"Debate on airport name moves to Atlanta lawmakers"

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Debate on airport name moves to Atlanta lawmakers 
By D.L. BENNETT 
The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution 


An anxious Atlanta City Council gets its first taste today of the racially
charged debate over renaming Hartsfield International Airport.

As the debate has raged for the past 10 weeks, council members have been
insulated from the heat by a 17-member committee appointed by Mayor Shirley
Franklin.

That panel, the Atlanta Advisory Commission, will brief the council today in
preparation of releasing its recommendations and final report Sept. 12.

At that point, all the pressure now focused on the panel will weigh squarely
on the council.

"It's going to be important for us to have a fruitful, productive,
non-divisive discussion on this," said Councilman Ceasar Mitchell, a
committee member.

Can the council do that?

"We will only know after we've tried," Mitchell said.

Today, the briefing will focus on process and progress because the advisory
group has not yet reached a consensus. The group was supposed to do that
last week, but a long public hearing prevented debate among the members.

The initial suggestions of panel members found majority support for naming
the planned international terminal at Hartsfield, not the entire facility,
for former Mayor Maynard Jackson. A passionate group of Jackson supporters
has pushed hard since his death June 23 to replace the name of former Mayor
William Hartsfield with that of Jackson, Atlanta's first black mayor. The
panel will also make a recommendation for honors for former Mayor Ivan Allen
Jr., who died July 2.

Jesse Hill Jr., advisory committee co-chairman, said the committee's final
recommendations may not be as simple as the battle over Hartsfield.

"We are using this time to look at things beyond just the name of the
airport," Hill said. "We've gotten some very interesting proposals."

Some have varied from creating a "walk of fame" for prominent politicians to
building a park over the interstate to creating a civil rights museum.

Carla Smith, who chairs the Committee on Council, was so concerned that
today's meeting might turn into "a circus" that she sent out a memo last
week saying the meeting would be "strictly informational" and that "there
will also be no public comment."

She conceded in an interview that those who sign up to speak at the meeting
would have to be allowed to talk under council rules.

Councilman Howard Shook spoke with dread about getting the controversy
dumped in his lap next week. The council, he said, will listen to the
recommendations but may not follow them. Three separate council proposals
were introduced in the days after Jackson's death: renaming the airport for
Jackson, a combination Hartsfield-Jackson honor or naming the new terminal
for Jackson.

"Obviously we are going to take their recommendations very seriously," Shook
said. "But, ultimately it will be up to the relationship individual council
members have with their districts."


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