APN Chat with Council President Candidate, Clair Muller

By Jonathan Springston, Senior Staff Writer, The Atlanta Progressive News (June 26, 2009)

(APN) ATLANTA -- In continuation of our series of interviews with candidates for elected office in Atlanta, Atlanta Progressive News sat down with Council President candidate Clair Muller to discuss her platform.

Previously, we have published interviews with Mayoral candidates Ceasar Mitchell [who is now running instead for Council President against Muller], Kasim Reed, Mary Norwood, Lisa Borders, and Glenn Thomas. Interview with Jesse Spikes forthcoming.

We have also published interviews with Council-at-large Post 1 candidate Michael Julian Bond. Interview with Clarence Turner forthcoming. Interviews with at large Post 2 candidates Amir Farokhi and Darryl Graham also forthcoming.

In her 20 years of service representing citizens of District 8 on the Atlanta City Council, Clair Muller has spearheaded legislation on a number of key issues.

She has served on every council committee during her tenure, which has led her to tackle budget control, fiscal management, public safety, transportation, traffic-congestion, and clean water and sewer infrastructure.

Currently, Muller is the Chair of the Transportation Committee and is a Member of the Finance/Executive Committee and City Utilities.

Muller also serves as the Chair of the Atlanta/Fulton County Water Resources Commission, sits on the Advisory Board of the Georgia Water Campaign, and is the city council-elected member of the Atlanta Regional Commission, where she has served for the last 14 years.

This level of experience and leadership has led Muller to believe this is the right time to serve as the next City Council President of Atlanta.

APN met with Muller Friday, June 26, 2009, near her City Hall office.

What kind of adjustments can the City of Atlanta make to ensure there are not future budget shortfalls?

[One reason for the shortfalls] is the recession and some of it is a need to reorganize the Finance Department. I will say that... we have had so many CFOs and we tend to trust the CFOs and as it turns out, many times, they’re on kind of a political track.

This time, we don’t have one. We pulled one out of retirement [Jim Glass]. I think he really is trying to make a difference in how we go about fixing the Finance Department.

We had a pro bono report from Deloitte [Consulting, a global finance services company] and they gave several recommendations that said everything is broken in the Finance Department except for accounts payable.

[Glass] is trying to professionalize the area, retrain.

We as a Finance Committee want very much go line by line through all those Deloitte recommendations. One of the things I’m very interested in is making sure that we have a liaison between the legislative branch and the executive branch [who] constantly review[s] the budget so that when we get a budget at budget time, there’s not all this angst and we don’t go through weeks and weeks of trying to tweak it and change it.

But [there] will be no surprises and we will just kind of be there. Jim Glass was horrified that we had no monthly closes. So he’s trying to implement the necessary technology in our system so we can close monthly and oversee the departments better.

It’s hard for us as a Council to oversee the departments... if [the Council] is not able to know what this department is doing month by month then it always will give you some surprises 12 months later.

So we have a roadmap to fix things and I think that’s very important. I talked to lots of CFOs, including my retired husband, about how is it that a department can overspend their budget without somebody saying stop it?

There’s emergencies and there’s this and there’s that but we’ve got to [have oversight] more often than annually.

We need to make sure we’re prepared for the next recession.

How can lawmakers work to make the budget process more transparent, especially to the public?

Some of those ideas that I just mentioned can do that because if we are having a discussion in [executive] Finance Committee twice a month or monthly when the close comes – it should be the CFO and the COO [who] work together. Each department head should be able to say 'this is why I’m over budget, this is why I’m under budget and I’m under budget because the bills haven’t come in but don’t think I’m going to be the same next month' so that it’s always calculated.

You’ve got to make sure the departments understand that if they save a little bit one month because they haven’t hired people, they can’t afford that. You really have to really keep that budget going.

This can help the transparency. I’ve seen 20 years, I’ve seen 20 budgets, I’ve gone through week after week after week and it’s always anxiety filled. In the old days, before we went to the new fiscal year that [is] June to June, there would always be a little bit of leftover because you can’t anticipate 100 percent, you can only anticipate, by law, 99 percent, but at one time we were even doing 96 percent.

We really knew there was going to be more because there were more years and we knew there was going to be more money coming in. We would squabble over how to spend that – sometimes it was $12 million, sometimes it was $18 million – and you have a $550 million budget. That amount should have always been going into reserve.

When we anticipated and when we got the budget finalized, whether it was that fiscal year or the new fiscal year, it should have been that’s it – anything extra that comes in goes to reserves.

Have there been any recent budget cuts that you didn’t agree with?

The whole city is pretty much agreed that we want to get off public safety furloughs. I think it’s scared people and we just don’t need our citizens frightened. But that seemed to be a necessity during the recession.

Parks and planning have been cut dramatically and, in some instances, I think you can make a good argument that recreation centers prevent crime because it keeps kids off the street and gives them programmatic things to do.

Do you think crime is a problem and how would you address it?

Getting police and fire off furloughs will help and get more visibility. The improvement of the economy coming out of the recession will help because... crime rises in bad economic times.

While it may be true some crime has gone down, some crime has definitely gone up and people feel it and you don’t want the perception over the reality.

What role should the City Council President play?

The Council President is not supposed to introduce legislation but I feel that it can certainly be a bully pulpit to be used on some issues of concern not only to the city but also to the region.

I have served on the Atlanta Regional Commission for 14 years…so I’m very involved in transportation and infrastructure and think it’s a huge need for the future.

I would like to use the Council Presidency as a bully pulpit to work on some issues. Transportation is a big one.

I want to work on sustainability, transportation. I think I have a good rapport with my colleagues. They know that I’m fair. They know that I’m hardworking. They know that I get things done. There’s only one person that’s been on council longer than I have [Jim Maddox]. So I’m excited about the job and I think we can work together well.

How can we increase affordable housing?

We’re working with several organizations to make sure that – certainly in the TADs [Tax Allocation Districts] that we have passed – there is a percentage that has to be affordable in all areas.

You’ve got to build housing that mixes rich and poor and young and old – you got to. You’ve got to have housing that is a good slice of the demographics. You don’t want people separated because, actually, they learn from each other.

The [Atlanta] Housing Authority has done a really good job with stepping up to mixed-income housing through the years. It used to be just sort of a holding place. It was not good because young kids couldn’t see the successful businessman or woman and use them as a role model. They could only just see sort of what was happening around them. The mix of rich and poor is really important.

How do you define affordable housing, taking into consideration not only purchasing a house but also renting an apartment or house as well as what the definition is for an individual and a family of four?

Apartments should be in the mix. The apartment association always says, 'We’re out here too' because... sometimes rental is good.

We’re hearing experts get on television right now in this recession telling people that if your debt situation is bad, don’t try to buy a house. You might want to sell and pay down that debt and rent for a while so you can definitely budget.

Any numbers you can throw out there as far as price ranges?

No, but I want to make sure we’re not pricing anybody out and I think that’s where problems can come in. I’ve heard a lot of people that are landowners saying they’ve lowered rent in order to be able to rent. There needs to be all levels.

I do think we ought to look beyond the region [for a proper affordable definition] because we have a level of poverty in the city that’s not in the region.

APN has raised concerns in the past about the demolition of public housing, how the AHA went about consulting residents during that process, the conditions of the buildings, and the availability of vouchers. Are you aware of these concerns and do you have concerns of your own?

I am concerned. In some instances I think it was done very well. In some instances, the housing was in such condition that it could not be renovated. It was cost prohibitive to try to renovate it because the sewer lines and all the infrastructure was just so bad – just because it was a brick building didn’t mean it could have been saved.

In some instances, many, many of the units were vacant because they were in such bad shape. I know they tried to give vouchers to everybody that was living there and I had heard about complaints that many times people didn’t feel they could come back.

We definitely need to address that and make sure that people can come back to live in the same area. You want to make sure everyone is taken care of. You don’t want them to just go away.

How would you address homelessness?

It’s a tough issue and I think there are lots of organizations that want to help the homeless. Sometimes we have some personality conflicts and that’s unfortunate because there’s probably more than one way to help the homeless.

But at the same time I do think one element of helping the homeless needs to be to try to help them get on track. That’s everything from transportation to jobs to medication and counseling. Some organizations offer those things and some don’t.

All in all, I would advocate trying to get all the groups to work together and trying to get the personalities out of the situation.

What’s your opinion of the BeltLine?

The BeltLine has got to go forward. I’ve heard people say it’s time to put it on the backburner. I don’t believe that. That is the vehicle where we can do sustainability and mixed-income housing and parks and density and walkability and old and young living together.

It’s a wonderful gift that we have because not all cities have this half-abandoned piece of rail sitting right there.

Is it an equitable vision?

It has had its growing pains and we need to make sure it’s inclusive for everybody in income ranges but it also needs to be inclusive as far as input. Sometimes I’ve had reports back that that hasn’t happened so much.

When I hear that, I try to refocus the BeltLine people to listen carefully.

Maybe the affordable element is not enough but it is there, it’s legislated.

I told [BeltLine President and CEO] Terri Montague last year that I wanted to try to... get the whole Council involved... so that we really feel included.

Do you think BeltLine planners are too focused on land development and not enough on the actual transportation aspect of the project?

I’ve heard complaints from my very neighborhood because my part [of the BeltLine] is in the northwest [quadrant], which is an active rail line. They are very fearful that it’s going to take forever to get an actual rail car of some sort.

They’re fearful we’ll just do all this building and it’ll just increase the cars and clog up their neighborhoods.

Do you support casino gambling at Underground Atlanta as a way to generate extra revenue for the city?

A lot of people feel gambling might not be the way to elegantly redo downtown.

I supported the gambling idea – at least for them to go study it – but it fell through and in hindsight, now that it’s fallen through, maybe we’ll find developers who want to do something else.

How would you characterize the relationship between the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia? Is it good or does it need improvement?

It needs improvement. Our delegation has helped but we probably need to reach out more statewide and to the governor.

Can the city do anything to help MARTA?

I’m a big MARTA supporter. We are trying to get MARTA to be the BeltLine umbrella and maybe even get a streetcar down the road.

We certainly can’t give money because we don’t have the money but we can continue to be advocates.

Can the city do anything to help Grady Memorial Hospital?

The city ought to be talking with Fulton and DeKalb more about how we help MARTA and Grady together because we funded it all these years and try to advocate that the funding for both start to slowly expand.

It is all about state cooperation. I’m hoping I can help there too. I try to talk to both sides of the aisle and try to work with people outside Fulton and DeKalb, but Fulton and DeKalb need to take the reigns.

What will you do as Council President to ensure public comments are properly heard and taken into consideration?

The public comment time is very important…it’s very important that you get the other side of the picture.

I have heard from a lot of people that they are concerned in two ways: they are concerned sometimes that Council Members are not listening and there is too much adversarial language... coming from the public.

[We should] try to have a decorum and a respect going both ways so that you can be efficient and hear issues because you get good ideas.

The Council implemented a rule a few years back that says citizens cannot engage in expressions of emotions, such as applause when someone is making a public comment. [Current Council President] Lisa Borders has been a stickler on this rule and many members of the public feel silenced. Do you agree with the rule?

The citizens have been very creative in figuring out ways to express their support of the speakers.

They could do a little card that they pin to their clothes that says, "we don’t want a tax increase."

The concern in the opposite direction is that it can get out of hand and it has before.

You’ve got to have a fine balance. The speaker could say everybody that agrees with me please stand up or raise your hand. The big deal is respect because everybody wants to hate government from time to time but we do have to get work done and we do want to hear from the public [but] there needs to be respect.

Larry Keating writes in his book Race, Class, and Urban Expansion in Atlanta about your attempt to fight commercial rezoning in Blandtown. Why was this case important to you? Why were you not able to get the zoning changed back to residential even though it was in the city’s comprehensive plan?

What happened in Blandtown, which is no longer part of the 8th District, was that it was starting to redevelop and people were starting to get pushed out of their houses. What I did was go to Georgia Tech and ask for a Georgia Tech planning class to survey the neighborhood and they did.

It really showed the promise of having housing exist with commercial.

What they did... was walk door to door and they surveyed and they gave some good ideas for some ways [residential and commercial] could coexist.

About the author:

Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for The Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

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