As 2023 comes to an end, the battle over the Atlanta Police Training Center still wages on — and on — just like it did at the ends of 2021 and 2022.
Last week, the question of putting the training center on a citywide referendum went before federal appeals judges. Also, the police department issued a $200,000 reward to find the arsonists intent on stopping the construction. And an analysis by four news agencies, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, found that the Stop Cop City crowd may not have enough signatures to put the issue to voters.
But the question that bubbles beneath all of this is: What if they win?
What happens if the question goes to voters and they say, “No, we don’t want it?”
It’s an interesting, and improbable scenario. But what if?
Currently, the city is plowing ahead and building at the 85-acre site in south DeKalb County. The land has been cleared. Electrical, sewer and water hookups have been installed and foundations are being poured. The city says the site is perhaps 40% complete.
The earliest that the effort — assuming it gets enough valid signatures — could ever get on a ballot would probably be the state primary elections in May.
By then the $90 million center would be perhaps 70% built. So, if Atlanta’s voters get to vote and say that they don’t want it, what happens then? Does a judge issue an order that says, “Tear it down and build a bird sanctuary?”
It sounds silly, and Mayor Andre Dickens’ office says I’m simply being speculative. And, yes, I am.
But I remember the old bridge abutments on Moreland Avenue a few decades ago.
In October 1991, my wife and I bought a house near Little Five Points right as the long-raging battle over construction of the Presidential Parkway was being settled. Back in the 1980s, a highway was planned to cut across Candler Park and the adjoining neighborhood and then hook up with the Downtown Connector. The plan was to get folks from Stone Mountain to downtown faster.
The neighbors fought hard, but the Georgia Department of Transportation, which is used to doing whatever it wanted, went ahead with construction until a judge told them to stop. Ultimately, they compromised, and a road that allowed access to the Carter Center stopped at Moreland Avenue. Hence, the planned highway overpass over Moreland was not needed and the graffiti-strewn, Kudzu-covered bridge abutments were later torn down.
A spokesman for Dickens’ office told me that the city doesn’t engage in speculation concerning the “hypothetical” scenarios that would prevent the city from building the training center.
Let me weave through the path of how unlikely it is that the center gets stopped.
Ben Hendren for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ben Hendren for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The city and training center opponents went before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week to argue about a district judge’s decision allowing those gathering signatures for a referendum to get an additional 35 days to do so.
It’s hard to guess the remedy that the court will issue, although it could throw out some signatures or allow them to stay. A decision would likely not be handed down until next month.
If the court allows the issue to go forward, then the city gets 50 days to vet the signatures asking for a referendum. The opponents need to get 58,000 signatures of registered Atlanta voters to put the question on a ballot.
Opponents said they got 116,000 signatures. A news analysis said they actually got 108,500 (still a lot), but fewer than half of those remaining signatures seem to be valid. If so, that would end the referendum.
If the opponents do get enough valid signatures, then the measure could conceivably go before voters during the May primary. There seems to be no way there would be enough time for it to appear on the March presidential primary ballot.
If opponents clear that hurdle, the city, which has already spent more than $1.3 million litigating the issue, would then argue in court that a binding contract legally enacted by a previous mayor and council cannot be undone. That ensuing litigation would add more time to the process and could perhaps push the question, if it still survived, onto the November ballot.
It’s uncertain how Atlantans would vote on the matter (polls are relatively tight on it). But it seems that the more voters who come out to the polls, the better the city does. And if the issue comes to voters in November, the training center would by then be largely built.
“It is unlikely a judge would order the city to tear down what we own on our property that is now 40 percent complete and by the time a May referendum could happen would be 75 percent plus complete,” the mayor’s office told me.
One thing for (pretty) sure is that the issue will be settled by the end of next year. That is, legally settled and the center, I would wager, would be probably ready to open.
That leaves the political battle for 2025 when Dickens and the City Council run again for their jobs. By then, voters will have a pretty good sense as to whether all of this this was a good idea or not.
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