The Marietta Daily Journal – Around Town Councilman was MIA so is Ward 5 bond funding now DOA

The City Council held a public hearing for Mayor Steve Tumlin’s proposal to spend $35 million as a catalyst for the redevelopment of the problem-plagued Franklin Road corridor on the city’s east side. Most of those who spoke favored the idea and the council voted 5-1 afterward to decide at a June 12 meeting whether to call a Nov. 5 referendum that would ask voters to approve the issuance of the necessary funding.

The council on Thursday also reallocated how the bond funds would be spent. The bulk, about $31 million, would go to buy and demolish blighted garden apartments along Franklin, although that allocation was downsized by $1.3 million.

But by meeting’s end the amount earmarked for improvements across town along Whitlock Avenue had unexpectedly more than doubled, to $4 million from the first-announced $1.5 million. Rather than just the originally planned sidewalks, the Whitlock spending also would now pay for lamp posts, a bike path and possibly even a median turn lane, at the behest of west side Councilmen Grif Chalfant of Ward 2 and Andy Morris of Ward 4.

So where would the money come from for the Whitlock frills? Well, not from issuing additional bonds, but mostly by nixing the $1.2 million that had been set aside by the mayor for renovating the old Lemon Street School in Anthony Coleman’s Ward 5, the segregation-era high school for local African-American students.

via The Marietta Daily Journal – Around Town Councilman was MIA so is Ward 5 bond funding now DOA.