The ACC Commission has authorized the purchase of land on Old Lexington Road for a new fire station, ending years of indecision and controversy.
At the same meeting, the commission rejected a request to allow industrial activity on a 233-acre parcel on Old Elberton Road, funded two affordable housing developments and heard pleas from human rights advocates to address the lack of consistent water access in the Pinewoods neighborhood.
Lastly, the commission appointed Christine Howard as the new Clerk of Commission. Howard is the first clerk appointed following the retirement of Jean Spratlin, who served in the position for over 50 years. Howard had been serving as executive assistant to Mayor Kelly Girtz.
Contents
Fire station approved for Old Lexington Road
Rezoning on Old Elberton Road rejected
Request to address Pinewoods water woes
Fire station approved for Old Lexington Road
After years of debate and two full rounds of site selection, the ACC Commission has finally decided where to relocate fire station #5, which is fifty years old and has become unsuitable for current needs.
At their meeting last Tuesday, the commission narrowly approved a plan crafted by Commissioner Carol Myers to purchase land at 4730 Old Lexington Road. This site is located on the southeast side of the county in a rural area. Fire station #5, which is currently on Whit Davis Road, can now be rebuilt in the new location using SPLOST funding.
In addition to authorizing the purchase of the land, Myers’ plan directs staff to minimize the size of the new station, to shield light fixtures from view and to use planted buffers to conceal the building as much as possible. However, these mitigation efforts are not enough to satisfy the concerns of many residents who live nearby, who say that the new fire station will disturb their quality of life with noise pollution, loud sirens and extra traffic. The residents also have other concerns, including the large $437,000 cost of the Old Lexington Road property and a fear that moving fire station #5 to a rural area might actually hinder the fire department from rapidly responding to emergencies in the urban core of the city.
“This is about making sure public safety isn’t sacrificed for lower insurance rates or convenience,” Old Lexington Road resident Sabrina Ward told the commission during public comment. “Right now, the Old Lexington Road site might improve insurance numbers for a small portion of the county, but it does so by increasing response times to the area where most emergencies actually happen. That means longer waits for help when seconds matter.”
Other speakers repeated this line of reasoning, saying that fire stations should be located in areas of high population density which most frequently call for emergency help, not in sparsely-populated rural areas. Although this kind of argument might make sense to laypeople, ACC Fire Chief Nate Moss gave an expert rebuttal at the meeting.
“How do we meet the needs of the densely populated areas of Athens? With more trucks and more people,” Moss told commissioners. “Station location is independent of that. We need to provide services to those less populated areas. We need to reduce the overlap of coverage and increase coverage to areas that are underserved or not covered. What we are doing is stacking the deck at those busy areas with the resources we have or the resources we plan to acquire.”
Essentially, Moss was explaining that more fire trucks and fire fighters are what is needed in the urban core, not more fire stations. Enough fire stations already exist in town to respond quickly to emergencies, but the rural southeast part of the county does not have adequate coverage.
One final concern of residents was that having a fire station nearby might dramatically increase their property taxes. However, ACC Assistant Manager Andrew Saunders explained that government purchases for fire stations do not affect nearby home valuations.
Despite hearing nearly every argument made during public comment addressed or rebutted in some way – often by the fire chief himself – Commissioner Patrick Davenport continued to press forward in his crusade against the Old Lexington Road location.
“You’re really going to serve those farmers on the far-east side [with the Old Lexington Road location]…I’m not denying that,” Davenport said. “However, you’re increasing the response time for those residents [in the urban core].”
This argument directly contradicted Moss’ expert opinion, given just minutes earlier.
Myers remarked on the lack of trust some commissioners seem to have in the fire chief during her comments before the vote.
“I’m going to ask my colleagues to please listen to the recommendation that the fire chief has made, to respect his position and expertise. He is our chief. If we’re not listening to him [on matters of fire safety], we should be talking to our manager [about potentially replacing him].”
The final vote was 6-3 in favor of the Old Lexington Road location, with Commissioners Dexter Fisher and Stephanie Johnson joining Davenport in opposing the fire chief’s recommendation. Commissioner Ovita Thornton was absent.
Rezoning on Old Elberton Road rejected
The commission denied a request to convert 233 acres on Old Elberton Road from agricultural to employment-industrial zoning, as recommended by the planning commission. The parcel is immediately adjacent to Coile Middle School and is not an ideal location for industrial activity. It lacks sewer access and is located on a rural, two-lane road that the planning commission feels is unsuitable for frequent use by large trucks. Furthermore, the location lies within Athens’ “green belt” which previous commissions had designated as undeveloped agricultural land for the indefinite future.
The applicant included a nonbinding concept with their request that included four large buildings spanning over 2,000,000 square feet which they suggested could be used as industrial storage.
Ten Athens residents, including many who live near the proposed site, strongly opposed this plan, with some fearing it might end up as a data center. After public comment concluded, commissioners expressed their agreement with these residents’ concerns about industrial uses in this area, especially regarding data centers.
“I would like to see this community put a moratorium on data centers so we can really study this issue and its impact on our community,” Commissioner Melissa Link said.
At the end of the meeting, Link asked the ACC Manager’s Office to provide some advice on how the commission could act to regulate data centers going forward.
The commission unanimously rejected the Old Elberton Road rezoning request.
Request to address Pinewoods water woes
As the meeting was winding down, a group of ten people took the podium to speak about a pressing concern not on the commission’s agenda that greatly impacts the lives of hundreds of Athens residents.
APN previously reported that a branch of the ACC Library in the Pinewoods Estates community off US-29 lacked consistent access to water due to frequent shutoffs in the area. While the installation of a 120-gallon water tank has mostly resolved the issue for the library, access to water continues to be a problem for over three hundred families living nearby.
“There are 385 families [in Pinewoods Estates], including 291 students who attend Clarke County schools…[they] do not have reliable access to clean water. They don’t know if they will lose clean water for hours at a time or on what days,” Athens resident Catherine Shinholser told the commission. “I don’t think that access to clean water should be a privilege, but that’s where we are right now. And I’m not here to yell or get angry, I’m only here to ask for help and I want us to work together to figure out a solution to this. I want to figure out a way to connect the residents in Pinewoods to the city water supply. It’s 2025 and everyone deserves access to clean water every day.”
Shinholser is one of the organizers of this initiative, together with Pinewoods Library Branch Manager Evelyn Rushing. Rushing and Shinholser have created a petition you can sign if you support their efforts to connect the Pinewoods community to the city water supply.
However, as with any petition on change.org, after you sign, it will ask for a donation. APN does not recommend donating to this particular website, as the money will not go to local groups fighting for the causes you support – instead, it goes to the owners of change.org, a non-profit foundation. [CORRECTION: This article previously stated that change.org was a for-profit. This is no longer true, as of 2021.]
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