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Hey reader, it's Matt. This is the Rising Report.
The City Council met on Monday after a three-week summer break. Here are my top stories from that meeting.
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- District 12 gives $30,000 to Mothers Against Gang Violence
- Atlanta has a new tax to address the blighted property problem
- Waste collection service prices are increasing
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Tekesia Shields (back row, third from left) with 2024 Center for Civic Innovation fellows and staff and members of the Mothers Against Gang Violence community. (June 24, 2024)
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Credit: Center for Civic Innovation.
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District 12 funds violence prevention initiative
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One of my favorite beats is City Council. I'm usually the one behind ACPC's live-tweet account—those live-tweet threads were where I cut my teeth as a reporter. As ACPC grows and prepares to expand, I get to spend less time watching council meetings, but I try to catch as many as I can.
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I covered Monday's meeting and was thrilled the council approved a $30,000 grant from Antonio Lewis's District 12 to Mothers Against Gang Violence (MAG-Violence), a transformative violence prevention organization in Atlanta. I first met Tekesia "TK" Shields, the founder of MAG-Violence, through our shared connections as fellows at the Center for Civic Innovation. TK was part of last year’s cohort, and I started through this year’s program.
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MAG-Violence offers counseling referrals, employment referrals, parental support, parental advocacy, mentoring, various programming, and regular community engagement. As many of the testimonials I've heard can attest, this organization serves as a critical lifeline in the community.
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My fellowship cohort attended one of MAG-Violence's weekly family engagement meetings on July 24. I was blown away by the work TK and her team are doing.
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On that sweltering June evening, about forty community members gathered in a cinderblock building behind a barbershop off Cleveland Ave. A window air conditioning unit and box fan battled the outside temperature. The group—an equal mixture of adults, teens, and young children—seemed entirely unbothered by the heat and laser-focused on the discussion topic.
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The raw and honest conversation focused on the deep wounds of betrayal inflicted by family, police, the church, and the government. The weight of these experiences filled the room, but so did a sense of hope and resilience. At the core of it all was the reinforcement of a skill many of us struggle with: communicating and dealing with pain in healthy ways.
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TK founded MAG-Violence in 2017 as a vehicle for dealing with the betrayal she felt losing her son to mass incarceration. Her work over the years resonated with the community, as we saw firsthand after the discussion. My fellowship cohort chatted with a young man who lost a friend to gun violence. He’s dealt with his feelings of betrayal by launching the Dukardi Wear clothing brand in his friend’s memory.
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Mother's Against Gang Violence is a prolific organization and continuously creates community inputs for violence prevention.
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Where to plug in: MAG-Violence invites anyone to attend their Monday Family Engagement Sessions, held every Monday from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at 30 Cleveland Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30354.
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The Council aims to clean up the city with new blight tax
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Under the new legislation, the municipal court can tax blighted properties at 25 times the current general operating millage rate. The city passed a general operating millage rate of 8.52 in July. (Note: Property owners pay around five times as much in total millage rates, but the only city's general operating millage rate will increase for blighted properties.)
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What's the millage rate? It's an annual tax on every $1,000 in real property value.
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A property valued at $100,000 is typically taxed $852, but the tax would increase to $21,300 if it's declared blighted.
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The new legislation incentivizes owners to improve conditions on their blighted properties in two ways. First, the Blight Tax won't take effect if the property is declared blighted and the owner cleans it up within the same calendar year. Second, once a blighted property is cleaned, the owner will receive a two-year tax break, reducing the 8.52 millage rate by half (saving $426 a year on our $100,000 property example).
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District 6 Council Member Liliana Bakhtiari raised concerns about the impact of this new tax on low-income property owners struggling with upkeep. Atlanta's Deputy Chief Financial Officer Youlanda Carr explained that the legislation is written so that the Blight Tax applies only to uninhabited properties.
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Revenue collected from the Blight Tax will go into the city's general operating fund unless the blighted properties are in one of the city's six tax allocation districts, which are specific areas designated for reinvestment. The revenue will be applied to the respective tax allocation district in those cases.
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Where to plug in: Questions, comments, or concerns about the Blight Tax can be raised at Finance/Executive Committee (FEC) meetings. The next FEC meeting is at City Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at 1:30 p.m. Each public commenter is allowed three minutes to speak; unlike full council meetings, time cannot be granted to another speaker.
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Other legislative highlights
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- Solid waste rates are going up 3.5% this year, with an additional 2% each year over the next two years.
- The city will create a $500,000 Business Impact Recovery Fund to support small businesses impacted by natural disasters. This fund will be in addition to the one created in June for small businesses impacted by water main breaks.
- Urban Farm Ormwood will become Red's Farm Preserve, a new public park including urban farming. The new park is named after Brian "Farmer Red" Harrison, who, before he passed away in 2023, created the urban farm as a community green space.
- Partners for Home will conduct a summer point-in-time count of the number of unhoused individuals living in Atlanta.
Notable legislation introduced:
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- $1.3 million for food, shelter and housing for unhoused immigrants. This legislation will go before the Finance/Executive Committee on Aug. 14 at 1:30 p.m.
- $2.25 million Department of Homeland Security grant for weapons of mass destruction emergency preparedness. This legislation will go before the Public Safety/Legal Administration Committee on Aug. 12 at 1:00 p.m.
- $7 million grant for a pilot program to provide trauma-informed case management services to undetained undocumented individuals. This legislation will go before the Finance/Executive Committee on Aug. 14 at 1:30 p.m.
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As always, I welcome your tips and suggestions! You can reply to this email with any leads or stories you think ACPC should cover.
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I'll be traveling next week, so I won't be able to provide live-tweet coverage of the city council committee meetings.
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This work isn't possible without our readers' support; every monthly recurring donation helps ACPC expand its coverage. Become a monthly donor today!
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P.S. If you see something in this week’s newsletter that you think someone else should see, you can forward this email to them directly!
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Stories from our friends
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Kay’s motivation to get Atlanta’s Korean diaspora to participate in the democratic process comes from her own history. She grew up in South Korea during its tumultuous post-war period, witnessing the country’s struggle to democratize. She watched her father fight (and suffer the consequences of) an authoritarian regime. When she talks to her audiences, she says she tries to convey the “preciousness” of voting to the Korean community.
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...in East Point, the luxury of enjoying a public swimming pool has been a fad of the past since the 1980s. And the racial history of the city plays a role in its lack of public aquatic spaces...
“East Point has no swimming pools. It’s a big city, 38,000 people, zero swimming pools,” Palmer said.
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Where to plug in: The East Point City Council meets next on Monday, Aug. 19, at 6:30 PM in the Council Chambers, located at 2757 East Point St., East Point, Georgia 30344. The public can sign up for comment with the city clerk between 6:00 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
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The flaw found by Parker was different from the two previously reported ones. This one would allow any user of the portal to bypass the screen that requires a driver’s license number and submit the cancellation request without it.
The Secretary of State “needs to consider this an all-hands-on-deck” moment “and hire multiple testing and security firms and stop relying on the public’s goodwill and pro bono security researchers to test the quality of their website,” Edwards said. “At this point, we should assume there are other subtle bugs that could have potentially serious impact.” Edwards said that it would have been easy for a malicious actor to automate cancellation requests to get around security measures built into the website and submit thousands of them.
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Where to plug in: Check your voter registration status through the GA My Voter Page.
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