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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Join Badie Tour on Wednesday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Come say hello to Rick Badie, your AJC Gwinnett News columnist, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at Dunkin’ Donuts, 5345 Jimmy Carter Blvd., in Norcross.
The Badie Tour stops to share coffee and donuts with Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village, a special community improvement zone that’s been created to spruce up JCB and other major roads. Yes, those Gwinnett Village signs erected last October do serve a purpose.
To bone up on the subject, visit www. gwinnettvillage.com.
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Giving up the fight against decay
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like any prizefighter, he’s given his best punches.
After a while, though, even the most tenacious boxer knows when it’s time to move on, to hang up the gloves.
Robert J. Kerns, a family man and Marine Corps veteran, has reached that point.
He has lived in the single-level house in the Glen Hills subdivision of Lilburn for 22 years. He’s installed a saltwater aquarium inside, and built a small fish pond out back. He, his wife and daughters have a border collie and rabbit as pets.
This is home. At least it was until the neighborhood started changing, and folk started moving. Of the 140 houses in the community off Dickens Road, Kerns can name only a few who’ve been there as long, if not longer, than he.
“It’s time,” he told me. We first met this summer over coffee, cured ham and grits at a Waffle House in Lilburn. The 55-year-old IBM project manager was gung-ho about persevering and preserving some semblance of the quality of life that had been on the decline for years.
In November 2000, a 10-year-old boy was shot in the hand when bullets riddled his house on Aberdeen Court, a street in Glen Hills. Gwinnett police say it was a drive-by shooting. A few weeks ago, Kerns said gunfire was exchanged between two cars.
“Too damned dangerous for a family,” he told me in an e-mail.
You can’t knock him for not trying to improve things. He’s served as a neighborhood block captain, the go-to guy for complaints about code violations. He’s helped arrange clean-up days. Fliers, written in Spanish and English, are sent to everybody, but few turn out. Residents who care canvass the neighborhood, while those who don’t peer from their windows and front porches — even as their junk is carted off.
In August, he reported 17 code violations to county code enforcement. Some complaints have been attended to by the agency as well as the violator; most haven’t.
With 10 inspectors for the entire county, code enforcement is stretched. From September 2005 to September 2006, the agency has handled about 8,000 complaints, said Andrew Mendzef, Gwinnett’s code enforcement chief.
“We can’t be out there 24/7,” he said. “We’re busy. But we’ll do everything we can to address Mr. Kerns’ concerns.”
After a tour of the area Monday, Kerns has plenty of them.
We saw bags of garbage in front of houses. Work vans and commercial vehicles, two and three deep, alongside another three or four cars, parked in front of not one house but several. A loose dog. Graffiti. A house with plywood in the garage windows, usually a tell-tale sign that a bed — not a car — is what parks there. An abandoned house with mattresses, insulation and other trash in the front yard.
“All of this affects the quality of the neighborhood,” said Kerns, who drove me around.
“I have finally woken up.”
Where he’s moving, he doesn’t know. He’d like to stay in Gwinnett so his daughters can stay in the schools they are attending. The family hasn’t made a decision on whether they’ll stay in the county.
But he knows he’s got to move on, to hang up the gloves, to give up what had been a good fight.
After all, even great boxers eventually reach the end of the road.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
