Bloglanta

Hey!  You! 
There are elections  this year!  Yes, it’s early, but you might want to run and you should definitely vote!
There has not been a comprehensive public list of Georgia Municipal Elections…until now!  Click here and read the table!  The folks at the Secretary of State Cathy Cox’s Office provided this information and it’s appreciated! 
One frightening item they mentioned is that often no election is held because only one person runs for an office!
You should consider running!  Qualifying is September 12-16th, so you have some time to think it over.
You should also also make sure that you know who your representatives are and where they are getting their money!
One!  One Civics Lesson!  Ah-hah-hah-hah.

Atlanta has any number of unsung heroes and today we salute one of them.
Jim Lane is the facilities manager for the Fox Theatre.  If you have a child who got home safely from either the Widespread Panic concert or the prom, you have Jim to thank. 
He’s a real pro.  He gets impossible work done quickly and easily.  He’s cheerful about it, and weather does not stop him.  Most of us could not load a 2 ton crystal glass sculpture into a ballroom with no elevator in the rain, but Jim can. 
If you see a guy running around in front of the Fox, trying to make sure that the homeless guy doesn’t go hungry but leaves you alone, that the jazz musicians get loaded in to Churchill Grounds, that the College Students make it safely back into their limo and don’t get mixed up with the Ballet Fans say hey to Jim and thank him. 

He’s a cultural institution that protects one.

We’ve lost another big show.  The National Association of Home Builders is pulling their convention out of Atlanta.  That’s another $120 million lost in economic impact.  It’s another $6 million not going into state coffers and another $1.2 million MARTA has lost.  It’s 100,000 people who will not fly through Hartsfield. 
They join COMDEX and the Supershow as no longer caring for our fair city. 
What are we doing wrong?  Here are a list of Things NOT to do to keep big conventions:
1) Write a letter to local hotels asking them to charge additional money for the hotel rooms in order to finance and incentive package to keep the convention
2) Create an incentive package that is only 20% of what the convention claims it needs
3) Let your ACVB be left holding the $2.7 million bag on the convention center deposit
4) Discount the distance people have to travel from hotels listed for the convention (Some people in official convention hotels would have had 13 mile Cab rides!)
While these are big issues, there are bigger ones looming. 
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One of the smarter things the City of Atlanta ever did was make sure there were express lanes for the Braves Shuttle.  Yes, there should be a train station is easy walking distance from Turner Field (and GSU’s station isn’t), but in absence of that, the express bus system is not a bad thing.

Why can’t other transit systems do this?  For example, the Gwinnett Gladiators are deep into the ECHL play-offs.   I’d love to take a Gwinnett Transit bus from the Doraville station directly to the arena.   However, this is only worth it if I can avoid all the traffic that builds on Sugerloaf  Parkway and Satellite Blvd.   Why no ‘bus only’ lanes? 

What good is a mass transit system if you won’t use it where there are masses of people?

MARTA is SMARTA!

Silly things can make a big difference in the commuterexperience.  Over the past few months, MARTA has put screens in the stations with news, information, temperature, and how long it will be before another train reaches your station! 

Is this a big thing?  No, not really.  However, for the commuters in the stations it seems to make a huge difference!   People like knowing when the next train is going to come.  It helps them plan, makes them less anxious, and  generally improves everyone’s mood. 

What’s especially nice about the screen program is that advertising is paying for the whole
thing! 

Speaking of paying… MARTA is holding hearings on a fare increase on April 25 & 26 and Citizens for Progressive Transit is holding a meeting on Sunday, April 17 at Java Monkey in Decatur.

You know,

Atlanta just can’t catch a break with larger governments.  The latest afront is the plan to cut the “Hope 6″ housing program.  Modeled after the successes of the Atlanta Housing Authority, “Hope VI” was designed to integrate people of various social classes into the same neighborhood and give low income people access to training programs that would help them sustain the ability to work and function in a truly diverse community.

Now, the Bush administration has cut it in the proposed FY 2006 budget.

The program has met with some difficulties, but as Renee Glover points, out, it’s successes have been meaningful enough so that a ‘Mend It, Don’t End It’ policy warrents true debate and consideration.

Housing in America’s metropolitan areas is increasing in price must more quickly than is inflation.  Quality affordable housing for the working poor with good access to highways and transit is essential.

Hope VI, for all it’s imperfections, should have been very popular with the neo-con crowd.  It used public private partnerships to develop housing and programs.  It leveraged a renewed interest in the urban fabric to emphasize the values of local association and volunteerism.

Atlanta was among the most successful examples of changing things.  Techwood changed.  Bankhead changed.

Ms. Glover outlined the keys to success in testimony to Congress.  Hopefully, Congress will continue to fund the program and link that funding to successful outcomes.  This is a far better use of the money than might be imagined by some Congressmen.

Jim Wooten, AJC Columnist recently wrote:

“MARTA is in serious financial difficulty. Its reserves, at the current rate of spending, will evaporate in another 2-3 years.

“Its board can play games. Its unions and interest groups can delude themselves into believing that the state will ride to the rescue, if only enough pressure is mounted and if the phrase is repeated often enough that no other major transit system operates without a state subsidy. The state’s response though, as expressed in a 2003 letter to MARTA, is to get its house in order and operate as a business.

“MARTA’s first obligation, plain and simple, is to balance the budget responsibly and on its own. Its existing funds are sufficient. There is no Sugar Daddy. There is no tooth fairy. There is no masked man riding to the rescue — nor should there be.

For most all of its operating life, MARTA has been a business operating as a social welfare agency, making decisions — including where to build lines — for political rather than marketplace reasons. The day of reckoning we knew would come is here.”

While I think Mr. Wooten is twisting the facts and is dead wrong, his sentiments are currently popular and people who support transit had better gear up with some truth to fight those who think as he does so…

Does MARTA have a perception problem and perhaps an economization problem?  Yes.  Must MARTA lower executive bonuses and top level salaries and put the focus on keeping bus lines running and electricity flowing?  Yes.

Can MARTA operate as a business?  Absolutely not.  First, MARTA is an externality based enterprise.  Its goal is not to profit from its undertakings but to serve the people, including the poorest among us, by getting them where they need to be and in so doing relieving highway traffic for the rest of the state.

If MARTA were to operate as a business, it would hike fares to $2.50, cut most bus service, put additional charges on routes from the airports and lower its capital spending dramatically.

However, the State controls how MARTA spends it’s money.  It can’t, as would any other business, decide how to allocate its recsources.   Also, if MARTA cuts all that bus service and smacks on serious additional charges to ride from the airport, that will affect convention traffic, and when convention traffic goes, Sales Taxes go down.  It hurts everyone.

Should MARTA get state funds?  Absolutely.  However, MARTA would settle for being able to use the funds it has in the way they are needed… just like any other business.

When Did Atlanta become a 3rd tier movie city?  How came it to be this way?

For those wondering about this, movies often roll out across various cities over time.  The first tier cities are New York and Los Angeles.  Many films open in these two cities that never even reach the rest of the country.  If they do, they open in select cities.  Those cities seem to be Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston.  They seem to get many movies about a week after New York and L.A.

Atlanta seemed at one point to be one of those cities.  Then, somehow, we were dropped off the map.  What happened?

I first noticed this with ‘Fahrenheit 9/11‘.  It arrived at Atlanta’s doorstep as it opened nationwide.  We were no longer in the film vanguard.  Now, it’s happening again with ‘Melinda and Melinda’.  Chicago has this movie.  Boston and Seattle do too.  At the moment, Atlanta is not even on the radar.  Fandango.com can’t even tell me when it’s going to open.

Woody Allen, who wrote and directed the movie, may not be as popular here as he is in New York, but surely he’s as popular here as he is in say Seattle… or Portland.

At what point did film distributors decide that Atlantans could not sustain anything more than the biggest blockbusters without excessive lead in time?  What led them to this decision?

Fortunately, if it comes nowhere else, eventually, this movie is likely to show up at Cinefest, at Georgia State University.  I’d just like to see it at the Buckhead Backlot.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

GEORGIA LEGISLATURE CREATES NEW ARTS AGENCY

Artopia, GA, (April 1, 2005) — The Georgia General Assembly in the waning hours of the 2005 session of the state legislature established a new Department of Arts and Culture. It is planned as a companion department to work closely with the new Department of Economic Development (formerly the Dept. of Industry & Trade). Leaders of both parties recognized
the value of Georgia’s rich cultural heritage, the economic and educational benefits resulting from a thriving arts scene at the community level, and legislated that the Advisory Council will be kept intact with the Presidents of the Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries (GAMG) and the Georgia Assembly of Community Arts Agencies (GACAA) serving as the Co-Chairs.&nbsp

It is reported the Governor has received favorable communications from GAMG and GACAA Presidents accepting the challenge of heading the Council with an active role advising the new Commissioner of Arts and Culture in the planning and
transition of the old OPB staff to the new independant Department.

With a last minute amendment to the state budget, just before the annual ritual of sine die, the per capita funding for the arts in Georgia for FY2006 will be more than doubled with a significant increase to a competitive level going from .67 to 1.50 which the bipartisan sponsors proclaimed necessary to adequately support the new Department, its expanded staff and to restore lost funding to save, rebuild and maintain local arts organizations in the state. The advocacy in this years legislature to increase salaries, travel funds and benefits for Department staff was the result of a well orchestrated strategic plan developed and coordinated by local arts councils, grantees and by statewide arts organizations.

Georgia’s Governor immediately responded with news of his support for the new Dept. of Arts and Culture. He promised to correct the historic lack of diversity (93% white) for members of the Georgia Council with his appointments early next month of African-American, Hispanic and Asian arts leaders to reflect Georgia’s diverse population. He promised to conduct a
nationwide search for a recognized, experienced arts professional with a track record of leadership at the national level in innovative and community based arts programming to lead the new Dept.  In his anticipation of next year, the Governor appointed a blue ribbon task force to draft long overdue legislation to implement the existing state Per Cent for Art law to automatically include public art in all state financed capital improvement projects. Based on current fiscal year’s budget, it would add some $19,000,000 new dollars for public art throughout the state for Georgia’s artists with exciting new commissions to enhance rural, suburban and urban communities, to expand heritage and cultural tourism and to provide a new quality of life  for all of Georgia’s citizens.

For more information, please visit: Governor: http://www.gov.state.ga.us/

General Assembly http://www.georgia.gov/00/channel/0,2141,4802_1361924,00.html

Department of Economic Developmen; http://www.georgia.org/