Last night’s meeting about the upcoming Doraville Days festival took place amid the goodies of Mozart’s Bakery on Buford Highway (the pumpkin rolls are really good, btw). I’m afraid I was browsing and buying during much of the car show business, but Tom and Steve, Stuart, and Bob Roche seem to have that under control, complete with food. The road races – there will be a Tot Trot for our vertically challenged attendees – is firming up, and Carol has something like 84 cases of water coming for the festival. There will also be popcorn, cotton candy and cokes, as well as punch and cookies for the student art show portion. Brian has coordinated a first-aid area with DeKalb Fire and Rescue and has procured a stage, generators, tents, and tables, while Maria is working with me (Susan C.) and Stuart on the art show. She, Pam and, (I think it was) Lynn Watanabe spent part of a weekend recently going from restaurant to restaurant in the city, asking the owners about participation. Charlene has promised to promote the festival to students in the area, and an advertisement will soon be coming out in a local Chinese newspaper whose very patient and accommodating representative attended last night. Pam is advertising in local papers – The Champion, possibly Creative Loafing, and Tucker Times, and will be getting some flyers out to local schools. She’s also ordered “sails” and signs and a banner and did a great job of coordinating everything. Kudos to all involved and if I left anyone/anything out, it was completely unintentional. This was only the first of a few upcoming meetings. Hopefully, the festival will be a success and a starting point for future festivals. Dancing on stage, face painting, clowns, inflated bouncing things I don’t know the names of . . . Tell your friends and neighbors! October 18th!
I received two e-mails in the past couple of days, both about opportunities to help clean up the city. The first came from Councilwoman Donna Pittman about a “Keep Doraville Clean” day she is sponsoring next month:
Councilwoman Donna Pittman and the Doraville Police Department’s Quality of Life Unit (QLU) are proud to announce “Keep Doraville Clean” day on Saturday, April 26th, 2008, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. We invite you to join community members as we work to clean up litter in our city. Let’s not just shake our heads at litter and wonder why someone would do that. Let’s get active and do something about it!!! This is a great way to show community pride and show people we do care about our city.
Volunteers will be provided equipment such as gloves, hand sanitizer and trash bags. These items were provided by Keep DeKalb Beautiful and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs as a part of the “2008 Great American Cleanup” campaign. Lt. Lowe will coordinate volunteers and assign them to areas needing to be cleaned. The Doraville Maintenance Department will furnish trucks.
We are also arranging for Chick-fil-A to have lunch available for volunteers to purchase immediately after the clean-up event. Look for more information in upcoming publications. You can also get more details by contacting Councilwoman Pittman at 678-334-9141 or the Quality of Life Unit at 678-530-2006 or qualityoflife@doravillega.us. We look forward to seeing you there!
Councilwoman Pittman initiated this event in Doraville during her first year in office. It was very successful, and we would like to see it remain an annual event.
The next event came from Eleanor, who is a frequent commenter on the blog. It’s about a campus beautification day at the local elementary school:
Saturday, March 15th, from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. is campus beautification day at Cary Reynolds. If interested in helping, please bring gloves, shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, garden shears, bags of mulch (if you care to). Please do not bring any plants.
All welcome – parents, teachers and community volunteers.
We’ve been discussing this article on the Northwoods neighborhood e-mail list. It tells of a plan to tame Buford Highway and make it into a pedestrian-safe shopping area. It’s a partnership of several organizations, including DeKalb County, Georgia DOT, and the CDC, which has a new major campus still developing near PDK airport. They have many ideas to improve the Buford Corridor from Sydney Marcus Blvd to Dresden Drive, at PDK just south of Chamblee. One important idea is to remove “Highway” from the name of the road, since it implies a large through road for long-distance travel. An interesting side note is that the Buford Highway corridor is the only area in metro Atlanta where public transportation turns a profit. I suppose that’s why there are a couple of private lines operating busses. Although the fact that any name change would require the Georgia General Assembly makes it more difficult to think anything sensible would come out of the process.
We’ve had some discussion that the new crosswalks in the Chamblee-Doraville segment of the road have not helped as much as they were expected to. I personally put the blame on drivers who just need some time to adjust and learn the new rules (an aggressive ticket campaign might help, if necessary), and on pedestrians who are … well, I can’t think of a nice way to say what I’m thinking. I was amazed to see that there are only 3-4 pedestrians every year struck by cars. I’m appalled to see the pedestrians pushing strollers across the busy street, often within a few dozen feet of the nearest crosswalk. I’ve been a pedestrian nearly daily for the last 8 months or so, crossing Buford Highway a couple of times each day, and I’ve found it worthwhile to go an extra block to the crosswalk at Park Avenue. That’s even without police out enforcing laws against jaywalking. Maybe we could hire a few extra police to ticket people for jaywalking along the few blocks of Buford Highway, as part of this campaign to improve the road for pedestrians.
At any rate, Doraville should be taking a part in this group to improve Buford Corridor. Although after seeing how Doraville could mess up a two-block sidewalk and continue to NOT have a sidewalk along Park Avenue to the police station, or along Central Avenue at all, we’ve seen how Doraville can mess up simple transportation projects when politics gets involved. So we need Doraville to take an INTELLIGENT role in this improvement process.
I need to be sure and add that the above opinions are purely my own are are NOT the blame of anyone in the discussion on the e-mail list.
Dr. Mel Colon attended the groundbreaking ceremony for Star Towers. He mentioned that it is 58% pre-leased already, a year and a half before completion. He also linked to this video from CBS 46 News at the event.
I had a brief chat with the librarian tonight about collections of historical materials that she knows about. The first thing that I was previously somehow unaware of is the 1995 book The History of Doraville, Georgia by Laura and Ken Barré. This book is a well-written account of Doraville’s history, from 1821 when it was part of land ceded by local Creek tribes to the State of Georgia. Read the rest of this entry »
I arrived late, so I got to stand at the back of the crowded Doraville Civic Center. All of the candidates were there, except for City Council incumbent Ed Lowe. I didn’t know much about a couple of the races. I have debated in my mind how to present my impressions of the forum, and I have decided to start with my personal preferences for all the races, then give my impression of everyone’s performance in the forum. My personal choices are based on wanting a city council that will work on good planning and zoning to help the city develop as a nice place to live and work, and will use the city web page as a “force multiplier” to enable a small, efficient city staff to disseminate detailed information about the city and city government to the public. I strongly recommend watching the video, when it is available, to check my memory.
Races:
Mayor: Ray Jenkins (Incumbent), Marlene Hadden, Tom Hart
District 1 (Oakcliff, Jason Anavitarte’s former seat): Maria Alexander, Clint Howard
District 2 (Northwoods, Marlene Hadden’s seat): Chris Avers, Bob Roche
District 3 (Winters Chapel, Tilly Mill): Ed Lowe (Incumbent but absent), Pam Fleming, John Noonan
District 2 (Northwoods, Tom Hart’s former seat.): Brian Bates, Matt Harner
My current selections: Marlene Hadden, Maria Alexander, Chris Avers, John Noonan, Brian Bates
Performance in The Forum:
Read the rest of this entry »
Susan Crawford, who produces The Cliffhanger–a semi-regular newsletter for the Oakcliff neighborhood–has recently received threats from a couple of different people who want her to stop publishing. I think that the people who are threatening her, more than anything else, disagree with the things Susan is saying–and want to get her to shut up, using whatever means necessary. As many of you know, dirty politics of this sort are no stranger to Doraville.
Because I hate seeing anyone’s voice stifled, I’m republishing one of the main articles from the January Cliffhanger here:
Cliffhanger hopes all of you are enjoying the new year to the utmost and that it will be an exciting and fruitful year for one and all.
We now have two new city council members. Congratulations to Tom Hart from Northwoods, Bob Spangler from Oakcliff, and to Donna Pittman who retains her position as councilwoman from Tilly mill. Everyone is at the starting gate and we are good to go.
Now where, exactly, we’re going remains to be seen. One of the first items on the docket is the changing of one of my favorite projects, the newly-formed planning commission. Jason Anavitarte from Oakcliff is tweaking and defining the group to be presented as an ordinance. Right now, the planning commission is a collection of volunteers from different areas of the city putting their heads together over new developments, zoning changes, or whatever the new council asks them to review. In turn, they collect ideas from their respective neighborhoods to be presented to the city council. They have no power. They are simply interested residents who want their property values to go up or to be able to get a steak or a pizza within their city limits or even–dare I suggest–buy a Stouffers frozen dinner! Or a magazine! Or a book!
Cliffhanger is having difficulty understanding why any member of city council would not want such a group to exist just as they are now, with the members we have and under no one’s wing, working in conjunction with, but not under the control of, any particular city council member. Blocking communication between residents’ groups and city council members can only be counterproductive if not downright damaging. if it aint broke, don’t fix it might be applicable here. We are, after all, working toward the same goals…Aren’t we?
If anything, I think Susan’s article doesn’t go far enough with naming names and detailing the efforts of certain new council members to remove any teeth that the citizen planning commission has had. Regardless, it would be a shame if dirty politics deprived us of her voice.
Mr. Jim Kutzman, Engineer and Senior Cnsultant from Mactec, will be at our Civic Center, Monday, March 13, 7:00pm with a 15-20 minute presentation on the development of Atlantic Station. Mr.Kutzman was with the Environmental Protection Agency when this project began and then Mactec was instrumental in putting it all together – so he is really ‘in the know’ on this. It is important because a similar type development could be under consideration for the GM site. I invited Bob Spangler to preview this presentation with me and we both found it very illuminating and informative.
Marlene Hadden
Council Member
City of Doraville
bestrep@mindspring.com
On the OakCliff neighborhood’s e-mail group, a neighbor reports there will be a special Chinese New Year celebration at the Chinese Cultural Center in Chamblee from 11am to 4pm on January 28 and 29. According to the e-mail, it will be a “great and unforgettable chance to taste all kind of traditional Chinese Food.” Possibly worth checking out.