Fresh Loaf

Somewhat lost amid the shuffle of the presidential race and a handful of legislators losing seats were the various referenda (or referendums, for non-English majors) that appeared on local ballots. Here’s a wrap-up:

• Yes to TADS; no to private cities. By a close margin, Georgia voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow school boards to join with local governments in issuing bonds for tax allocation districts. But voters narrowly spiked a crazy proposal to allow private developers to levy taxes on homeowners. Less controversial was an initiative to provide tax incentives to encourage preservation of forest land; it passed handily.

• Fulton County libraries will be getting a facelift. Voters overwhelmingly approved a $275 million bond issue to add eight new branches, spruce up 24 existing branches and spend $85 million toward replacing the downtown central library. Expect a grassroots campaign to emerge against tearing down the old building. (more…)
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One of the conundrums of the AJC reorganization was the company’s announcement last year that it would spend $30 million to upgrade its newspaper printing operations in Gwinnett. That’s a lot of wampum to pour into what we’ve been told over and over again is fast becoming outdated information-delivery technology.

The most immediate effect of the decision to expand and enhance the Gwinnett plant is the planned mothballing of the paper’s old press downtown. Last week, company officials told employees that about 100 press-related jobs at Marietta Street would disappear by the end of the year.

(more…)

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If you’ve been put off by articles about the long lines at early-voting locations, but you don’t want to wait until Election Day to cast your ballot, you may get a break next week. That’s when Georgia counties begin advanced voting.

What’s the difference, you ask? Oh, there’s a world of difference; early voting began Sept. 22, while advance voting runs next Monday through Friday.

Still not clear? (more…)

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Ya know that baseball stadium under construction in Gwinnett County? The one the county commission recently agreed — without any public input — to support with an additional $19 million of taxpayer dollars?

From the AJC:

“I’m still trying to figure out how this is going to pay for itself,” [Gwinnett County resident Don Shaw] said, echoing an oft-quoted line from County Administrator Jock Connell in January, on the day county officials announced they’d reached a deal to build the stadium and relocate the top minor-league affiliate of the Atlanta Braves to Gwinnett.

Connell said he anticipated the stadium “paying for itself from day one.”

It might seem that way, “Jock.” (Gwinnett is a land rich with irony.) But a bunch of academics — as well as our very own John Sugg — politely disagree.

(more…)

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Is it me, or has there been a spike in kidnapped drug dealers lately?

On Sunday, a kidnapped drug dealer threw himself out of a car on I-285 and rolled across several lanes of traffic. In July, a kidnapped drug dealer was chained up and held for nearly a week in a Lilburn basement. And in May, a badly beaten kidnapped drug dealer was found in the trunk of a car near Grant Park (though in the end, that guy wasn’t really kidnapped but merely faked the abduction — perhaps because he knew about the trend in kidnapped drug dealers).

The trend seems to be resonating strongly in the suburbs, of all places. Who knew?

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The growth of the Atlanta metropolitan area is finally slowing. Not so for Atlanta proper, though. This is coming from the Atlanta Regional Commission.

First the bad news (or, depending on your opinion of sprawl, the good news):

The population of the 10-county region increased by 70,200 people between April 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008, the smallest increase since 2003 and 16 percent lower than the annual average increase of this decade.

Now, the part that really gets Gwinnett’s goat:

Despite the slowdown in the rest of the region, growth in the City of Atlanta remains robust with its largest single-year population gain in almost 40 years, up 13,100 people. The City’s annual growth also marks the first time in at least four decades that the City added more new residents than Gwinnett County.

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HOMELESSNESS: New study quantifies homelessness in Georgia, finding that 20,000 people were homeless statewide one night in January and 75,000 went without a home at some point during the year.

NICHOLS TRIAL MOVED: To Atlanta City Court.

NOT THE LAST STRAW: The Athens Banner-Herald sees the silver lining in Gwinnett voters’ straw-poll rejection of MARTA.

IN TRANSIT: CNN reports on Americans weaning off driving and the rise of public transit; as usual, Atlanta is used as the example of the city lagging behind.

IN-THE-RED STATE: Gov. Perdue announces that the state budget is $600 million short. Maybe Atlanta and Georgia aren’t so different after all.

GOING AGAINST THE GROIN: Mike Hampton comes out of another minor league game after “tweaking” something, this time his groin, after just 29 pitches.

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RUNSOFF: Jim Martin and Vernon Jones will face off in a runoff Aug. 5 to determine who faces Saxby Chambliss in November; Burrell Ellis and Stan Watson will also have a runoff in the DeKalb CEO race; the Fulton County sheriff’s race will be running off to decide whether incumbent Myron Freeman or retired FBI agent Ted Jackson will face Republican Michael Rary in November.

INCUMBENTS: U.S Reps. John Lewis, John Barrow and Paul Broun all fended off their challengers to retain their seats in Congress.

CITI TREND: Dunwoody becomes the latest north Atlanta community to catch city fever.

GWINNETTIANS: Less opposed to MARTA than they used to be.

ALL-STAR GAME: American League wins its 12th straight in the longest All-Star Game in major-league history.

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BOWEN OUT: HUD approves of the Atlanta Housing Authority tearing down Bowen Homes in northwest Atlanta; AHA says renovating the housing project would cost $100 million and tearing it down will be less than $6 million.

UGA: Beats Fresno State in Game 1 of the College World Series; now one win away from winning the national championship.

SHELL SHOCK: Four advocacy groups have filed an emergency petition to the Georgia DNR seeking to repeal the state’s turtle collection law, arguing turtle species are dropping due to unrestricted trapping.

TRAIN TAX: MARTA holds informational meeting in Gwinnett about moving rail service into the county; Gwinnettians will vote on the measure, which would be funded with a 1-cent sales tax, on July 15.

CODE RED SMOG ALERT: Atlanta’s now in the red in more ways than one.

EVIDENCE: The zebra found grazing in an I-75 median in April will be recuperated enough for public viewing July 12.

COLOR GUARD: Don Imus says he only asked “what color” Adam “Pacman” Jones is to make the point that Jones has been unfairly targeted by police in his six arrests since 2005. It might have been clearer if Imus had actually said that instead of just, “Well there you go. Now we know,” after being told Jones is black.

CLAYTON: Superintendent John Thompson, who one month ago said Clayton County Schools would meet the SACS mandates by July 15, now says the school system has a “very slim” chance of maintaining accreditation at all. Who cares, though — I want to know how John Thompson’s spirits are holding up:

“After talking to all the politicians, people and powers that be, we have a very slim chance of maintaining accreditation at all. It could have dampened my spirits, but it did not.”

Whew.

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DEFENSES DOWN: The Fulton County Superior Court’s chief judge calls the mass layoffs of public defenders — which was announced Friday with lack of state funding as the reason — irresponsible, saying it could create a legal crisis.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES: Major restaurants and grocery store chains are voluntarily withdrawing raw tomatoes suspected of starting a 17-state salmonella outbreak, as officials continue searching for the source. Georgia tomatoes are fine.

OLD SHOULDERS NEVER DIE: John Smoltz is having season-ending shoulder surgery today.

CLAYTON: Corrective superintendent says the school district’s mandate-meeting progress can be quantified when SACS officials visit next month.

FIREBOMBING: Gwinnett radio station is attacked by a former employee armed with Molotov cocktails; a bystander corralls him, but the two of them are injured by the ensuing fire.

VOGTLE MAJORITY: The Marietta City Council unanimously votes to spend $405 million on the $14.2 billion nuclear expansion of Plant Vogtle. Since the city won’t need the energy until 2036, it will sell it to other utilities for 20 years, reducing the overall cost to $200 million.

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OBAMA AND CLINTON: Meet in Washington.

PREZ DISPENSER: Georgia has six public universities, including Georgia Tech and Georgia State, that have recently lost their presidents and are searching for new ones before fall classes begin.

TRAINING DAY: Gwinnettians will vote in the July 15 primary whether to pay a penny sales tax for MARTA service in the county. Although the last such vote in 1990 failed, recent polling indicates many now think itsmarta, perhaps due to horrible traffic and gas prices. As a backup to rail, though, county leaders are hoping to at least introduce diesel-electric hybrid accordion buses to the historically train-trepid public.

DOWN AND DROUGHT: Lake Lanier is still 13 feet below normal despite winter rains, meaning the next best hope is for a hurricane to hang out in North Georgia for a while this summer.

CHIPPER JONES: Hits 400th career home run.

CARTERSVILLE ADVENTURE: Illinois man has a big morning in Cartersville.

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DOUG COLLINS: State rep from Gainesville, who’s also an Air Force Reserve chaplain, to be deployed to Iraq in September.

ONE FOR THE ROAD: Hawks play one in Boston tonight before returning to Philips Friday.

SHAD STATE OF AFFAIRS: Because lock valves on a Savannah River dam have failed, leaving the gates stuck shut, biologists on Tuesday manually moved spawning shad in the Savannah River upstream to shoals near Augusta so they can lay their eggs.

CLAYTON SCHOOLS: New corrective superintendent’s contract pays him $1,187.50 per day and allows him to take 45 percent of his time off; the school system is set to lose its accreditation in 124 days. Also, the state attorney general’s office is demanding that the Clayton school board address allegations that it illegally closed public meetings.

GWINNETT SCHOOLS: Gets AAA, the highest possible rating, from two agencies that evaluate financial stewardship.

LONG, STRANGE TRIP: Father of LSD Albert Hofmann dies at 102.

WRIGHT BACK ATCHA: Obama denounces his former pastor.

THE BREAST THINGS IN LIFE: WSB reports on a website (NSFW) that allows women to post photos of themselves, nude if they choose, to solicit donations for breast implants. WSB gets fair and balanced by quoting Georgia Christian Alliance’s Sadie Fields to wax philosophical on the nature of porn. Guess what? She says it’s porn.

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From the AJC:

A traffic stop Wednesday morning on I-85 North near Pleasant Hill Road netted a 308-pound marijuana seizure with a street value of $1.4 million.

$1.4 million for 308 pounds? That’s $71 per quarter.

Gwinnett, you’re smoking better weed than I would have assumed.

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About 20 years ago, I had an epiphany about pro sports. I worked for a Miami business newspaper, and we began wondering about Dolphins’ owner Joe Robbie’s claims that his new stadium was entirely privately funded. By today’s standards, it was. But our investigation revealed there were tons of public costs.

Whatever else you can say about Robbie, and he could be a sonofabitch, he was just about the last capitalist to own a pro sports team. Since Joe Robbie Stadium was built, the team owners have converted to the creed of socialism for the very rich.

Sports stadiums nowadays are giant palaces built for the affluent and paid for largely — and some entirely — by working- and middle-class taxpayers. I covered two initiatives in Tampa. When Malcolm Glazer purchased the Buccaneers in 1995, he used the standard pout of team owners: Build me a new stadium or I’ll move. As I detailed in a series of reports, Glazer lied about what he planned to contribute. To pass a referendum worth more than $1 billion over 30 years to Glazer, the Bucs’ owner had his political lackeys combine the stadium funding with new school construction. If parents wanted decent schools, they had to give Glazer his stadium.

The Tampa Bay Lightning NHL team, meanwhile, had taxpayers pay for its coliseum based in part on assertions that the owners were a wealthy Japanese golf course company. I won awards for exposing the lie R