A side note- I’m here for your investigation and insight. But your writing style is a joy as well. Truly had me laughing with your remark about a kitchen renovation. Thank you as always for your relentless curiosity and compassion.
Great post, thank you. Having said that, I nonetheless think that reducing lawlessness on MARTA trains and stations is important to cultivating a widespread confidence that MARTA represents safe transit. As always, consistent enforcement is much more important than harsh punishment.
Thanks for this piece George and thanks for the humanity you give everyone you cover in your work. People are so much more than their circumstance and being poor is not a crime. Fare evasion enforcement like library fees and parking tickets only punish the poor. Wishing Christian an easier time on MARTA and hoping our city moves towards plentiful housing and services and away from punishment as it is keeping more people in danger than it keeps safe.
City of Atlanta lets Fulton Assessors short it of up to $125M / yr by grossly under-appraising high-value commercial towers. APS loses out by another $250M. The County by some $200M.
Just to put that $10M screw-up in context.
Interestingly, three members of the Mayor's new Policy Team are fully informed about this huge source of inequity. Which is also a huge opportunity to reduce inequity. If big commercial paid its way, the extra resources, intelligently spent, could be transformational for Atlanta. Nothing else comes close. Time for some pressure on the Assessors to turn this around.
Thanks George. I am constantly puzzled that funds designated for critical purposes such as you cite don’t make it through the bureaucracy. Where is the bottleneck? It’s not that $10m will solve all the problems but its loss certainly is one of the problems.
A side note- I’m here for your investigation and insight. But your writing style is a joy as well. Truly had me laughing with your remark about a kitchen renovation. Thank you as always for your relentless curiosity and compassion.
Great post, thank you. Having said that, I nonetheless think that reducing lawlessness on MARTA trains and stations is important to cultivating a widespread confidence that MARTA represents safe transit. As always, consistent enforcement is much more important than harsh punishment.
Thanks for this piece George and thanks for the humanity you give everyone you cover in your work. People are so much more than their circumstance and being poor is not a crime. Fare evasion enforcement like library fees and parking tickets only punish the poor. Wishing Christian an easier time on MARTA and hoping our city moves towards plentiful housing and services and away from punishment as it is keeping more people in danger than it keeps safe.
City of Atlanta lets Fulton Assessors short it of up to $125M / yr by grossly under-appraising high-value commercial towers. APS loses out by another $250M. The County by some $200M.
Just to put that $10M screw-up in context.
Interestingly, three members of the Mayor's new Policy Team are fully informed about this huge source of inequity. Which is also a huge opportunity to reduce inequity. If big commercial paid its way, the extra resources, intelligently spent, could be transformational for Atlanta. Nothing else comes close. Time for some pressure on the Assessors to turn this around.
Thanks George. I am constantly puzzled that funds designated for critical purposes such as you cite don’t make it through the bureaucracy. Where is the bottleneck? It’s not that $10m will solve all the problems but its loss certainly is one of the problems.
There will always be a place for you at our table, George.