Economist.com Cities Guide: Atlanta Briefing - May 2005

News this month

What's that odour?

Shirley Franklin, Atlanta’s mayor, ought to be riding high after being named one of America's best mayors in Time magazine's April 25th issue. But recently, her most important project—the $3.2 billion refurbishing of Atlanta’s sewer system—has been a target of criticism. A continuing trial of executives at Roland Pugh Construction, an Alabama firm, on bribery charges has raised allegations that Pugh representatives paid off Atlanta city employees to win sewer-related contracts. Ms Franklin has ordered a review of all sewer work awarded to Pugh—roughly $42m between June 2000 and September 2004.

Digital crime wave

Georgians have faced a recent rash of data thefts. On May 13th, the Georgia Technology Authority admitted that a computer programmer employed by the state had been arrested and fired in late April for downloading driver’s-license information onto his home computer. And on May 16th Georgia Southern University, in the south-eastern part of the state, reported that one of the computers in its university bookstore, which stored credit-card information for transactions back to 1996, had been breached. The university warned that students as well as anyone who had bought tickets to Georgia Southern football games could be at risk. This all followed a critical incident in January, when ChoicePoint, a firm in Alpharetta that traffics in personal data, admitted that it had sold information on some 145,000 people to identity thieves posing as small-business operators.

Runaway bride

Days before her wedding, Jennifer Wilbanks, a medical assistant living with her fiancé in Duluth, north-east of Atlanta, was reported missing on April 26th. She failed to return from an evening jog, prompting a nationwide search. But on April 30th, Ms Wilbanks finally called her fiancé, John Mason, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he kept her on the line long enough for police to trace her whereabouts. It seems her cold feet led her more than 1,000 miles away.

Though she originally told police she had been kidnapped by a Hispanic man and a white woman, she later admitted she had bought a bus ticket a week in advance. The city of Duluth is now debating whether to bill Ms Wilbanks for the estimated $60,000 spent searching for her. One local business is selling “Jennifer's High-Tailin’ Hot Sauce”, and the “runaway bride” herself is quietly receiving counselling. Meanwhile, her fiancé has been on national television to defend her. The wedding, apparently, has been rescheduled.

Open again

Louis Graham, DeKalb County’s chief of police, has re-opened five old child-murder cases. Between 1979 and 1981, some 30 blacks, both male and female, ranging in age from eight to 27 years old, were killed by various methods. The terror and uncertainty of the case has lingered, and many doubt that Wayne Williams, convicted of two of the murders in 1982, was responsible for all or even any of the murders. Following Mr Williams’s conviction, police said they believed he was the killer in the other murders, and 22 of the 29 outstanding cases were closed without further trial.

Mr Graham, who was an assistant police chief in Fulton County during the case, told reporters, “I never believed he did it”. He assigned a new squad to investigate five of the murders that took place in DeKalb County (the others were in Fulton County). Mr Graham was spurred by Frank Ski, a local radio deejay, who approached him after interviewing Mr Williams, believing he is innocent. The interview has since aired on Mr Ski’s show on V-103, a radio station with a large local black audience. But prosecutors in Fulton County, which handled the bulk of the missing and murdered children cases, say they remain convinced of Mr Williams's guilt.

Some close, others expand

Several local military bases are on the list of those to be closed, announced on May 13th by Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary. The biggest is Fort McPherson, a 488-acre Army base that opened in 1889 and employs 2,000 civilians, most of them living in East Point, south of Atlanta. Three other sites on the closure list include Fort Gillem in Forest Park, south-east of Atlanta; the Naval Air Station in Marietta, to the north-west; and the Naval Supply Corps School in Athens, a nearby town.

Though Atlanta is set to lose jobs, the state as a whole is expected to gain 7,400 new positions from the consolidation of existing bases. Fort Benning, for example, is set to expand, to the delight of nearby residents of Columbus, a city of 185,000 on Georgia’s south-western border with Alabama, which has had a hard time recovering from the 2001-2002 economic downturn. All this leaves Sonny Perdue, Georgia’s governor, in a sticky spot: he has vowed to fight for the doomed bases, but does not want to look as if he opposes bringing jobs to Columbus.

The worst of times

The small city of Lithonia, in DeKalb County, has attracted an unusual amount of media attention recently, mainly for being broke. First the city had to permanently park its police cars and rubbish trucks because it did not have the funds to pay insurance premiums; then the state Department of Revenue placed a lien against the city’s assets to pay unpaid payroll taxes.
Lithonia’s total debt is estimated at about $160,000, of which $70,000 is owed to the IRS. The city (of about 2,000) can be forced under state law to relinquish its charter if it fails to provide basic services; it could also relinquish that charter voluntarily, which would leave the county to clear the city’s debt.

Catch if you can

June 2005

Music Midtown

June 10th-12th 2005

Now in its 12th year, this annual festival just gets bigger and more amorphous. This year’s lineup is wide-ranging: it includes country stars Alan Jackson and Jo Dee Messina; hip-hop groups Public Enemy, Slick Rick and Common; rock favourites Keane, The Killers and The White Stripes; Francine Reed, a blues singer with a large local following; older pop acts John Fogerty (formerly of Clearance Clearwater Revival) and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; The Pixies, a seminal alternative band of the early 1990s that reunited in 2004; and Lou Reed, onetime leader of the Velvet Underground.

Expect a crush of people, mostly (though not exclusively) young and drinking beer out of plastic cups. Parking will be nearly non-existent and the MARTA will be crowded, though fortunately there are two stops near the festival grounds (N3 North Avenue and N2 Civic Centre).

Between North Avenue, Piedmont Ave and Ralph McGill Boulevard. Performances: Fri 6.15pm–12am; Sat 2pm–12am; Sun 2.30 pm–9 pm. Tickets: $75 for the weekend; individual days available. For more information, see the festival’s website.

More from the Atlanta cultural calendar