WELLNESS
YOUTH
Away with decay
Familiar surroundings
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says dental sealants are effective in the fight against cavities. 7
Head football coach Damien Wimes is finally back home at Southwest DeKalb, where his high school playing career began. 9
Let’s Keep DeKalb Peachy Clean Please Don’t Litter Our Streets and Highways
EAST ATLANTA • DECATUR • STONE MOUNTAIN • LITHONIA • AVONDALE ESTATES • CLARKSTON • ELLENWOOD • PINE LAKE • REDAN • SCOTTDALE • TUCKER
Copyright © 2017 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
February 18, 2017
Volume 22, Number 43
www.crossroadsnews.com
Residents want more money for police, for libraries By Rosie Manins
Some DeKalb residents want more money for police and public libraries in CEO Michael Thurmond’s proposed $1.3 billion budget for 2017. At a budget hearing hosted by the DeKalb Board of Commissioners at its Feb. 14 meeting, residents argued for more money to hire and pay police officers and to restore library hours and materials that were cut during the recession. Faye Coffield, a private investigator and Lithonia community activist, said the shortage of police officers in DeKalb is a major problem and the county government needs
to immediately invest in law enforcement. “It’s critical,” she said. “It’s at a crisis mode and it needs to be addressed before anything else can be addressed.” Coffield, who ran unsuccessfully for the DeKaFaye Coffield lb Commission Super District 7 seat last year, said the county needs almost 400 extra police officers. “That’s enough sworn officers to staff two and a half precincts, all three watches,” she said. Police and firefighters got a 4 percent
raise in 2016 after going without a raise since 2008. The proposed 2017 budget includes $2.1 million for 20 additional police positions and 36 more Fire Rescue personnel and $600,000 for police body cameras. But Coffield said that is not enough and police officers should be receiving at least a 20 percent pay increase and have their former incentives and pension plan reinstated. “You can no longer allow a police department to function at the low levels that it has,” she told the board. “You are not attracting enough people to fill the vacancies.” DeKalb, with just over 700,000 residents, has about 860 sworn police officers and 230
support staff operating out of four precincts, 600 trained Fire Rescue personnel operating out of 26 fire stations, and about 860 sworn officers and civilians working in the Sheriff ’s Department. In his budget draft sent to the BOC on Jan. 17, Thurmond said it provides a framework for strengthening the government’s fiscal condition, improving public safety, annualizing the fiscal year 2016 pay and compensation increases, and funding various infrastructure and capital improvements. There are no tax increases. Sara Fountain, chair of the DeKalb Please see BUDGET, page 4
Conditions at Sugar Creek way under par Longtime golfers bemoan decline of popular course By Terry Shropshire
At one time, Sugar Creek Golf Course was considered the crown jewel of south DeKalb County, attracting golf enthusiasts and connoisseurs from many miles around. Golf aficionados, novices and older players cherished the flat course, the manicured greens, and the tree-lined, narrow fairways. Its easy-to-reach location at Bouldercrest and I-285 was a big plus, too. Today, the greens are shoddy and rundown, and weeds have taken over in the bunkers. Joe Price who plays a lot of courses all over town, and the Sugar Creek course is without comparison. “It’s easily the worst-condition course in town,” he said. Golfers like Price, who remembers better days at Sugar Creek, are fighting mad. They blame flagrant neglect and chronic mismanagement, and they want to see the storied course returned to its glory days when it hosted important foreign dignitaries, and was the site of major amateur tournaments and civic and philanthropic events. Robert Mitchell, president of Sugar Creek Men’s Golfer’s Association, says the course has been on an uninterrupted downward spiral for the past several years. “It has been on a continual path of erosion for the last eight to 10 years, particularly the last four years,” said Mitchell, who has golfed there since Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office. “They don’t do anything. They don’t care if anyone comes to the golf course or not.” Mitchell says these days, the course is off the radar of most golfers. “If you’re a serious golfer, you don’t go to Sugar Creek,” he said. Larry Anderson, who has been volunteer-
Jennifer Ffrench-Parker / CrossRoadsNews
Terry Shropshire / CrossRoadsNews
Sugar Creek Golf Course used to be a favorite of golfers. These days they complain about crappy greens, cart paths in disrepair, and potholes in the parking lot.
Grass has taken over this bunker at Sugar Creek.
ing at the course for three years, says “the greens are absolutely the worst greens I’ve ever seen anywhere.” Price put it bluntly. “The course is going to hell in a hand basket,” he said Feb. 14. “They don’t maintain the course. They don’t maintain the tennis courts. The parking lot has holes in it. I mean, it’s just terrible.” The course, which is owned by DeKalb County, has been through several operators in recent years. And each time, the situation has gotten worse. Regulars can’t understand why the county has allowed the course to deteriorate to this level. “I don’t expect it to be like a country club,” Price said. “Just average greens, instead of the worst greens in town. You can’t even hit a three-foot putt if you hit it perfectly.”
county-owned course. “We are not talking rocket science;” the memo said. “The solution is not complicated. This golf course needs the proper funding, personnel, and equipment so that routine maintenance, such as cutting the fairway grass, aerating the greens, and draining the bunkers, can be performed.” Johnson said that he has been out to Sugar Creek multiple times, most recently two weeks ago, to look at the condition of the course and the tennis courts. “I took photos and handed them over to Parks and Recreation which is charge of it,” Johnson said Feb. 16. “I told them that there is erosion happening out there and that the grounds are looking bad. They had one person cutting the grass.” On the other other hand, the golfers say that Mystery Valley, on Shadow Rock Drive in Lithonia, gets much better care.
mains loyal to the course even though he feels the management and county have let him down. “I’m a senior citizen and the reason I still golf over there is because it’s very flat relative to the other courses in Atlanta,” he says. “As an older person, you can still walk it and get valuable exercise on it. In terms of design of Sugar Creek and the ability to walk the course, I don’t think there is a better designed course in metro Atlanta. All I would expect would be in average condition.” Anderson and Price, in particular, say they have attempted to reach DeKalb County government many times over the past few years but little has been done to stem the decline. In a July 27, 2016, memorandum emailed to District 3 Commissioner Larry Johnson and copied to the other commissioners, the Sugar Creek volunteers implored the county The good old days to fix what’s wrong with Sugar Creek and put Even Price, a Sugar Creek diehard, re- it on par with Mystery Valley, DeKalb’s other
Please see GOLF, page 4