Atlanta Deficiencies

Letter to AJC 5-9-2012

A recent visitor to Atlanta wrote about three major deficiencies of  our city. Poor transportation, miserable education, and crime. They seem to be the definers of our metropolis and make all our lives that much less enjoyable. It is the civic responsibility of citizens grouped into a large city to ensure that everyone has access to good education, ease of moving around, and a safe and secure environment to raise a family. For many people in Atlanta,  we are failing miserably in these basic goals. 

Our traffic situation is abominable and our mass transportation is practically non existent. Modern cities pride themselves on state-of-the-art people movement systems while Atlanta and surrounding cities ignore the morass we are in, and and balk at spending any money to make the situation better. It's like the old saying "cutting our nose off to spite our face".

Our education system is almost the worst in the nation. Instead of trying to fix it we encourage an atmosphere of cheating, and then turn our backs on the less well off segments of the population and establish private schools for the rich which suck off dollars from the public school system. Yes classism is alive and well here, and money talks.

As for our crime situation; have we become inured to the constant drum of murder and violent crime that serves as news? What happened to our civic pride? Why aren't we tackling the underlying problems that have built this laissez faire attitude?  

Time for Atlantans to wake up to reality and start behaving like responsible adults.