The Athens Mayor and Commission hosted their October Work Session meeting Tuesday evening to discuss proposed and active development projects.
SPLOST Project Administrator Diana Jackson, detailed the proposed improvements to Memorial Park. The park will undergo four phases: forebay revamp, Pondside Drive improvements, entrance parking lot renovation and pond revamp.
The improvements to Pondside Drive includes making the road a one-way so that park visitors will be better able to predict what direction traffic will come from. There will also be new raised crosswalks built for further safety measures.
Jackson also proposed to upgrade park amenities, improve pond infrastructure and renovate the parking lot panic shelter, if the budget allows. The main four phases are estimated to cost $4.67 million in total.
“We’ve not managed it well at this point and we need to put that on a predictable life cycle depending on storm events, of course, but that’s just part of it,” Athens-Clarke County Government Manager Blaine Williams said. “My whole point is: In this design, let’s make it easier and hopefully cheaper to maintain what we have.”
SPLOST Project Administrators Derek Doster and Michael Clanahan presented the improvement project to the Atlanta Highway Corridor. This project consists of the reconstruction and implementation of sidewalks on two sections of Timothy Road and on Mitchell Bridge Road.
The second section of the Timothy Road project, from Loop 10 to Rhodes Drive, will include a ten-foot shared-use path, which will impact six parcels located on that segment. The first section of the Timothy Road project, from Skyline Parkway to Loop 10, will impact 46 parcels, and the Mitchell Bridge project will impact four parcels.
Interim Transportation and Public Works Director Rani Katreeb spoke to Project number 25 of the Bike and Pedestrian Improvements Program. This project includes expanding sidewalks and bike paths to eliminate gaps, the removal of sidewalk obstructions, pilot projects and creating “complete streets.”
The creation of “complete streets” refers to incorporating bike lanes and sidewalks on every road so as to give residents more transportation options than just driving. Katreeb pointed out telephone poles that were built into the center of a sidewalk on Lumpkin Street which creates safety concerns, especially for those in wheelchairs. The facilitators of such utilities will be held responsible for reconstructing that segment of the sidewalk once it has undergone the removal of such obstructions.
Another introduced project, called the pilot project, consists of testing out one possible solution per year to try and solve safety and traffic concerns. This will allow for the committee to discover what works and deserves more funding.
SPLOST Project Administrator Daniel Garren, Athens-Clarke County Fire Chief Jeff Scarbroughand Battalion Chief Nate Mossspoke about the plans for the relocation and construction of Fire Station Number Five. The fire station is currently planned to be located within District One, because current response times to that area are slower.
“A fire … can double from every 30 seconds to every 120 seconds…you can bleed out [in] five minutes time,” Chief Scarbrough said. “If you’re in cardiac arrest, for every minute that you don’t have good CPR performed, the survival rate drops from 70% to 10%.”
District One Commissioner Patrick Davenport was against this proposition, as majority of the residents of that district feel as though the fire department would be taking away valuable farming land. Mayor Kelly Girtz rebutted Davenport’s concerns.
“When I think about the core responsibilities of a local government, safety provision really is the bottom line,” Girtz said.
Doster spoke once again on behalf of the Broadband Connectivity Enhancement project to give the commission an update on the progress.Thus far, the team has discovered target spots as to where internet access should be expanded to. They found that less than 1% of the Athens area is currently classified as unserved when it comes to internet accessibility.
The next steps in the project are to start an educational campaign about the importance of internet access for safety and school needs. The team’s goal is to know what to build and where to expand internet access by the end of 2024.
