TODAY'S ISSUE: Former Mayor Brett Harrell Remembers Time In Office
ELLIOTT BRACK: Highway 316: Toll Road Would Be Welcomed Improvement
UPCOMING: Figure Skating, Recycling and Spanish Class at Chamber
NEWS: State of the County to be Tuesday
TODAY'S QUOTE: How To Draw Upon Some of Your Talents

BEST OF 2003: Click here to see the best of cartoonist Bill McLemore's work from 2003.

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"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

-- Humorist Robert Benchley (1889-1945).

TODAY'S ISSUE
Ex-mayor of Snellville recalls images from time in office
By Brett Harrell
Ex-mayor, City of Snellville
Special to GwinnettForum.com

JAN. 6, 2004 -- I so thoroughly enjoyed my tenure as Mayor of Snellville. It was an extraordinary experience. I am eternally grateful to our citizens for allowing me the honor and opportunity; the Council for their support and guidance; and a tremendous City of Snellville staff that truly accomplished remarkable improvements. I will always remember and treasure our many successes, but in Gwinnett, a county of tremendous success and affluence, we often miss the images of the less fortunate and troubled among us.

I will always remember these images from my tenure as Mayor as well:

• A mother's body lying lifeless in a public parking lot just minutes after she placed a shotgun under her chin and took her own life in the same spot her son had committed suicide one year to the day earlier.
  
  
• The horror in the eyes of loving grandparents arriving at their daughter’s home to take custody of their grandchildren from an un-inhabitable dwelling. It was so unkempt that the stench forced me to cover my nose and mouth three feet from the front door and brought water to my eyes as I entered.
  
  
• Mrs. S who has cared for her bed-ridden husband in their home for so long that the toll of care and confinement is exacted on her own mental faculties. She asked me for help, convinced that in the middle of the night, someone was using a nail to scratch the mortar from between the bricks on her home. Mrs. S slept with a pillow and blanket on the floor by a different door to her home each night in hopes of catching the imaginary vandals.
  
  
• Mrs. C is an elderly woman who has lived alone for many years now with rarely a visitor. She first called to have limbs trimmed from blocking her view as she exited her driveway. She then called with a septic problem, a furnace problem, and a cable TV problem. Her only true problem was loneliness. All she really wanted was company which for a few minutes from time to time I gladly provided.
  
  
• A high school age gothic guy that frequented Briscoe Park for some time. His presence raised suspicions with staff---dressed in black, with lots of chains, carrying a book, and always alone. I asked if anyone had spoken to him. No one had, so I did. He was not so scary; he just did not quite fit in, did not have any friends, and could use a job. I made a few suggestions and do not know if they worked, but for a few minutes one afternoon, this gothic guy had a friend and enjoyed a positive conversation.
  

There are many others, some sad, some peculiar, some devastating like the mass of twisted metal at the site of the billboard collapse that took the lives of three innocent, young men while miraculously sparing another. I accumulated thousands of images during my service as Mayor these are but a few. What do you see?

ELLIOTT BRACK
We failed to improve Highway 316 in 1970s, which hurts today
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher
GwinnettForum.com

JAN. 6, 2004 -- It was back in 1981, and a group of Gwinnettians and highway department officials were gathered on the actual roadway of what is now Georgia Highway 316, just west of the present bridge at Highway 120. We were there for the dedication of the second part of Highway 316, which went only from the 120 bridge about five miles to what was then U.S. Highway 29 just past the CSX rail tracks.

Danny Altobelli was the principal speaker, as a federal highway official, that day. After retirement, he joined later with then DOT Commissioner Tom Moreland to form the engineering firm of Moreland-Altobelli, which is now headquartered on Beaver Ruin Road in Norcross. Other dignitaries were present, including Governor George Busbee,
County Commission Chairman Charles Ashworth, and future DOT Commissioner Wayne Shackelford, if memory serves.

We recall the day because of what was not dedicated: four bridges. We remember talking that day to people about the ramifications of the decision to change four road intersections to at-grade crossing, instead of bridges. The four bridges that didn't get built were to have been at Collins Hill Road, Georgia Highway 120, Hurricane Shoals Road, and at U.S. Highway 29. Think of how improved these road intersections would be today with bridges at these locations, instead of red-lighted crossings!

The 1973 international crisis in oil was the major reason these four bridges were taken off the construction list. This first major oil crisis of post-World War II had shocked our nation. People were not used to standing in long lines for gasoline, and not used to paying the higher and higher prices for gas. Those prices of 1970's seem cheap compared today to the $1.50 or so a gallon Americans pay.

With the oil crisis, and the new American determination to drive smaller cars, revenues from the gasoline tax fell in Georgia. This caused Tom Moreland, as DOT commissioner, to recommend removing the four Gwinnett bridges from the construction program.

Back then, it was estimated that to acquire right of way and build all four bridges would have cost $20 million. That seems peanuts today, for no doubt the right-of-way acquisition of these intersections would today cost far more. Altogether, total cost today might be four or five times that 1970’s construction figure for the bridges.

There's certainly another cost you need to factor in for us not building those bridges back in the 1970s: the cost in lives of people killed, and the hazard cost these crossings engender, in auto accidents at these grade intersections.

Now, happily, there is renewed interest in Highway 316, with talk about upgrading it to interstate highway standards, via the possibility of a toll road. That, of course, would mean bridges all along its route, not at-grade crossings. That would be welcomed by drivers, with the added benefit of greatly improved highway safety.

Though there will be a tremendously high cost of upgrading Highway 316, we think that most of us who travel that route routinely would gladly pay a toll to see major improvements on this road. Luckily, the highway, as a toll road, seems to have caught the attention of lots of people. One reason, for sure, is because of the heavy traffic of university students from all across Georgia, using this road to get from Athens to Atlanta.

We do not want to look back 20 years later, and wish that Georgia had used the vehicle of a tollway to improve Highway 316. We failed to include major improvements to Highway 316 back in the 1970s. Once is enough.

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