Georgia Today: VP Harris visits Atlanta; Poll worker shortage; Severe storm casualty in Clayton

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB news. Today is Tuesday, Jan. 9. I'm Orlando Montoya. Coming up on today's episode, Vice President Harris made a stop in Atlanta today. Georgia needs more poll workers. And police in Clayton County have confirmed a death related to the severe storms that rolled through metro Atlanta this morning. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Story 1:

Orlando Montoya: Vice President Kamala Harris was in Atlanta this afternoon. Harris participated in a campaign stop that the White House, describes as a, quote, "roundtable discussion with community leaders on the front lines of the fight for voting rights." It's the 10th trip that Harris has made to the city since she's been vice president. It also underscores the Joe Biden campaign team's focus on battleground Georgia and the issue of democracy in the coming presidential election.

Caption

Voting is good!

Story 2:

Orlando Montoya: Fulton County elections officials are hosting a series of recruitment fairs to hire poll workers ahead of the election season. GPB's Amanda Andrews reports from the first one in College Park.

Amanda Andrews: All U.S. citizens age 16 and up living in Fulton or neighboring counties are eligible to serve as paid poll workers. With 183 locations, Fulton County needs about 2,200 people to run things smoothly. Fulton Voter Outreach and Education manager LaShandra Little says they have about 90% retention and, so far, not seeing a shortage of workers. But they like to be prepared.

LaShandra Little: We want to make sure we have enough people to staff our polling locations, and then we also make sure that we have a reserve list, so that if something does happen on Election Day or, you know, somebody can't show up, there's a list that you can pull from to bring somebody else in.

Amanda Andrews: Recruitment fairs take place in Roswell, Jan. 20 and Chattahoochee Hills Jan. 23. For GPB News, I'm Amanda Andrews.

Story 3:

Orlando Montoya: Police in Clayton County are confirming a death related to the severe storms that rolled through metro Atlanta this morning. County police say a person died when a tree fell on a car traveling through Jonesboro, south of Atlanta. The storm prompted several tornado warnings up and down the state. Flash flooding closed some highways. Flights were grounded at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Radar shows the strongest storms were moving offshore as of this afternoon.

Story 4:

Orlando Montoya: State revenue officials are reporting a 5% drop in tax collections for December. The numbers released this morning come as Gov. Brian Kemp prepares to release revenue projections to state lawmakers. Those projections will guide budget writers in the state House and Senate as they map state taxes and spending in the current and coming fiscal years. Revenues have been skyrocketing for several years before starting to slow in 2023.

Story 5:

Orlando Montoya: Cases of COVID and flu have risen sharply in Georgia since the Christmas holidays. The state epidemiologist told members of the Georgia Board of Public Health today that COVID cases have increased by about 50% since last week, but cases remain well below levels seen during the pandemic. Georgia flu cases have more than doubled in the last month, accounting for more than 10% of all health care visits. Most of Georgia's flu cases involve the H1N1 strain, which typically peaks in January.

Story 6:

Orlando Montoya: Georgia has recorded its sixth hottest year on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today released data showing a historic number of billion-dollar weather related disasters, including in Georgia, a late-year drought and severe storms in March. The agency said the nation recorded its fifth warmest year. University of Georgia agricultural climatologist Pam Knox says the high temperatures resulted in part from human-caused climate change, and in part from the tropical warm weather pattern El Nino.

Pam Knox: Normally, when we have an El Nino winter, the winter is cooler than the long-term average, and that's because we tend to be really rainy and cloudy. But this year, in spite of that, um, Georgia has been quite warm and not the warmest on record for sure, but, uh, definitely above the long-term average.

Orlando Montoya: Georgia's average temperature for 2023 was 65.6 degrees, 1.4 degrees above the 30-year average.

Story 7:

Orlando Montoya: State education officials have identified 185 schools across the state that need additional support to improve student performance for the 2024-2025 school year. The Georgia Department of Education said 86 schools performed well enough to exit the list. The schools are all Title I schools: those where at least 40% of the students are from low income families. Almost all the secondary schools targeted for more aid made the list because they aren't doing right by students with disabilities.

Story 8:

Orlando Montoya: The state awarded more than $9 million yesterday through the Rural Workforce Housing Initiative to support more than 400 housing units in four Georgia communities. It's the second round of grants through a program Gov. Brian Kemp created last year. Three of the grants, worth about $2.5 million each, are going to the cities of Alma and Vidalia and to the Development authority of Donaldsonville and Seminole County. The fourth grant, for $1.5 million, will go to the Dalton Whitfield County Joint Development Authority. The money will help fund water, sewer and street improvements to accommodate new homes in those communities.

Story 9:

Orlando Montoya: Brookhaven Mayor John Park has become the first Asian-American Pacific Islander mayor in Georgia. He was sworn in yesterday at Brookhaven City Hall. Park says his three goals are to hire a citizen advocate to increase customer service in the city, bring the public works director in-house to focus on multi-modal connectivity, and to improve the city's stormwater infrastructure.

Story 10:

Orlando Montoya: Let me ask you about Underground Atlanta. Have you been there? Have you been there lately? Maybe you only remember it from when you were a child. Well, people have been wondering what to do with Underground Atlanta for decades. But now the long-vacant downtown retail center is entering a new phase as a grassroots arts hub. Underground Atlanta recently hired set designer Marina Skye and artist Mike Stasny to direct the project. GPB's Jake Cook spoke with Stasny and musician Jamie Shelton at Stasny's art venue in Underground Atlanta for this audio postcard.

Mike Stasny: Hello, my name is Mike Stasny. I like to cut loose and get wild. We are currently standing outside of Mom Said Its Fine which is a passion project of mine that serves as my studio, artistically, a showroom and a quasi-venue. Tonight we've got Sister Sleep band who is a dope group of people. They respect the space and I respect what they do. So we're going to come together tonight and film a music video and hopefully bring tingles to the back of your neck. 

Jamie Shelton: I'm the singer of Sister Sleep. We are shooting a music video. We're having people come out. It's going to be a free show. Free live show. So, yeah, should be a good time. 

Mike Stasny: I will say directly the last thing was a Victoria's Secret and it says Victoria's Secret on the back door. However, Underground at large has always had different iterations. It used to be the center of decadence and debauchery way, way back in the day. And they kept on building it, and it would go away and building it and going away, building it and going away. The last iteration was, I guess, what one could consider a mall. 

SOUND: Techno/drone music

Mike Stasny: I grew up in the greater Chicagoland region of Northwest Indiana. I was a flight attendant for a number of years. So approximately 25 years ago, I came here just to check it out. I was like, "oh, okay, this is Underground." And then I moved here officially 10 years ago thinking that, "okay, Underground is a mall." But there was no reason for me to come here until a good friend of mine, Kris Pilcher, who was the original creative director here said maybe you want to check out this empty, weird space. It turned out mutually beneficial. The leasing officer in general liked what we were coming up with. So I pretty much stuck around. 

SOUND: Rock song ends, guitar amplifier feedback

Audience member: Woo!

Barry Shelton: Until, like, the Masquerade moved here. That's when I really started going to Underground and adjacent areas. Especially the past couple, like year or two. I feel like Underground is really starting to rebuild, especially in the DIY fashion. Like having, like, multiple, like, art studios and performance spaces for people to, like, express themselves and put their art out there. 

Mike Stasny: Basically anybody that's interested in doing some sort of creative output with the undeniable fact that it is my aesthetic, I'm willing to work with. Whether that be a fashion show, music of all sorts, conference, you name it. 

Barry Shelton: We played here earlier this year. Met Mike, and Mike was just a really cool guy, really helpful. And he really liked us a lot. I liked the vibe of the studio. I like the location. The space. It's really eclectic. Really, it's just interesting. 

Mike Stasny: It's my version of boyish escapism approximately between the ages of 11 and 14, now in a 42-year-old body. 

SOUND: Distorted electric guitar plays riff

Sound engineer: You can turn it up just slightly. 

Mike Stasny: As far as I understand just how developers work in general, they usually have different phases. Phase 1 is usually what do we do with empty spaces that kind of nobody wants. And the best thing to do is put artists into those spaces. We're financially feasible and we activate things. 

Barry Shelton: I like what they seem to be doing here in Underground, for sure. 

Mike Stasny: Creative placemaking, you know, turns something that maybe was not cared for before into something that could be of value just through love. 

Orlando Montoya: That was Mike Stasny, one of two new creative directors for Underground Atlanta. You can find more about Stasny at MomSaidItsFine.com. And I myself visited Underground Atlanta for the first time since I was a child a few weeks ago, and it was a great experience. They had lots of food booths set out. It was late at night, but there was a bustling air of activity all around. Great place to check out.

And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. If you'd like to learn more about these stories, perhaps hear some of them again, visit GPB.org/news. If you haven't yet, hit subscribe on this podcast yet. Do that right now. That helps you to keep this podcast current in your feed. If you have feedback for us, send us feedback at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Orlando Montoya, I'll talk to you again tomorrow.

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