Anne Fauver on council race and city waste
April 29, 2009 at 12:33 am by Thomas Wheatley in NewsAtlanta City Councilwoman Anne Fauver’s unexpected exit from the District 6 race yesterday took nearly everyone in the politically active and tight-knit neighborhoods she serves by surprise.
In a Tuesday interview with CL, Fauver said the decision, which she’s wrestled with for the last two months, largely came down to two things: frustration with city politics and the desire to try something new.
“[Atlanta] once had a strong council and a weak mayor,” Fauver said. “That’s been reversed. That can be very frustrating because council is supposed to determine policy…As of now, we don’t.”
Fauver added that it’s difficult to juggle a career and serve in City Hall. The job of a councilmember, which pays $39,000 a year and is supposed to be a part-time gig, is more like a round-the-clock position.
“It’s four years,” she said, referring to another term. “Four years on top of eight years is a little bit longer than I want to do it. I’m frankly looking forward to a new challenge and I don’t know what that will be.”
Fauver, who underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2002, said she’d heard that there was a lot of speculation over whether her decision to bow out of the race was health-related. She stressed it was not. “I’ve been seven years cancer-free and I’m very happy about that,” she said.
In what’s now her final year at City Hall, Fauver said she’ll look for more revenue-generating measures to help offset the city’s budget shortfall. (Since the city announced its teensy weensy financial predicament, Fauver has searched the municipal couch cushions to find what she said is revenue Atlanta should be collecting but has overlooked. Last October, she proposed a $100 fine for false burglar and fire alarms and a 911 tax on residents who use Voice-over-Internet phone service.)
Favor said she’ll continue to push for various streetscape and sidewalk projects already in progress in District 6. (”It’s important to me that those don’t get lost in the bureaucracy,” she said.)
She also thinks the city isn’t efficient enough and some departments could use a little trimming — the Police Department’s administration, in particular.
“The police and fire furloughs, I’m in favor of getting rid of if we can,” Fauver said. “But there is a lot of waste in the administration of the police department. I want to be clear about this — I don’t think we should have fewer police. But the administration — [Chief Richard Pennington's] office and different aspects of the police department — is bloated. I think some things can be consolidated. It’s top heavy and very inefficient. The people in the field, that’s not true of. They’re first-rate.”
Fauver’s exit from the race leaves just Midtown business consultant Steve Brodie gunning for her seat on Nov. 3. She said she’s not aware of anyone else who plans to run. When asked if she would endorse Brodie, whom she narrowly defeated in the 2005 city elections, she said she would not.
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