxury development scheduled to open next year.

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For 30 years, MARTA CEO Beverly Scott knew little about Atlanta aside from what she saw out of a hotel lobby on Peachtree Road. Today, as a resident, she’s blown away by the neighborhoods.

“They’re all over!” she said today after addressing politicians, civic leaders and stakeholders at the annual “State of MARTA” luncheon at the Georgia Freight Railroad Depot next to Underground Atlanta. “I go to this coffee shop on Edgewood [Javaology], my church is right there on Boulevard, and I love it.”

The only problem, of course, is getting to all these gems.

Since Scott took the helm of Atlanta’s underfunded and beleaguered transit agency, she’s been the recipient of glowing praise for her ability to speak directly and not walk on egg shells about what changes need to be made. That was on display today.

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Insurance commissioner is one of those state jobs that doesn’t normally generate a lot of attention. In part, that’s because the incumbent, Republican John Oxendine, is happy to quietly pocket insurance companies’ campaign cash as he waits for a shot at the governor’s office — a long shot.

The race could get really, really interesting, however, if consumer hero, maximum penny pincher and all-around swell radio guy Clark Howard decides to run. Howard, we can be sure, would turn the office into a watchdog agency, a prospect that likely scares the bejesus out of those who are supposedly regulated by the insurance commissioner.

When last heard from, Howard was considering a run for Atlanta mayor. That race, however, is now crowded with candidates.

The news of Howard’s interest comes from three prominent local Democrats. Howard’s office didn’t return calls.

The Democrats might have their best chance in years to recapture statewide offices. A Zogby poll in January showed that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-BushToady, has low approval ratings and would be in a statistical dead heat with a Democrat. The carnival show at the state Capitol has revealed that the Republicans are incompetent at serious governing, and more interested in buffoonery over abortion than confronting critical state problems.

The Democrats need only one commodity to win back some seats: candidates. Howard is just the sort of wild card — a true crusader for average citizens — who would attract voters.

More later …

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This one goes out to all the wonks in the audience.

The Atlanta Regional Commission released its 2008 Freight Mobility Report this afternoon, all 122 whopping pages of it. Lots of interesting aspects to it, including:

• The region is one of the top five logistics hubs in the country — pretty notable judging that we’re landlocked. Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago are the three largest inland distribution centers in the country.
• Lots of tractor trailer operators rarely — or don’t — use the heralded Georgia Navigator system.
• The bottlenecks you’d expect freight operators to gripe about — Spaghetti Junction, Peachtree Road, etc. — are terrible for moving goods and are getting worse. Oh, and Howell Mill Road sucks for truck drivers.
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ranked 10th in the nation and 25th in the world for annual tonnage moved in 2005.
• Heads up, Metro Chamber: “It was noted during stakeholder interviews that shippers are starting to look outside the Atlanta metro region for distribution facilities due to congested conditions. As they do so, Atlanta will retain its competitiveness relative to other areas (such as Macon, Valdosta, Chattanooga and Charlotte) because the region’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages.”

Check it out here. Really thorough report. The ARC board voted today to adopt the recommendations of the report, which include increasing driver education, double-track the rail corridors between Atlanta and Chattanooga and Savannah and Memphis, and eliminate or reduce at-grade crossings at bottlenecks, among others. Lots of suggested infrastructure fixes listed in there, too.

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Received an e-mail from state Sen. David Shafer, R-Duluth, about his comments on the Senate floor regarding Chattanooga’s “ha-ha-why-don’t-you-try-conserving-before-you-gank-our-agua” shipment of bottled water. Big Chief say:

There is an ancient Indian proverb. Give a man a cup of water and you quench his thirst for an afternoon. Share in the waters of a great river and you quench his thirst for generations to come.

Today the City of Chattanooga delivered a pickup truck full of bottled water to the State Capitol. On behalf of the State Senate, I graciously accept this water as a down payment on the billions of gallons of Georgia water that feed the Tennessee River from the creeks and streams of Northwest Georgia.

I remain confident that border dispute between our two great states can be resolved in a neighborly fashion.

We’re all for cherry-picking ancient words of wisdom uttered by civilizations the White Man devastated, so here are some of our favorites, culled from a trustworthy and never-wrong source.

• “A good man does not take what belongs to someone else.” (Pueblo)
• “The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.” (Sioux)
• “We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.” (Dakota)
• “When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.” (Lakota)
• “Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money.” (Cree)

And my personal favorite:

• “White men have too many chiefs.” (Nez Perce)

Love ya!

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Jekyll Island Jeff Chapman Linger Longer

WHO BENEFITS? Critics say plans to build condos, hotels and a retail center may cut off this public beach from Jekyll’s day visitors.

Woe is Jekyll Island, the pristine beach getaway that has fallen into disrepair. Visitors across the state have voiced concerns about plans by a developer – and the actions of the governor-appointed Jekyll Island Authority that oversees the barrier island – to revitalize the state park.

Linger Longer Communities, a development company owned by two GOP cash cows – and fundraisers for presidential hopeful John McCain and potential veep Gov. Sonny Perdue – wants to build a “town center,” hotels and posh condos near a prized public beach.

What’s even more worrisome: Bills proposed by state Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, to protect the island from development have been stonewalled by members of his own party in a legislative committee. Sen. Chapman agrees that the island is in need of revamping, but says the process needs to be responsible and the result affordable for all Georgians.

“If they manage to stop or kill good legislation, then they’ll have a free hand to do anything they want,” Chapman says.

Chapman went on the offensive yesterday and slammed the authority for underreporting its revenues and visitor numbers. The authority’s critics have repeatedly claimed that the data it uses to show a sharp decline in visitors is misleading, noting that the statistics intentionally omitted season pass holders.

For more information, visit the Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island.

(Photo by Greg Lowery)

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One of the key figures in the rise of the conservative movement in the United States has