Morning Metro: Melton’s Will, Atlanta Parks Smoking Ban, and North Georgia Wine Buzz
Decatur Metro | July 17, 2012 | 10:01 am
- Restoration after rats requires Melton’s strong will [SaportaReport]
- Cicadas: The quintessential sound of summer [MANA]
- DeKalb school board rejects teacher layoffs [AJC]
- Atlanta passes city parks smoking ban [AJC]
- In praise of small cities [Atlantic Cities]
- North Georgia Vineyards are “ripe with promise” [AJC]
Photo courtesy of The_Gut via Flickr
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June 4, 2012 Morning Metro: Fox5 Covers Property Assessments, No Smoking at AS?, and Is Traffic Congestion a Good Thing? (15)
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December 19, 2011 Morning Metro: Holiday Trash Schedule, James Joyce Owner Takes Business Back and Problem Palms (3)
RE: Melton’s…
I am SO glad that PetCo opened just down the street so that I have another option for pet supplies other than Petsupermarket! I have been boycotting Petsupermarket since this whole thing with Melton’s happened.
Thank you Atlanta for having the leadership to protect the air in your city parks.
I think the links are messed up — when I clicked on the DeKalb school link it brought up the Cicadas link.
Anyway, having read the DCSS article on AJC, it reveals a stunning lack of leadership, even by the standards of DCSS, which is really saying something. The board voted for these cuts just weeks ago, and is now balking at actually implementing them. And the Board (namely, Eugene Walker) can’t be bothered to come up with an alternative solution, other than to tell Atkinson to find $20 million worth of cuts elsewhere. She won’t do it, of course, as she’s already refused to meaningfully cut the low-hanging fruit of assistant principals and central office staff.
The truth is that DeKalb has a government it cannot afford, and real cuts — including teachers — simply have to happen. We are lurching from budget crisis to budget crisis and trying to patch these up with large tax increases, both at the County and DCSS levels. It can’t continue. DCSS and the County commissioners fooled themselves into believing that the mid 2000’s tax revenue expansion was real, and they increased the size and expense of government at a rate much faster than population and inflation. It was all a mirage, and it needs to be unwound.
Sorry…I think there’s something screwy with writing and linking in Google Chrome. UNACCEPTABLE!
truth be told…when i was a little girl i thought that the sun made the sound i heard and not cicadas…clearly i wasn’t very smart….
Awww, I love that! Seems like something right out of an Uncle Remus story.
So I can’t relax in Piedmont Park with a stogie? Seems a little misguided.
Not for whoever is trying to relax downwind.
I smoke the stogie to cover up the offensive perfume from the woman upwind of me to which I’m highly allergic but nobody is worried about me. I could die instantly. I think I’m more at risk.
DISCLAIMER: The allergy claimed above for myself is a lie, but is real for many. I’m not a person affected by allergies, but I play one on local blogs. This doesn’t make the issue any less serious. Ban All Perfumes Now!
Ban everything I don’t like.
Yeah!! I asked my wife to buy me a shirt that I saw a man on Decatur Square wearing last week. It said: Stop Plate Tectonics.
Milton’s should be suing the owner of the building which allows the wood piles (try rat homes) to proliferate with a restaurant. Melton’s needs to own up to the fact that they had rats and ignored the signs…
we should support ALL the businesses in the shopping center.
Rats can and do live anywhere. Not sure why operating a firewood supplier in that location would or should give rise to a legitimate lawsuit.
Regarding the smoking ban…how can you go to jail for up to six months and not have it reported to the Georgia Crime Information Center.
Six months in jail for smoking in a park? Insane. Simply insane. The only way to explain that level of punishment for such a minor offense is spite.
What do you consider an appropriate penalty?
$50 fine.
I think it is a dumb law to begin with, but if I had to choose a penalty it would be a fine for certain. Not more than $100, which would seem more than sufficient to deter violations. Do you think smoking a cigarette in an open park is worthy of 6 months of a person’s life taken away from him or her?
No, I don’t think a six-month sentence is appropriate, but I do think it’s a worthwhile law and hope they are liberal with the community service and monetary fines, especially for repeat offenders. And it’s certainly not the only example in the criminal or civil code where somebody can get a sentence that’s out of proportion to the offense. But I also don’t think it’s a dumb law. I think smokers are only entitled to smoke where, when and in a manner their smoke doesn’t infringe on other people. In my ideal world, smokers would be required to wear some kind of re-breathing hood that captured all of their pollution.
That argument held some force as to restaurants. But parks? You could move about 5 feet to the left of a smoker and have no issues with the smoke. Certainly no more than if you were under a pavillion at Piedmont and someone had fired up a charcoal grill. But we’re not banning that, just the cigarettes. The reason isn’t that the charcoal grill does not have the potential to infringe. It makes more smoke than 10 cigarettes. It is social disapproval of the smoking.
It’s not even the smoke though that is annoying. It’s that smokers seem to think the ground is a huge ash tray and they can toss their butts anywhere.
As a side note, I was driving on Scott Blvd behind a large pickup truck from Gwinnett County this morning and the driver dropped his cigarette butt out the window onto the road. I would’ve yelled at him if I could’ve gotten close enough. I realize this isn’t part of this discussion; it just really made me angry. People, if you smoke, don’t litter!
You’re saying if I go to an event in the park and get there early enough to stake out a prime spot, and then someone comes along and starts blowing smoke in my face, it’s my responsibility to move? Sorry, no. And what AMB said, too — didn’t the AJC article mention a gallon of butts per lunch hour in Woodruff Park, or something of the kind?
Agree that this is about social disapproval of smoking, and I’m A-OK with that. It’s legal, so adults can choose to do it. But it carries all kinds of direct and indirect costs for everybody, and society doesn’t have to approve of that individual choice.
No that is not what I am saying and that hypothetical is surely incredibly rare. Of course you can always ask the smoker to move even if he does blow smoke in your face. Usually people work these things out, as opposed to simply banning the activity altogether. I understand the urge to ban things we disapprove of. I just differ with you on whether actually doing so is a good thing in this case (and likely many others).
Maybe I should be buying lotto tickets more often, because I’ve experienced that situation several times over the years. Sometimes asking the smoker politely to move or face another direction works out fine — until they forget and light up again, or another smoker joins them, or the wind clocks around. Sometimes the smoker opts to take a stand on their “right” to smoke in that place and time, regardless of how it affects other people. Something tells me we will never find a point of agreement here, because I dream of more stringent noise ordinances, and the resurrection and enforcement of laws against spitting in public, and big penalties for car stereos that rattle my fillings when I’m trapped at a stoplight. Contemporary life is much more stressful than it needs to be, in part because in so many contexts, we tend to put the onus of “working it out” on those experiencing an adverse effect instead of those creating a problem.
Our common ground is that I don’t like any of those things, either. I just don’t want to use the power of the state to force my preferred world into existence. The reality of modern life is that we are all put upon and inconvenienced by the acts of others. It’s been said (pretty much correctly) that “hell is other people.” Yet banning all the problems we perceive to be caused by other people will not usher in heaven.
Clarification: I didn’t literally mean someone blowing smoke in my face on purpose. I meant someone sitting nearby and smoking and their smoke blowing in my face.
They really should have a specific fine amount for offenses but nobody will actually go to jail for this. 6 months and a $1,000 fine is simply the maximum for any municipal violation for which no lesser sentence is specified. It will be similar to a speeding ticket. Under GA law, all traffic offenses are misdemeanors, meaning that a judge can send you to jail for a year for running a stop sign. That just doesn’t happen and there would be a huge uproar if it did.
Because it’s a civil and not a criminal violation.
Maybe we should plan a flash dining mob at Melton’s?
I don’t think the flashing would help my appetite or digestion.
Hilarious!
No really, let’s pack the place once a month to help get them through this rough patch.