Should the Atlanta region even be a region?
The needs and fears that drove and killed the T-SPLOST transportation referendum last summer were on full display Wednesday night at a forum on the question of regionalism.
A basic question underlying the 10-county vote — whether the area’s 68 towns and 10 counties can, or even should, work together as a region — was the subject of a public forum presented by The Atlanta Journal Constitution and PNC Bank. The event was held at the Georgia Public Broadcasting building in Midtown Atlanta.
The services at stake, according to people on the panel, vary from water to public safety, education, and, of course, transportation. But who should take charge of what, and when and how, is the question.
The civic and elected officials participating in the forum all agreed that people need to work together.
They agreed that people don’t trust government, and that planning needs to treat different neighborhoods differently. They don’t think the transportation special purpose local option sales tax (T-SPLOST) was the ideal plan.
Most seemed to agree that the region needs to tackle the area’s water supply together. But beyond that, when it came to specific plans, areas of agreement were hard to find.
Tad Leithead, chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission — a board of mayors, county commissioners and citizen members tasked with regional planning — believes the whole region needs to work together on the challenges the commission has taken up: water, the aging population and transportation. Big problems can require very big, expensive solutions, he said, something it’s difficult for individual jurisdictions to fund.
Eva Galambos, mayor of Sandy Springs, believes the mass transit systems of Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties should be combined. “We have four different bus systems. That’s ridiculous,” she said. But cooperation should be approached on a case-by-case basis, she said, and the best way is voluntary, as when her city and others worked together on a common radio frequency for emergency responders.
Steve Brown, who rode T-SPLOST opposition to victory as a Fayette County Commission member and chairman, often agreed with Galambos.
Ellen Mayer, executive director of the Civic League for Regional Atlanta, questioned whether the creation of new cities had added to the confusion, although she noted it responded to an unmet need.
In the audience sat some of the people who had worked to defeat the T-SPLOST, some now with buttons reading “RepealRegionalism.com.”
All four panelists have served on the regional commission or its committees. Leithead, its chairman, did have a novel suggestion that shows just how touchy things are: Stop using the word “regionalism.”
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