Fresh Loaf

Good morning, John Oxendine, Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate. What bad ideas do you have for us this morning? Oh, you think we should talk about building a “parallel downtown connector” that could plow through most of East Atlanta! OK. Lemme just first clean up all this coffee I spit all over my desk.

Oxendine pitches the idea — along with a Western Bypass, a new Northern Arc, and a couple of other projects that will most likely never get built — in this campaign video.

Building a massive asphalt artery through some of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods isn’t going to win Oxendine any support inside the perimeter.

But this pie-in-the-sky idea, which will most likely never happen, could win the gubernatorial hopeful points with the North Fulton crowd, a tried and true Republican enclave that’s thought to most likely favor Karen Handel. The Ox says that people who live in the Ga. 400 and I-85 corridors — unlike potential voters in Cobb County — don’t have the luxury of bypassing the city.

But anything to get Georgia out of gridlock, right?

(H/T to Jim Galloway)

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Oh, North Fulton. Y’all are so wacky up there.

The City of Alpharetta recently began presentations of a proposed government complex to replace the two-story building it currently calls home.

The vision: a $69 million city-center project complete with storefronts, a fountain and a grassy area where residents can ostensibly fly kites. There’ll also be a new park. According to the artist’s sketch at right, the adjoining parking lot will be complete anarchy, as gray cars will be allowed to park wherever they choose. Big Government will literally overshadow nearby churches. Aside from that, CL’s urban-planning team thinks this will be a good project because there might be kites.

But not everybody’s cool with the idea. The project, which would be backed by $25 million in municipal bonds, must first be approved by voters on the November ballot. And the city’s got some very visible — and creative — opposition: Chateau Alpharetta, a website that lampoons the project as an opulent moneywaster, one which the taxpayer is “cordially invited to pay for.”

Who’s behind the site? A former CL columnist of course!

(more…)

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Matching House and Senate bills to revivify the long-gone Milton County at the expense of Fulton never made it to the floor in the just-completed General Assembly despite having some heavyweight sponsors. But that doesn’t mean the issue is dead. In fact, if a recent lunch gathering of North Fulton mayors is any indication, the movement may only be gaining steam.

For its annual luncheon Tuesday, the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation invited elected officials to opine on the unwieldy topic: ”How Fulton County Could Improve Its Governance To Prevent Any Secession.” But no one really took up that challenge — instead, the consensus seemed to be that it’s too late to preserve Fulton County in its present form.

Although Roswell Mayor Jere Wood has been in office long enough to have worked with a succession of county commission chairmen from North Fulton, he said the best that be hoped for is a clean break, with Milton pulling out of Fulton.

“The residents of North Fulton believe it’s time for the relationship to be ended in divorce,” Wood said.

(more…)

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Last Monday, state Rep. Jan Jones, R-Alpharetta, fired the first shot in the battle between North Fulton residents and the Fulton County Commission. The aim of these highly educated, high-income, and mostly Republican residents: Split from the terrible fiend named Fulton and revive Milton County, which fell on hard times after a boll weevil infestation and the Great Depression. In 1932, it merged with Fulton County.

Jones filed a bill that would allow former counties to “re-create” themselves. There’s no dancing around the fact that it’s meant for Roswell, Alpharetta, Mountain Park and the newly created cities of Johns Creek and Milton to revive Milton County. The House Communications office even announced it as such.

It would also mean Fulton County loses one of its wealthiest areas.

(more…)

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