Atlanta Forward: How the issues rank


About 1,800 subscribers acted on our e-mailed request to complete an unscientific survey on Atlanta’s challenges. Here is how survey respondents ranked the issues in order of importance:

1. Education

Readers say education must be adequately funded, even if it means raising taxes or cutting back in other areas. Some suggest cuts within school systems — to administration, sports and facilities, for example — to keep money in classroom teaching. There’s wide support for vouchers and school choice.

What we said

Georgia’s hard-won gains in educational achievement cannot be allowed to unravel if we’re to remain a competitive place to live and do business. (Editorial, Jan. 31, 2010)

Our view now

In 2004, Georgia ranked dead last in SAT scores. It seemed it couldn’t get much worse for our schools. Now, test scores and graduation rates continue to be in the cellar, but we have a growing lack of confidence in the folks charged with running and improving our schools.

In Clayton County, the schools lost accreditation, largely because the school board was so dysfunctional. In DeKalb County, the former superintendent and three others have been indicted for racketeering. In Atlanta, the district can’t seem to follow basic fair bidding rules, even after misadventures in previous years cost the school district millions and sent two people to prison. And in Atlanta and throughout the state, there are serious questions about cheating on standardized tests.

Meanwhile, teachers are being laid off by the thousands. Class sizes are growing and kids are suffering as too many school districts fail to run themselves in even a semblance of businesslike fashion.

It’s way past time that school boards and high-paid administrators took control of the dwindling money they still have and make sure it’s spent well. Yes, we must resolve whether schools are funded in the best way in Georgia. But first, we must hold boards and administrators accountable for better managing our money.

2. Transportation

Readers believe metro Atlanta must take a regional approach to transportation. That theme resounded throughout the transportation section of the survey: Centralize all transportation planning, and find the political will to bring a single mass transit system to the suburbs.

What we said

The cross-roads or the bypass. Where we land may well determine how we both dovetail into the Southeast’s growing economy and move around metro Atlanta in years to come. (Editorial, Sept. 27, 2009)

Our view now

They’re easy to find, but maddeningly hard to fix. Atlanta’s transportation problems, that is.

We likely each have a favorite chokepoint. A Downtown Connector so clogged with traffic that double-decking it has been considered to add capacity. I-20, I-285, Ga. 400. Choose a traffic magnet — it’s easy to find places overtaxed by vehicles and underinvested with infrastructure. The resulting friction on traffic costs us all in fuel wasted and productive hours lost.

After years of trying, planning and false starts, the Atlanta region was granted a path toward relief this year by the Georgia General Assembly. But, in order to make good time on the road to progress, we’ve got to get our act together as a region — a task that has proven pretty elusive until now.

Our only-worry-about-my-own-backyard attitude can’t continue if this region is to successfully see a penny sales tax approved by voters for transportation projects in 2012.

We must learn to concentrate on the good of the broader metro area, not pet projects that are isolated in both scope and geography.

A few big improvements are preferable to another decade of bickering and inaction. We can’t afford that, given that competing regions have been building while we’ve been stuck in traffic.

3. Economic development

Readers believe economic development will lag until the Atlanta region reduces crime, fixes transportation woes, offers incentives to small businesses and provides better schools. Businesses looking to relocate must weigh tax incentives, quality of life and their ability to attract qualified workers locally.

What we said

Seeding the fields of economic recovery will take long, arduous effort that will stretch across 2010. (Editorial, Dec. 27, 2009)

Our view now

Modern Atlanta was built on banking and a voracious real estate industry that were both fueled by rapid growth. People coming here by the millions for jobs needed homes. Upward mobility fueled demand for move-up properties and mortgages to pay for them. The service sector and retailers were other beneficiaries of the boom times.

That was then, not now. What’s our overall economic development vision for tomorrow? Who will lead it? What will enable it?

We must find new ways and models to boost stagnant personal incomes and increase the ranks of the middle class, both in the Atlanta region and across Georgia. The Metro Atlanta Chamber’s new economy initiative is a good example of where we must set our sights.

What will help businesses grow and create, or import, good-paying jobs? Low taxes are part of the answer, but not the only answer. What sort of tax code will promote real growth and jobs using verifiable metrics of what works, or doesn’t?

The cities and states that work have honed regional cooperation into a purring machine that creates an environment for success by using government’s levers from the state level on down to solve the big problems. Georgia must tune up its economic development engines, lest we fall behind.

4. Health care

Readers are at odds about the best ways to improve health care, with many calling for a repeal of “Obamacare” and others urging the state to drop its “idiotic fight” against the new reform law. Many cited Grady Memorial Hospital’s progress in overcoming fiscal challenges and wished more counties helped fund the hospital.

What we said

The biggest medical malpractice case in the United States may be that the frantic action around health care reform seems more focused on the cure than the chronic disease. (Editorial, Aug. 30, 2009)

Our view now

Serious problems remain with how we pay for, and access, health care.

Now that a national model for health care reform — good or bad — is the law of the land, the Atlanta region and Georgia must concentrate on how to work within the still-developing new framework to deliver adequate services at reasonable cost.

Georgia cannot, as we’ve done to resounding failure in the past, obstinately defy federal law and expect to come out ahead. That’s what led to the current scramble to resolve our water supply problems that gained new vigor after a federal judge soundly spanked our legal reasoning in a stinging court ruling.

Georgians dutifully pay federal taxes like other Americans, and our leaders must position our state to get its fair share in return. Given the immense cost of health care now, and in coming years, that fair share should be used as wisely as possible, using the levers we can control.

Georgia should, for example, figure out ways to improve clinics and funnel more non-life-threatening illnesses to them. That will keep such cases out of emergency rooms, which will save money. We must also address shortages of health professionals in spots around the state.

Figuring out how to improve the system will be a better proposition than bucking the system.

5. Quality of life

Readers praised Atlanta’s ease of living, arts offerings and other amenities. They worry that budget cuts have overly strained police and other emergency services.

What we said

We don’t need make-work; we need strategic projects that build for our future. (Editorial, Dec. 13, 2009)

Our view now

Economic development here has been powered by a baby-boomer-friendly quality of life. Abundant trees, adjacent mountains, cheap land and housing, an accessible location, good schools and amenities made Atlanta an attractive metroplex for millions.

What will drive the next 25 years? The youngest boomers are now past 45. Will a far-flung Atlanta that offers few non-auto transportation options fail an aging population? That would act directly against the state’s tax inducements to lure wealthy retirees.

Will the praised-and-maligned concept of livable communities take hold here as Atlantans age? Will townhomes supplant today’s two-story home atriums and acre-plus lots?

It’s safe to say that demographic and economic changes ensure that tomorrow’s Atlanta will be different.

What will desirable cities of the future look like, and how will Atlanta stack up in this regard? We should be thinking about that now, and not just in think tanks.

For the region to prosper in the future, we’ve got to resolve our water-supply issues and maintain air quality.

We have to control crime across the region. Doing so will take both adequate resources and a shared sense that solving common problems will benefit us all, families and communities alike.

6. Regional cooperation

Most readers believe that the Atlanta region should truly think, and act, as a unified body to solve our biggest problems. We should not be afraid, they say, to realign and restructure government to make this happen.

What we said

The current recession, if good for nothing else, gives us a breather to take stock, study plans and, more important, honestly assess future community needs. (Editorial, July 12, 2009)

Our view now

We’re a region with strong local identities and an even stronger independent streak. That was permissible, though not optimal, back when Atlanta was humming.

Such parochialism will hurt us as we claw our way toward slowly brightening post-recession days. The megacities that will row fastest out of recession’s backwaters are those that can quickly make real regional decisions. Fragmentation and bickering are enemies of the progress we need here.

That’s not to knock small, lean, local government. But we should ask whether a small-government bias costs us in the long run, at least on big areawide issues. Would creating a form of region-wide elected government tasked with handling a few broad issues, such as transportation or trash hauling, actually save money and boost efficiency? We believe it could.

Yes, the region has come together in some ways. The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, for example, has made real progress in coordinating dozens of political entities and promoting conservation.

On other issues, such as transportation, we have a long way to go to enhance regional cooperation and governance.

Other regions are yielding results from working across borders. We should do so in Atlanta.