Commissioners Carol Myers and Patrick Davenport have proposed two separate plans for how to move forward on replacing the ACC Fire Department’s aging fire station #5. These plans are irreconcilable and the one ultimately adopted by the commission may have far reaching safety implications for southeast Athens.
Commissioners also examined requests for funding affordable housing at two separate locations, considered changing the structure of local advisory boards and discussed the lack of funding available in SPLOST 2020 to maintain government facilities at their meeting last Tuesday.
Contents
Dueling plans for fire station #5
Funding affordable housing
Changes to the ACC government’s advisory boards
Facilities maintenance funding gap
Dueling plans for fire station #5
The ACC Commission has had great difficulty in deciding where to relocate Athens’ aging fire station #5, causing a controversy that has been ongoing for years. Next month, the commission may finally make their decision. Or not – it depends on which commission-defined option is ultimately approved on October 7.
Myers, who chairs the site-selection committee, crafted a plan to approve the Old Lexington Road area for the new station but also to address the concerns of people living there. If her plan passes, the commission would direct staff to minimize the footprint of the new fire station, to shield light fixtures from view and to use planted buffers to conceal the station as much as possible so as not to disturb the neighbors.
These efforts will not likely be enough to satisfy residents living nearby, who are very concerned about the traffic, noise and light pollution that a new fire station in their backyards would bring. This is why Davenport has crafted an alternate plan to deny the Old Lexington Road location and require the fire department to look for a new site outside the area which they deem optimal for safety reasons.
The site selection committee chose the Old Lexington Road location to better serve the needs of southeast Athens, to cut response times and help maintain the county’s excellent Insurance Services Office rating. The response times of emergency services in particular are very important when a fire does break out, but perhaps even more so during certain medical emergencies.
“For every minute that someone may have suffered a cardiac arrest and there’s not viable CPR being given to them, there’s a 10% drop in their chances of survival. Five minutes could mean someone’s life,” ACC Fire Chief Nate Moss explained to commissioners at last week’s meeting. “There are a lot of unknown factors [that control response times] when it comes to traffic conditions and weather, but location of a fire station is something that you all can control. This is a very, very key investment in the community.”
If the commission chooses Davenport’s plan over the one drafted by Myers, it could have adverse health implications for 800 Athens residents living in southeast Athens who are currently unserved by a nearby fire station. It could threaten the county’s ISO rating, causing some Athenians to pay more for home insurance going forward, whether they live in southeast Athens or not. It would also throw the site selection process into chaos, delaying construction for months or even years while also introducing a political element to a process otherwise governed by rational criteria.
UPDATE (10/7/25): The ACC Commission chose Myers’ plan in a 6-3 vote, with Commissioners Dexter Fisher and Stephanie Johnson joining Davenport in voting no. Commissioner Ovita Thornton was absent.
Funding affordable housing
The Athens Housing Authority is requesting that the ACC government provide a zero interest loan to fund two upcoming affordable housing projects, including the Classic City Heights project on Atlanta Highway and phase two of the redevelopment of Bethel Midtown Village.
Classic City Heights will be a 68-unit apartment complex intended for senior citizens with incomes at or below 70% of the median for the Athens-Clarke County area. A quarter of the units will be reserved for those of very low incomes (below 30% of the area median). The Athens Housing Authority is requesting $1 million from the county’s affordable housing fund to supplement their primary source of funding, which is the federal low-income housing tax credit. In exchange, the housing authority will provide the ACC government a payment in lieu of taxes on the property to simulate the taxes they would be required to pay if they were a private entity.
The housing authority is also asking for a $3.5 million loan from the county’s affordable housing fund for phase two of the redevelopment of Bethel Midtown Village (now known as “The View at NoDA”). While it was originally hoped that the $39 million the commission allocated to the Bethel redevelopment in SPLOST 2020 would help fund the entire project, inflation has complicated matters as it has for many projects. The Bethel / north downtown Athens redevelopment in particular has had large cost overruns for reasons that are somewhat unclear but extend beyond mere inflation, including rising interest rates and “challenging site conditions,” according to the commission’s agenda item. This required many millions of dollars in additional funding from the local government to complete the 120 units in phase one, with nothing to show for phases two through five to date.
Phase two will include another 146 units. This time, the units will be dedicated to residents of Bethel Homes and other low-income Athenians, unlike phase one, which are marketed widely as mixed-income units.
This is fortunate for these residents, since the viability of phases three through five is currently unclear and the old Bethel Homes apartments that remain are in an advanced state of decay.
UPDATE (10/7/25): The ACC Commission voted unanimously to fund both developments.
Changes to the ACC government’s advisory boards
The ACC Commission’s Government Operations Committee has released a long list of recommendations that would change the way the local government handles resident advisory boards and other authorities and commissions. If the ACC Commission passes the recommendations as they currently exist, the number of boards and authorities would be reduced by merging related boards, board members would receive a $25 stipend for each meeting they attend (with a maximum of one stipend a month) and the process for appointing members to some boards would change significantly.
For example, the Construction Board of Appeals would be discontinued if these recommendations pass and their role would be delegated to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. The dormant Commission on People with Disabilities would also be discontinued, since their role is currently being filled by the Human Relations Commission. Finally, the six Tax Allocation District Advisory Committees would be consolidated into a single committee.
Facilities maintenance funding gap
Since the 2020 pandemic, inflation has raised the price of nearly everything, causing a strain on the budgets of households and governments alike. While the federal American Rescue Plan Act helped to ease the urgency of funding basic government services somewhat, Athens’ share of ARPA is now almost depleted. President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade wars have done nothing to improve the situation, sparking new inflation while adding uncertainty to global markets.
Making matters worse, the ACC government had the misfortune of approving a large, 12-year SPLOST program right before all of this happened. Nearly every project on that list has been impacted, including a $7.9 million project that provides capital funding to maintain local government facilities over their lifecycle. The project was intended to fund things like generators, HVAC equipment, facility walls and finishes, plumbing repairs, facades and roof replacements, but now all of this necessary work is vastly underfunded.
While there were other sources of funding that could have made up the difference, the commission spent most of their ARPA funding on addressing Athens’ social needs, such as poverty and homelessness, and on things like affordable housing and youth activities. Very little was spent on infrastructure or general expenses. Similarly, the commission’s yearly budget negotiations since 2020 have mostly focused on addressing immediate concerns and on lowering taxes where feasible, not on long-term capital needs which have been little considered.
All of this has brought the local government to where it is now. There is currently a need to spend over $7 million on repairing or replacing ACC government facilities and equipment in this fiscal year, but less than $1 million is available through SPLOST to pay for it. Even if this backlog was somehow filled, the problem would not go away and the funding gap would continue in future years as shown in the graph below.
All commissioners agree that they should spend SPLOST money that is available on facilities maintenance. But Myers briefly held up approving this item so that she could urge her colleagues to take this problem seriously, going forward.
“When I looked at that chart and saw how little [we had in] SPLOST and how much work was due, I really wanted to emphasize this to staff and to my colleagues that we get an updated facilities and equipment lifecycle plan as we’re preparing for our next budget,” Myers said. “These are long-term things where most of us might not be here [on the commission] in 15 or 20 years when some of these things are falling apart, so it’s easy to push it off, but we need to continue to look at this.”
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