Richard Leigh
Age: 77
Residence: Riverdale
Occupation: Retired aircraft technician
How he'll vote: Yes
“It would be good for the ones who don’t have transportation. I wouldn’t use it. I have a car. I don’t need it. It wouldn’t make that much difference to me (paying) that extra penny. I don’t do that much shopping.”
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Arkia Allen
Age: 37
Residence: Morrow
Occupation: Hair salon owner
How she’ll vote: No.
“Clayton already has enough issues with crime. Property values have decreased. We have one of the highest foreclosure rates in Georgia. We have more things we need to focus on besides (bringing in) public transportation. We’ve got bigger issues than MARTA. There are people who actually need it and I symphathize with that but Clayton needs its own public transit that it can control. A public transit system opens up our community to everyone, making it more assessible. Take Peachtree City. It’s not easily accessible. Therefore its property values remain high. I don’t want my county open to anyone and everybody.”
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Jerry Griffin
Age: 70
Residence: Lake Spivey
Occupation: Retired executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Georgia.
How he’ll vote: Yes
“I’m going to vote for it. It’s not something I’m going to use. I’m thinking more in terms of what’s good for the county and the region. The intra-county buses will greatly help. People have a hard time getting to the jobs around the airport … and the hospital. The only thing that really bothers me is the contract they’ve got with MARTA. As I understand it, there’s not really an assurance that MARTA is going to ever do any rail.”
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Kristina Dean
Age: 24
Residence: Morrow
Occupation: Student in her senior year at Clayton State University
How she’ll vote: Yes
“I just got a car in August. Before that, I had to walk if I needed to get around Clayton County. When I first came to the university, they had C-Tran (bus system). But even that bus system wasn’t very effective. People need transportation here. Some people have to leave at 6:30 in the morning just to get to a 9 o’clock (doctor’s) appointment. But with MARTA, people will likely be able to walk to the MARTA bus stop if they needed to.”
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Magdalena Castro and husband Jose Pacheco
Ages: 33 (Castro) and 38 (Pacheco)
Residence: Forest Park
Occupations: homemaker and self-employed home improvement contractor
“It would be very useful for a lot of Hispanics. People need to get to work. It’s been very hard to buy food or go to work without public transportation. They’re either always walking or trying to get a ride and they’re faced with a lot of traffic and danger when they’re walking. Many are not well off because the economy went down and to have something to get them from point A to point B would be very helpful.”
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Kathryn Brown
Age: 35
Residence: Unincorporated Jonesboro (Mundy’s Mill area)
Occupation: Homemaker
How she’ll vote: Undecided
“I am on the fence about it. I’d really have to give it a lot of thought and research to make my final decision. It could be a good and bad thing. I’m taking into consideration others’ opinions that public transit could attract (more) lower-income residents here. Those are often not property tax-paying people. We really need more homeowners to pay taxes to go into the system. The positive side is it’s a benefit to the environment. Public transit will reduce the number of cars on the road which contributes to lower carbon emissions. So that’s what I’m weighing right now.”
Two years ago metro Atlantans roundly rejected a regional transportation plan, but Clayton County hasn’t let go of the idea of regional public transit.
Next month, Clayton County residents will cast one of the most decisive votes in the county’s recent history: whether to join MARTA and revive public transportation in the county.
If successful, it will be the first major expansion of MARTA outside of Fulton and DeKalb counties since MARTA opened for business more than 40 years ago.
Clayton is the only core county in metro Atlanta without a dedicated local transit. Supporters of MARTA expansion into Clayton say public transportation is critical to Clayton’s economy and future. Opponents worry that MARTA won’t provide Clayton with a full return on the $45 million annual investment a 1-cent increase in the sales tax will generate.
Under the plan, half the money will be used to finance limited bus service starting in March 2015 and full bus service the following year. The other half will be set aside for a future commuter rail or comparable transit service.
In a county that leads the metro region in unemployment, foreclosures and the proportion of households without a car, the vote is being billed as critical building block to rebuilding Clayton’s economy.
“We may not have this opportunity again,” said State Rep. Michael Glanton who helped make the Nov. 4 vote possible by introducing legislation earlier this year.
That reality has prompted some county leaders to press hard to pass the initiative.
“This is the 21st Century. We can’t live in the Dark Ages anymore,” Commission Chairman Jeff Turner told a crowd at the recent launch of a pro-MARTA campaign called “Power of the Penny.”
But some Clayton residents don’t see public transportation as progress.
Take Arkia Allen.
The Morrow resident is dead-set against bringing public transit back to Clayton. She believes county leaders should be focusing on other more-pressing issues such as the county’s high unemployment and foreclosures and low home values.
“There are people who actually need it and I sympathize with that,” said Allen who has lived in Clayton since 1995 and owns a home and hair salon in the county. “But public transit would just open up more avenues (of problems). We’ve got bigger issues than just MARTA.”
MARTA proponents understand they have to educate voters over the next month to make the case for the tax.
“The biggest obstacle is people being unaware,” said Roberta Abdul-Salaam, a former state representative who founded Friends of Clayton Transit four years ago. “ … There’s a lot of misinformation about what it will do and what the service will look like. When people find out about it, there’s hugging and kissing and ‘praise the Lord.’ Until you say something to them, people don’t know a lot. People have no clue.”
Grassroots organizations have fanned out across Clayton going door-to-door telling residents about the referendum. On a recent Friday night, when most people would be enjoying high school pep rallies and football games, some 120 people gathered at the Jonesboro fire station to kick off the Power of the Penny campaign, another pro-transit effort involving a coalition of groups in the Asian and Caribbean communities as well as politicians and ministerial groups. The Rev. Jesse Jackson joined a rally of grassroots volunteers, community leaders and activist working to get the word out about the vote.
“No city or county can grow without transportation,” said Courtney McFarlane, executive director of the Caribbean-American Advancement Foundation. Inc. who attended the POP launch. “What’s good for north metro Atlanta is good for south metro Atlanta.”
It is not unusual to see scores of women with babies in strollers and small children in tow navigating Tara Boulevard, a key thoroughfare without sidewalks. A recent survey by The Ankor Resource Center, which serves Clayton’s immigrant community, found about 90 percent of those surveyed said they favored public transit in Clayton. Eight in 10 of those surveyed said they knew of someone who would directly benefit from having public transit and the same number said public transit would help the county grow economically. The center works with a lot of young people who don’t have transportation, said Randy Muth, founder and executive director at Ankor, the Cambodian word for “city.”
“For those people who qualify to vote, transportation is a big issue. Even trying to get car pools together is tough,” said Muth.
Visible examples of an unmet public transportation need might be a compelling argument in favor of the vote. But giving what some consider a blank check to MARTA gives some pause.
Residents are put in the position of having to trust local leaders and MARTA on the promise of rail sometime in the future. There’s concern, too, that money collected in Clayton would be used to enhance Fulton and DeKalb services or shore up MARTA’s finances.
MARTA General Manager and Chief Executive Keith Parker told a ministerial group last week that the regional transit agency would be good stewards of Clayton’s tax dollars.
“Our budget is $900 million. On a good year, Clayton may collect $46 million,” Parker said. “That’s in the neighborhood of four to five percent (of MARTA’s budget). So it doesn’t decide success or failure for MARTA. It’s an important piece. So any money we get will be invested in the right way. So that’s certainly not the intention.”
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