LAST WEEK: SHOULD ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS SEEK SPLOST FUNDS?
Although Atlanta Public Schools don’t have a lot of buildings in disrepair or other maintenance problems, district officials say a spruce-up is overdue.
So the Atlanta Public School System is contemplating asking voters to approve a sales tax worth about $546 million. That would be the APS share of a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that would be levied in Fulton and DeKalb counties.
The school district has about $764 million in projects it needs funded, according to AJC reports.
The money will go toward demolishing some schools; renovating others; infrastructure improvements such as HVAC, heating and plumbing; upgrades to sports stadiums; technology; debt payments and new vehicles.
Although most APS schools are in decent shape, a review commissioned last year showed that about 30 could use some work.
We asked readers if it is time for APS to seek more tax dollars.
Here’s what readers said:
Nope, not to use it to enhance Grady HS and schools on the north side of town! Rezone those schools to "balance" them just like they do the "other" schools OR better yet try providing the identical materials, school equipment, and etc. to schools on the south side of town so that they can have an equal opportunity at learning! That way the "better" schools in APS won't be so over crowded with students of parents looking for better options for free education (by any means necessary). — Mentoria Reaves
Why not? If the buildings are run-down, the students deserve decent accomodations to learn in. Maybe then the teachers won't have to resort to drastic measures (and you know what I mean). — IJS
Maybe APS needs to sell some empty buildings. Maybe the city needs to give the school district all the money owed in the beltline deal. There are other ways than taxing the already over-taxed residents. — John Q. Public
Bonnie Kallenberg, owner of the long-successful Finders Keepers in Avondale Estates, told the AJC five years ago, “There is no real business synergy [in downtown]. It’s pretty scary at night when we close up.”
A half decade later downtown Avondale remains something of a concrete ghost town with 20 under-developed or undeveloped acres. The abandoned “Erector Set,” a partly built steel structure, which hasn’t been touched since 2008, stands as a mocking, skeletal symbol.
Nobody argued with former Mayor Ed Rieker last month when he proclaimed during a joint city commission/Downtown Development Authority work session that downtown needs about 1,000 new visitors a week.
So how, precisely, can that be achieved?
Euramex Management, which has owned about 15 of those downtown acres (including the Erector Set) for over a year, may be close to giving a public presentation of its mixed-use plans for the old Fenner-Dunlop property. Even so it may be years before any actual construction gets started.
Shorter term solutions include building parking deck, an idea favored by many including Jim Stacy, the singularly eclectic and resourceful owner of Pallookaville Fine Foods.
The city has recently re-organized its DDA, and as a first step towards marketing downtown Mayor Jonathan Elmore would like that board to put city maps in every shop while also erecting a billboard.
The city is also again committed to pursuing annexation, particularly the Laredo Drive/Rio Circle commercial district, which many believe has enormous future earning potential.
But this is Avondale Estates, the first documented planned city in the southeast, where modernity frequently clashes with tradition. During public-comment portions of meetings it’s not unusual for someone with casual familiarity to reverence George Francis Willis, the patent-medicine mogul who founded the city and has been dead since 1932.
It’s also not unusual to hear a citizen simply proclaim, “We just want things to stay as they are.”
What should Avondale Estates do to satisfy both sides? Or is that impossible?
Send comments to communitynews@ajc.com.
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