 Welcome to Athens Politics Nerd, where we break down commission meetings to bring you the important local news. Recently, the Mayor and Commission finalized SPLOS 2020. Now its fate is up to us. They also discussed the inefficiency of private trash haulers and debated a new study that could revolutionize transportation options in Athens. All coming up. Don't miss a thing. You can keep up with local news, Georgia politics, and national policy by subscribing. The SPLOS 2020 project list was approved last month, setting up a referendum on November 5th. If Athenians vote yes, our 1% sales tax for special projects will continue for another 11 years, raising over $300 million. Nine yes, one no. This money will fund 37 different projects, including renewable energy generation, an east side library, broadband connectivity across Athens, and a 5,500 seat arena for the Classic Center. The arena was a controversial last minute addition, but we can rest assured that the jobs it creates will pay living wages, something which was requested by the Commission. Commissioner Tim Denson also fought to include a childcare facility in the structure to assist working parents. Moving on to Solid Waste Collection, which became an issue at this month's Commission meeting. Commissioner Russell Edwards proposed Riverbend Parkway's trash pickup be handled by the county instead of by private haulers, which sparked an interesting conversation. I look forward to this moving forward in our community learning that this is possible and that it could motivate other clusters and neighborhoods to also move forward with this idea. And a lot of us in our communities want the same thing, and I think we need to take a holistic approach instead of taking a singular approach. Yeah, I agree. I hope we can come up with a holistic approach very soon, because we've got some haulers that just aren't, they're just not doing their work. They're just failing week by week by week. Trash is picked up by the county within the old Athens City limits, but outside that area it quickly becomes a free-for-all of competing private haulers. This causes unnecessary noise and can even be dangerous because not every resident living on anyone's street will have the same hauler. With multiple trucks coming and going at all hours, Riverbend residents and others have gotten fed up. There are eight trucks roaring through our neighborhood and since there's only one entrance, it becomes a round trip. That means 16 passes of trucks weighing as much as 56,000 pounds each and each getting about 2.8 miles per gallon. That's a lot of waste for a little bit of waste. Some feel that the public system should provide trash pickup to the whole county. Others have suggested a zone system with one private hauler being given a monopoly in each zone. The local government is wondering what your opinion is and you can tell them at a series of open house meetings coming soon. There's also an online survey at accgov.com slash collection survey. Go ahead and give them a piece of your mind. I'll link the survey in the description below. Also at this meeting, the commission accepted a detailed study of the Lexington Road and Atlanta Highway corridors. It included a total of 52 recommendations such as reconfiguring some major intersections, redesigning Georgia Square Mall, enhanced bike and pedestrian infrastructure, including miles of multi-use paths and many public transit improvements such as implementing queue jumping lanes and building additional transit hubs beyond the multimodal center. I have to say, I think this study is amazing and I look forward to it being implemented. I think there's a lot to be excited about, particularly in the Lexington Corridor. Things like queue jumping, transfer hubs so that it's easier to transfer between buses. Multi-use paths are a great asset and amenity for our community. Connect residents, create a more vibrant democracy, encourage exercise, allow safe places for children to play and for the elderly to navigate, so I'm very much in favor of this plan. The project also includes suggestions for the airport. I think it's a wonderful plan. However, not all commissioners felt the same way. In fact, there are some recommendations in here that I could probably never support. Hey, did you know you can sign up to receive emails whenever I release a new video? Head on over to AthensPoliticsNerd.com slash sign up to get the updates and make sure to hit that like button if you liked this video. I'll see you on the next one.