All:We are receiving requests to check on the status of the ethics complaint filed against Tina D'Aversa by Neal O'brien in the Fall of 2009.
Various statements of supposed fact have been left in our comments section. In order to figure out where things truly stand, we have contacted City Manager Chris Lagerbloom in the hopes of shedding some light on the topic.
Once we have that information in hand, we will post it here on Accessmilton.com.
Thank you,
Rescue brings hope to Haiti natives
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The City of Milton/Hopewell Youth Association Spring 2010 Recreation Baseball Season starts with practices on Saturday, Feb. 6.
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Incorporated on December 1, 2006, the City of Milton is a distinctive community that embraces small-town life and heritage while preserving and enhancing the city's rural character. The City of Milton is committed to maintaining the unique quality of life for its constituents while efficiently delivering essential services to residents and businesses in an interactive community environment. For more information, visit www.cityofmiltonga.us, or call 678-242-2500.
by Jonathan Copsey / Appen Newspapers
"OUT OF THE CELLAR" WINES
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Media Contact: Jason Wright
Courtesy T-Mobile
Double Click To Enlarge Image.T-Mobile conducted a thorough review of alternative site options and no existing cell sites or properties in commercial or industrial areas are available to meet coverage needs in this area
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January 18, 2010 MILTON - For subdivisions demanding speed humps and other traffic calming devices on their streets, Milton may have some bad news.
At last week's council work session, the consensus was residents would pay for traffic calming devices.
There is no way to reduce the volume of traffic, but speeds can be controlled.
Homeowners' associations (HOAs) have petitioned the city to install speed bumps and similar devices to slow vehicles down. Milton's current traffic calming policy does not specifically address such petitions.
"We have serious problems regarding speeders in our neighborhood. The speeding is atrocious,"
said Bret Cole of the Hopewell Plantation HOA.According to Cole, Hopewell Plantation serves as an oft-used shortcut for traffic. "There's no way of controlling that right now," he added.
To combat this problem, Public Works Director Carter Lucas proposed a series of changes to the policy to formalize and regulate a system for accepting applications for traffic calming devices. Under his suggestions, an application would go like this: A formal request for speed control measures is made of the city.
City employees would then go out and conduct a traffic study to determine if the street meets traffic volume limits (between 400 and 4,000 vehicles a day) and if 15 percent of those vehicles speed in excess of 10 mph the posted limit.
If the road is eligible, an application fee is paid and residents sign a petition of approval (which requires 75 percent of the affected residents' signatures). The city designs and then installs it.
The questions put before council were "how fast is too fast?" and "how much should the subdivision pay?"
Under the current guidelines, of the 11 subdivisions that have requested traffic calming measures, only seven met the traffic volume requirements. Of those, most speeds on the roads were clocked in at between 5 mph and 8 mph over the speed limit. Only White Columns subdivision had speeds much higher – the average there was a full 16 mph too fast. Council was unanimous in their support of making the speeding threshold between 5 mph and 8 mph, which would allow most of the other subdivisions to apply.
Of more concern was cost. Speed control measures, depending on the design and material, cost between $2,000 and $5,000, said Lucas.
By attaching a fee to the approval process and requiring HOAs to foot some of the bill, the city can weed out those communities that are not entirely serious about putting in the measures. According to Lucas, a cheap material, such as rubber, would be covered 50-50 by the city and the subdivision. For anything different – such as brick – the HOA would fund the difference.
Council member Karen Thurman raised to question of installing such measures on open roads, where speeding is just as much of a problem as in the subdivisions.
"In south Florida they have them [traffic calming devices] everywhere you go,"
said Thurman. "And some of those roads are more than 35 mph."Mayor Joe Lockwood agreed. "My road is 35 mph and myself and my neighbors would love to put speed calming devices on our road, but it's not a neighborhood," he said. "We'd open a can of worms if we went [putting traffic calming devices on roads with speed limits] over 35 miles an hour."
City attorney Ken Jarrard said Milton must comply with Georgia law for what is safe to put in the road.
Rachel Joy Scott spoke before several assemblies of the student body about five codes of ethics that each child should strive to live by.
By the end of the school day, more than 400 of these children had pledged to follow by Rachel's words of guidance.
What is more surprising is that Rachel has been dead for 10 years now.
Rachel was the very first victim of the Columbine massacre that occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado April 20, 1999, the first of 13 victims to be brutally gunned down by two classmates.
Through the efforts of her family and friends and the moving words she kept in a half-dozen notebooks, Rachel's words preaching kindness, understanding and love have reached the ears of more than 12 million people, including presidents, athletes and actors.
Her story was brought to Northwestern by the student body. A poll had been taken regarding bullying and the vast majority of students admitted to some form of bullying.
To combat that, the students searched for a program aimed at teaching respect and kindness.
"We do a lot of things for respect and bullying, and this program really helps,"
said Principal Bruce Fraser. "It has made a huge difference."Through five simple steps, Rachel predicted that the world can be made a better place, so long as everyone does their part. They were included in a short essay she wrote just six weeks before her death.
The first code is "Look for the best in others." Only by getting to know the personality within people can one truly get to know them.
First impressions are not always correct. Only by making an effort to make a friend can eliminate you prejudices.
"Choose positive influences."
Her killers chose April 20 because it was the birthday of Adolf Hitler, a man they idolized. Rachel, on the other hand, chose to admire Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager killed during World War II. Like Anne, Rachel's life is remembered most through her journal writings and ideals of a better world. You get out of life what you put into it, and keeping positive influences leads to a positive life."Kind words and acts of kindness"
can open up doors normally closed. Rachel's kindness touched many students in her school. Through the Rachel's Challenge program, her message has touched millions."It's really touching and really sad,"
said one woman who saw the program and whose son is a seventh grader at Northwestern. "He was very touched by it. He thought it was good.""This is probably the most motivated middle school I've ever had,"
said speaker J.B., who was amazed at the reaction of the Northwestern students. "You don't normally get that in middle schools."The final code is by far the most important: "Start a chain reaction" and pass along her message and accept her challenge of making a better world.
Courtesy by Jonathan Copsey / Appen Newspapers
Jones.Courtesy Jim Tharpe / Atlanta Journal Constitution
She has a husband, four kids and two dogs -- one named “Hotshot,” the other, “Rocket.” She likes to garden. She often reads herself to sleep at night.
Jan Jones also just happens to be the most powerful woman ever to sit in the male-dominated Georgia
Legislature. The 51-year-old Jones, a Republican lawmaker from Milton, was last week elected speaker pro tem of the state House of Representatives, becoming the first woman in Georgia history to hold the title.By week’s end, she was still trying to get settled in her role as well as her new Capitol office, just around the corner from House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge). Her cellphone’s voice-mail box was jammed, and she was struggling to keep up with her e-mail. She suddenly had a lot of new friends.
Her lawyer husband, Kalin, and her kids -- ages 14 to 22 -- were not overly impressed.
“My kids laugh when they [reporters] say that,” she said of the reaction to her new title and its “most powerful”
prefix. “They think of me as Mom. They think of politics as my hobby. Your family keeps you grounded.”This is Jones’ fourth term as a state lawmaker, her eighth year at the Capitol. She was majority whip before she was elected to her current job. Friends describe her as a reserved woman who doesn’t mince words. Just ask about her political role models.
Jones will probably come to appreciate those complications even more in her new role. She was immediately inundated with praise as she held the House gavel for the first time
State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) fears Jones will use her newfound power to push a bill that could re-create the county. That House resolution has been lingering in the
Legislature for four years.“It’s a bad idea, and she’ll use her ascension as a platform to push it,”
Fort said. “It’s a bad idea for Atlanta, and it’s a bad idea for the region. Essentially what you would have is the Balkanization of metro Atlanta.”But Jones also has her fans. They see her as a fresh, new beginning after the sex scandal that forced former Speaker Glenn Richardson from office.
State Rep. Joe Wilkinson (R-Sandy Springs) described the new speaker pro tem as a quiet woman not to be underestimated. She was a key player in the controversial creation of his city out of north Fulton County five years ago, Wilkinson said.
“She was the one who came up with the financial calculation to prove we, as the city of Sandy Springs, would be viable,”
Wilkinson said. “She would have won MVP in that fight.”Jones was born the middle of three children in Warner Robins, just south of Macon. Her father, Gerald Slaughter, was in the U.S. Air Force, and her mom, Mary, spent her days raising kids. The family moved a lot, living in California, Alaska and Labrador, but always seemed to end up back in Georgia.
"Dublin, Ga., [where her parents grew up] was always home base,”
Jones said. “We’d move around the country and the world, but we’d come back there for summers.”Jones got interested in journalism while the family lived in California. She and a friend attended the trial of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, arriving at the courthouse before dawn to line up for a seat.
“My mom always said that she always wanted her kids to come back to Georgia,”
Jones said. “When it was time to go to college, it was the only offer we had on the table.”She met her husband while he was at UGA and he was in law school there. They got married, and she went back to UGA to get a master's in business administration.
Jones and her husband lived in the Garden Hills neighborhood of Atlanta for 12 years, and have lived in what is now the Milton area for the past decade or so.
During that time, Jones has held sway in a variety of roles, marketing executive for Home Box Office, stay-at-home mom (for 10 years) and self-described “community activist.”
Jones got involved in community issues, both in Garden Hills and north Fulton, once trying to annex all of northwest Fulton into Alpharetta.
She said she never got interested in running for office until the 2000 census created three districts out of former Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter’s (R-Johns Creek) seat. It was Burkhalter, Jones said, who encouraged her to run for one of the open seats.
“He said, ‘Pick issues you care about. And pick something that matters to you.' "
For her, Jones said that means the creation of Milton County -- she thinks Fulton County is too big to be effectively governed -- and education.
The decision to run for office in 2002, she said, was made only after discussion with her husband and family. And it came after years of growing frustration from an activist working outside the system.
"I was tired of knocking on the door from the outside,”
she said. “I’d been doing that for 15 years. It was an opportunity to be on the inside and make a difference.”Now she is very much on the inside. Republicans control the House, the state Senate and the governor’s office. She said the prospect of life under the microscope as a GOP leader doesn’t bother her.
“My husband and I are pretty low-key people,”
she said. “A big night for us is to go out on Saturday night to dinner and them come home and get in bed and read.”Jones, however, can quickly become the politician. Just ask her if she sees her current job as a launchpad for higher office – governor, perhaps?
“I could just as easily see myself in four years running for something else as I could deciding I’ve had a great stint in public service and I’m ready to have a private life again,”
Jones said. “I don’t see either as more likely than the other.”
