ARC chairman declares 4 focus priorities are water, transportation, aging population and education

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Atlanta Regional Commission Chairman Tad Leithead told members of theBuckhead Business Association Thursday morning that the ARC’s four focuspriorities are transportation, water, the aging population and education,stating that water supply is the biggest issue facing the region.

ARC Chairman Tad Leithead

Spending long periods of time stalled in traffic can beirritating, he told those attending the weekly breakfast meeting at the CityClub of Buckhead, but not nearly as irritating as getting up in the morning andturning on the faucet and not getting any water.
Leithead said the ARC projects the 10-county Atlanta region will grow from apopulation of 5.5 million to 10 million in the next 30 years and Lake Lanierstruggles now to handle the consumption needs during long drought periods.
“We can’t conserve our way out of a drought,” Leithead said. Fiftytrillion gallons of water a year fall out of the sky in the region each year,but we only capture about 1 trillion gallons, he explained. “We need to at leastdouble the amount that we capture.”
He said reservoirs can be built north of Atlanta, but the permitting andbuilding of a reservoir is a 20-year process.
He said most people have difficulty understanding water shortages whenthey look at the Chattahoochee River and see it is full of water. However, hepointed out that the Army Corps of Engineers controls the flow of water out ofLake Lanier to help the downstream environmental needs. It is hard to believe,but the Corps increases the flow out of the lake during droughts.
Leithead also explained that theregion does a pretty good job of treating “previously used water” and puttingit back into Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River.  But people downstream object to gettingpreviously used and treated water, even though in most cases it is better thanthe water that falls out of the sky, he added.

Liethead speaks at the BBA Weekly Breakfast  at the City Club of Buckhead

The ARC chairman said that, while the region’s water supply is theorganization’s number one focus, providing services for the increasing agingpopulation is number two.
The region now has 750,000 people over the age of 65 and that number isexpected to double to 1.5 million. People are living a lot longer and the needfor tailored services for this aging population is growing, he said.
Leithead explained that when Social Security was started, it was designedto bridge the gap between when people reached the age of 65 and the thenaverage life expectancy, which was 67. It was designed for a two-yearperiod. People on average now live well into their 80s.

ARC Chairman Leithead talks about the needs
of the region's growing aging population.  

He told the story of his 85-year-old mother who just returned from acruise to Alaska. He said the biggest challenge was getting her to the Atlantaairport. Once she was there, the airline helped her get to her flight and thecruise line had all the accommodations to care for her needs.
He used that to illustrate a service need for the aging population—andinfrastructure to pick up elderly people and take them to the airport, or toMARTA, etc. “We need to develop sustainable solutions for these problems,” hetold the audience of business people.
Leithead, who spent 26 years in the commercial real estate business inthe region before taking on the chairmanship of the ARC, explained thatorganization has a board of 39 members, which includes 24 elected officialsfrom the 10 counties and cities within those counties.
The role of the ARC is to bring those representatives together to findsolutions to these regional issues. Transportation is the one issue that isdefined by law as a focus for the ARC. He said that, although education is amajor focus area for the ARC, it does not get directly involved in working withlocal school districts on education issues.
Leithead ran out of time before getting into a discussion of the focus on dealing with transportation issues following the defeat of the T-SPLOSTthis past summer. However, in answering a question from the audience, he didpoint out that the proposed expansion of the Savannah Port facility will resultin tripling the number of trucks going through the Atlanta region every day.

Buckhead Heritage Society Executive Director Erica
Danylchak urged those attending Thursday morning's
BBA meeting to consider sponsorships for Buckhead's
175th Anniversary Celebration that is coming up in 2013.
The sponsorship levels range from $1,000 to $10,000 for
the March 1, 2013 event, which is being planned by  the
Buckhead Business Association and Buckhead Heritage.
For more information go here.  

After the meeting, BuckheadView asked Leithead if he feels the variousCommunity Improvement Districts throughout the Atlanta region—those entitiesthat tax commercial property owners additionally in order to provide localcommunity infrastructure improvements—will have to step up to provide increasedsupport for transportation needs.
For instance, the Buckhead CID provided much of the funding for studiesand design work for the Peachtree Boulevard reconstruction project, as well asnegotiating donations of right-of-way from the property owners along the route.
The Perimeter CIDs have committed $10 million toward the majorinterchange project at GA 400 and I-285, which Gov. Nathan Deal has said is thenumber one road project priority, in hopes of generating additional commitments of funding from the surrounding cities.
Leithead said the problem is, with the tightening economy, it is gettingdifficult to get property owners to give up valuable right-of-way for projectssuch as this. Also, the funds that the CIDs provide can help with studies anddesign work, but are a very small part of the total project cost.
But, he added, that is the type of cooperative efforts it is going totake to get some of these projects competed. 
Leithead, who waselected in December 2009 as chairman of the ARC, also serves as chairman of theCumberland Community Improvement District and is also a board member of the FultonCounty Perimeter Community Improvement District and the North Fulton CommunityImprovement District.