DeKalb County says water will be shut off in Tucker on Wednesday night as contractors replace a aging and damaged water line.
The work will take place at the intersection of Lawrenceville Highway and Northlake Parkway between 10 p.m. Wednesday, July 14, and 3 a.m. Thursday, July 15.
The county says Northlake Parkway will reopen to traffic on Thursday, July 15.
The latest edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Take to Task," includes a reader complaint about a pothole.
"This is on Silverhill Road, Smokerise, in Stone Mountain. As you cross the speed bump you drop forcibly into these holes and feels as if you've hit the frame of the vehicle, even though you've slowed almost to a stop to cross the speed bump," Ray Rosenberg wrote.
The AJC says "We sent the issue to Stone Mountain and will keep you updated."
"Who's looking into it: Public Works Director, Jim Tavenner," the newspaper adds helpfully, referring to a longtime Stone Mountain official.
However, Smokerise is not in the City of Stone Mountain, it is in Tucker. The city limits of Stone Mountain do not extend north of the Stone Mountain Freeway (U.S. Highway 78), where Smokerise and Tucker are located.
Less than a quarter of a mile of Silver Hill Rd. is in the City of Stone Mountain. There are no speed bumps in Stone Mountain's section of the road and only a few minor potholes. It is likely that the letter-writer is actually referring to this section of Silver Hill Rd. in Tucker:
This speed bump and pothole are located just west of Musket Lane on Silver Hill Rd. in Tucker.
Presumably, Stone Mountain will tell the newspaper to contact officials in Tucker about potholes in Tucker. Maybe someone at the AJC will be taken to task.
Two DeKalb County cities have announced qualifying dates for candidates for their respective municipal elections on November 2.
Voters in Stone Mountain and Clarkston will go to the polls to choose a mayor and three city council members who will serve four-year terms.
Clarkston will accept candidacy notices from August 16 through 18. Stone Mountain will accept candidacy declarations from August 17 through 19.
August 16 is the first day to request an absentee ballott for the November election.
Dele Lowman Smith was elected as the chair of DeKalb County's five-member Board of Registration & Elections on Thursday, with new member Nancy Jester unanimously elected as the vice chair of the board.
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| Dele Lowman Smith |
In nominating Lowman Smith as chair, Susan Motter described her as "an ethical, a transparent, a hard worker and collaborative colleague." Her nomination was seconded by Swift.
"I see Ms. Lowman Smith as demonstrative of a generational shift that is needed for this board as well as the elections department," Motter said.
"In her day-to-day livelihood, she does work with a number of governmental entities including with respect to elections. So she clearly has the experience," Motter said. "I am looking to her to bring a new era of transparency and openness amongst the board, the board members and the public."
Lowman Smith was elected chair in a 3-2 vote, with Jester and Anthony Lewis voting against her nomination. The vote for Lowman Smith came after a 3-2 vote against Lewis' nomination of Jester to chair the board.
"I look forward to working with you," Jester, a former DeKalb County commissioner, told Lowman Smith. "I know you'll make a great chair."
A DeKalb County Commissioner is asking the county to go on record as opposing any federal or state legislation that would increase in the size or weight of trucks passing through the area.
District 7 Commissioner Lorraine Cochran-Johnson has offered a resolution that notes the poor condition of some Georgia roads and bridges and says that allowing increased weight or length for double-trailer trucks would raise the costs of maintaining major roads.
At the Board of Commissioners' July 13 meeting, commissioners voted unanimously (7-0-0) to defer action on the proposal until July 27.
The impetus for the resolution seems to be a proposal, defeated by the U.S. Senate in 2015, that would have allowed longer tractor-trailer trucks, sometimes called "Double 33s." That vote came after the U.S. Department of Transportation recommended against changing truck size and weight laws, noting that trucks with multiple trailers have an 11 percent higher rate of fatal crashes than single-trailer trucks.
Representatives of the trucking industry contended in 2018 that extending 28-foot trailers to 33 feet would result in 4,500 fewer truck accidents each year and reduce truck traffic by 3.1 billion miles.
More than two dozen DeKalb County groups are set to receive grant funds from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the council said Wednesday.
The council, a division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, announced 266 grants totalling more than $2 million for arts initiatives throughout the state. The funds will be distributed during the 2022 fiscal year.
Bridge Grants, intended to support non-profit arts organizations recovering from COVID-19 shutdowns, will provide funding for operating support to nine organizations in DeKalb County:
- Atlanta Artist Relief Fund Inc
- Atlanta Radio Theatre Company
- Callanwolde Foundation, Inc.
- Decatur Book Festival
- OnStage Atlanta
- Paint Love, Inc.
- PushPush Film & Theater (PushPush Arts)
- Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance
- The Essential Theatre, Inc.
Project Grants to help fund one-time arts events or a series of art projects or events were given to six DeKalb County organizations:
- Emory University Center for Ethics
- Kids Video Connection, Inc.
- Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, Inc.
- Room To Move Inc.
- Several Dancers Core
- The Japan-America Society of Georgia
Thirteen programs in DeKalb County will receive funding through an Arts Education Program Grant:
- A Través, Inc.
- Callanwolde Foundation, Inc.
- Coralwood School
- DeKalb School of the Arts Foundation
- Global Village Project
- Henderson Mill Elementary School Foundation
- How Big Is Your Dream?! Foundation
- Kids Video Connection, Inc.
- Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, Inc.
- Spruill Center for the Arts
- The Essential Theatre, Inc.
- The Japan-America Society of Georgia
- Utopian Academy for the Arts
Funding for the awards by the Georgia Council for the Arts come from the Georgia General Assembly, the National Endowment for the Arts, and $904,000 from the American Rescue Plan. Additional grants for Vibrant Communities and Cultural Facilities programs will be awarded later this year. The Georgia Council for the Arts used peer review panels to judge and review the applications that were received.
Georgia Council for the Arts Executive Director Tina Lilly said the grants "will help cities and organizations leverage additional funds and bring people back to work while providing fun and educational opportunities for Georgians across the state."
A complete list of the awards given out statewide can be found at https://bit.ly/3ho9mo5
DeKalb County will pay $82,500 to settle a lawsuit filed last year that alleged the county was unlawfully purging voters from the rolls in violation of federal law.
The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously (7-0-0) on Tuesday to approve settlement of a lawsuit filed in February 2020 by the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the Georgia Coalition for People's Agenda against the DeKalb County Board of Registration & Elections.
The lawsuit (1:20-CV-00879-ELR) alleged that the county was "unlawfully purging voters from the DeKalb County registration rolls in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution." It asked that the county be prevented from purging voters from the rolls until the county receives written confirmation from the voter of a change of address, or the county provides proper notice and waits two federal election cycles.
The lawsuit also contended that the county election board was improperly asking for information from cities regarding the validity of some voter registrations. It said this violated the U.S. Constitution because it improperly discriminated against voters "residing in transitional housing or non-traditional residences."
After a lengthy executive session, the BOC voted 7-0-0 to settle the case with a requirement that the lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice. The payment is to go to the plaintiffs and their legal counsel as part of a settlement agreement, release and waiver of claims.
The county had tried to argue that the DeKalb County Board of Registration & Elections is protected from federal lawsuits by sovereign immunity. However, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross rejected that claim in September 2020, ruling that county boards of elections in Georgia are not “arms of the state,” even when determining voter eligibility.
In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said the DeKalb County Board of Registration & Elections had purged voters who used the Decatur address of a center for people with mental disabilities who need housing to avoid psychiatric hospitalization. The elections board said it removed the voters because the address was not a "residence."
In an August 2019 letter to the county elections board, the ACLU said "neither state nor federal law grants election officials the authority to judge what constitutes housing, especially for those hardest hit by life's struggles."
"Election officials must be vigilant when considering challenges or requests to disenfranchise people that are based on Google Maps or their preconceived notions of what a 'residence' looks like," the ACLU said in its letter. "It is morally wrong for government officials to judge where someone calls home," ACLU Georgia legal director Sean Young said at the time.
The federal court trial of former DeKalb County Commissioner Sharon Barnes-Sutton on two counts of extortion and one count of federal program bribery, originally set for August, has been delayed until October, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The newspaper says U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen has set an Oct. 18 start date for Barnes-Sutton's trial so that she can undergo surgery in September for a health condition.
"The Court finds that Defendant has presented sufficient medical evidence to support a continuance until after the completion of her surgery, which will result in only a short continuance," Cohen said in his order.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment against Barnes-Sutton in 2019, alleging she extorted bribe payments from a DeKalb County subcontractor while she was the chair the Board of Commissioners' Finance, Audit & Budget committee.
Federal prosecutors alleged in the indictment that Barnes-Sutton sought monthly payments from an individual whose company had received a procurement award from the BOC related to construction of a wastewater treatment plant.
DeKalb County has been awarded a $949,811 grant to help unemployed young people aged 16 to 24 who are not in school to get jobs in construction and other industries.
The YouthBuild grant, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment & Training Administration, provides occupational skills to young people using a pre-apprenticeship model that includes classroom and workplace training. Participants can earn a high-school diploma or equivalency degree while getting the training.
The award to DeKalb County was one of the smallest of the 68 grants around the country that were announced on Thursday. The only other recipient in Georgia was the Bibb County School District in Macon, which is receiving $1.5 million.
DeKalb County began its YouthBuild program in 2019. At the time, the DeKalb Juvenile Court said it would use the funds to provide paid internships and training in partnership with the Solicitor-General’s office, WorkSource DeKalb and other community organizations.
"YouthBuild meets young people where they live, and wherever they are on their path to educational attainment and career success," Principal Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training Suzi LeVine said in a statement announcing the latest grants.
DeKalb County election officials are monitoring moves in the Georgia General Assembly to impose new requirements on voters, even though the state's top elections official has said there was no "systemic fraud" in the November 2020 election.
The Georgia House voted on party lines on Monday in favor of a bill (HB 531) that would make more than two dozen changes to election laws and impose new identification requirements on absentee voters.
"That's probably going to change everything we do. We just got voters to learn about how things happen and now everything's going to change," DeKalb Voter Registration and Elections Director Erica Hamilton told county commissioners during a committee meeting on Tuesday.
The state measure, sponsored by State Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem), who chairs the House Special Committee on Election Integrity, would limit the time period when voters can request an absentee ballot and reduce weekend hours for early voting.
"We're already anticipating what we'll need to do if this legislation passes as is. We'll need additional resources," Hamilton said. "We'll need to beef up our full-time staff so that we can always have a very knowledgeable base in the office and not have to worry about the temporary staff putting most of the weight."
Hamilton expressed concern about low voter turnout for current elections. She said voter turnout was only three percent in the Feb. 9 House District 90 election and advance voting has been low for the March 9 runoff. "Out of 20,000, only 240 have cast a ballot," she said.
Out of 5,000 eligible voters, only four have cast a ballot in Clarkston's March 16 special election to fill an unexpired term on the City Council, Hamilton said. (Clarkston's web site says the city has 6,281 registered voters.)
Commissioner Ted Terry said Tuesday he has been asked by the nonpartisan, non-profit National Vote At Home Institute to observe an election next Tuesday in Orange County, Calif., which has shifted to voting by mail. About 80 percent of voters in Orange County, the fifth-largest county in the nation, mailed in their ballots last year.
"I will keep my colleagues posted with any developments and provide a post-observation report with the purpose of better informing the DeKalb elections work group," said Terry, who chairs the Board of Commissioners' County Operations (OPS) Committee.
"The hurdles and outright barriers being constructed with Jim Crow-era precision are, in essence, whiting out the lines of conduct for a free and fair democratic process and our democratic republic," he said.
"The state is going to cost DeKalb County taxpayers millions and extra bureaucratic layers for the sole purpose of making it harder to vote -- not because of potential fraud ... but because the state knows that when more people express their free will and vote, they tend to lose," Terry said.
The Capitol Beat News Service reports the measure approved by the Georgia House on Monday would require absentee-ballot drop boxes to be located inside polling places or local elections offices. The bill was approved by a vote of 97-72. It will now be considered by the state Senate.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee has approved a separate bill that would limit absentee balloting to people who are over 65, are disabled or will be away from their precinct on the day of an election.
"I hope they will reverse course," Terry said. "We will not relent in our path to ensure voting rights and protections are afforded to all legal voting registered citizens."
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in November there were no irregularities that would have affected the results of the November election. "We've never found systemic fraud -- not enough to overturn the election," he said on ABC-TV's "This Week."
DeKalb County Commissioner Lorraine Cochran-Johnson will host a virtual Town Hall meeting on Thursday, March 11, at 6 p.m. to provide progress reports on existing and planned initiatives.
Heads of DeKalb County government departments will make presentations at the District 7 First Quarter Town Hall Zoom meeting. There will also be an update on Cochran-Johnson's partnership with PNC Bank and Operation HOPE to provide DeKalb County residents with financial dignity training, home ownership assistance, and resources for small business development and expansion.
"Economic development, home ownership and the fight against blight have seen significant advances, but COVID-19 has impacted service delivery in certain areas. I am eager to share our progress, departmental updates and future projects with District 7 residents," Cochran-Johnson says in a news release.
While Cochran-Johnson's District 7 includes the eastern half of DeKalb County, she says all county residents are welcome to register for the Town hall at http://bit.ly/3qOA8ID .
The Rockbridge Coalition is hosting an event Tuesday evening town hall meeting on how neighbors can organize on a precinct and block-by-block basis to empower their communities' power base.
Speakers will include NACP DeKalb County Branch President Teresa Hardy, Mega International CEO and founder Dr. Gerald Austin, and Karen Davenport, DeKalb Democrats' 2nd Vice Chair.
The Rockbridge Coalition says its mission is to enhance and preserve quality of life in the community thru proactive collaboration, promotion of best practices, active communication, expansion of government partnerships, and mobilization of direct action. The organization is chaired by Lance Hammonds.
Clarkston voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, March 16, to elect a City Council member. The special election is to fill a term on the City Council that expires at the end of this year.
Candidates who qualified to run for the post are Mark W. Perkins, Dean Moore and Shana "Tiny" McAllister. Moore served as a Clarkston council member from 2010 through 2017.
The deadline to register to vote in the election is Feb. 16. Voting will take place at the Clarkston First Baptist Church Family Life Center and the Clarkston Community Center.
A former Stone Mountain lawyer given a stiff sentence for mortgage fraud was among 73 people pardoned on Tuesday by President Donald Trump just hours before he left office.
Chalana McFarland, who owned the McFarland Law Firm in Stone Mountain, was sentenced in 2005 to 30 years in prison and jailed immediately after pleading guilty to 169 criminal counts of mortgage fraud. She was among 17 people indicted in the case.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said McFarland used the stolen identities of numerous victims to submit false fraudulent loan applications which used straw buyers and inflated appraisals as part of a property flip scheme between summer 1999 and March 2004.
Prosecutors said the scheme involved more than $20 million in fraudulently obtained mortgages mostly in the Waters Edge, Mountain Oaks, North Shore and Southland subdivisions in Stone Mountain and Lithonia in DeKalb County, but also involved properties in cities as far away as Griffin and Elberton.
McFarland had been serving her sentence in Florida, but was allowed last year to serve the rest of her sentence at her Marietta, Ga., home because of concerns about COVID-19 at the federal prison where she was being held.
Homeowners in Waters Edge noticed unusually high sales prices in their subdivision and notified local officials, according to a 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution report. "This case was made because vigilant citizens became aware of suspicious sales in their communities and told us about them," U.S. Attorney Bill Duffey said at the time.
The McFarland law firm had offices on Redan Rd. and N. Hairston Rd.