| EDITORIAL
Highway 78 CID founders bring a vision, and a plan
By Gary Custar
The news is full of
stories about seemingly unsolvable traffic problems, neighborhood
decay, and increasing crime. Rarely are stories reported that tell
about peoples’ efforts to stop the downward slide of their
communities. The Highway 78 CID (Community Improvement District) is
not only halting the downward trend in its area, but is sending
expectations in an upward direction. The Highway 78 CID is
promoting and implementing a concrete plan for revitalizing an area
which had begun to deteriorate in the presence of apathy, lax code
enforcement, and the lack of a vision for its future.
The formation of
the 78 CID came about through the desire of a handful of forward
thinking individuals to keep the Highway 78 corridor, from the
Dekalb County line to State Road 124 in Snellville, from echoing the
decline of Memorial Drive. These individuals convinced business
owners along the corridor that not only did their vision have merit,
it was worthy of creating a self-taxing district to support and fund
the effort. The additional property tax these businesses pay has
become an investment yielding high dividends, rather than a
sacrifice with no return.
The approximately
$800,000 collected annually in business property taxes serves in
part as matching funds to attract federal, state and county highway
money - $14 million and counting - to use in improvements. That’s a
return of more than $10 for every $1 collected from the business
property taxes! These improvements include hiring off-duty Gwinnett
County police officers to patrol the area thereby increasing the
safety of citizens and the security of businesses, and employing a
landscaping crew to mow and edge both sides of the seven mile
stretch of roadway every week while picking up dozens of bags of
litter.
Working closely
with both the Gwinnett and the Georgia Departments of
Transportation, the 78 CID has made numerous enhancements, both
functional and aesthetic, to the original DOT plan by developing a
landscape master plan for planted median areas incorporated in the
new roadway and by upgrading span-wire traffic light supports to
decorative mast arms with illuminated signs at cross-streets.
The removal of the
reversible lanes and construction of the median will take two years
of patience by those who travel the road regularly, but the 78 CID
will work to mitigate the impact not only to travelers, but also to
the businesses along the area. When all is said and done, we’ll all
end up with something much better.
My hat is off, not
only to those individuals with the foresight and drive to form the
78 CID, but also to the business owners who saw the need to do what
was necessary for the revitalization of the area, their area,
and agreed to pay for it.
Gary Custar is the
Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners appointee to the Highway 78
CID Board. He and his wife, Becky, have lived in the Lilburn area
for over 16 years, graduating one son from Brookwood High School,
their younger is a junior there. Becky is an educator within the Gwinnett County school system and
Gary owns a small business located on Highway 78, Presentation
Solutions.
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