MARTA is looking for artists to design a mural on concrete barriers at a new bus transit center in Clayton County (rendering).
ATLANTA – MARTA is looking for artists to design a mural to be painted on concrete barriers at a new bus transit center in Clayton County.
As part of the first phase of planned transit improvements at the Clayton County Justice Center, MARTA will move a bus stop from Post Way to inside the center’s northwest parking lot. The concrete barriers will serve as a temporary wall between buses and bus shelters until a permanent structure can be built.
The transit hub will serve four bus routes with 800 daily riders.
Interested artists should submit 10 digital images of relevant previous work, labeled with title, dimensions and completion date.
Applications should include a statement of purpose describing the general approach and themes the artist plans to incorporate into the design. Artists also must submit a resume including community-centered work they have done, current contact information and two references.
Applications must be submitted in a single PDF document (not to exceed 10 megabytes) to [email protected] by May 29 at 5 p.m.
The selected artist will be notified by June 5 and must submit a final design for approval before the commission can be completed.
Designs may not represent violence, be profane or graphic in nature or contain overt political or religious messaging.
The Artbound program will pay an artist’s fee of $5,000 to cover design and creation of the stencils that will be used to paint the mural.
Democrat Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump are locked in a tight race in Georgia, according to a new poll.
ATLANTA – The presidential race and one of the two U.S. Senate contests in Georgia this year likely will be decided by close margins, according to a poll released Tuesday by left-leaning website DailyKos.
The survey, conducted by the online polling firm Civiqs, found Democrat Joe Biden holding a narrow lead over incumbent Republican President Donald Trump, 48% to 47%.
Likewise, Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff was slightly ahead of incumbent GOP U.S. Sen. David Perdue, 47% to 45%.
On the other hand, Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins was running well ahead in Georgia’s other Senate election on this year’s ballot. Incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler was fourth in the crowded field.
The online survey of 1,339 registered voters took place from May 16-18, with results weighted by age, race, gender, education and party identification to accurately reflect the population of Georgia registered voters. The margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.1%.
The results pointed to a continuation of gains in Democratic strength in what has been a reliably Republican state for the last two decades. The pattern surfaced two years ago when Democrat Stacey Abrams lost a close race to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrats captured a congressional seat in Atlanta’s northern suburbs long in Republican hands and nearly toppled a second GOP incumbent in a U.S. House district based in Gwinnett County.
Democratic voters will go the polls June 9 to choose a nominee to oppose Perdue’s bid for a second six-year term in the Senate.
In the DailyKos poll, Ossoff was the only Democrat holding a lead over Perdue in head-to-head matchups. Perdue held a one-point lead over former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, 45% to 44%, and a three-point advantage over Sarah Riggs Amico, the 2018 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, 45% to 42%.
Collins entered the other Senate race last winter after Kemp appointed Atlanta businesswoman Loeffler to succeed retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson.
In an unusual free-for-all election being held without a party primary, 21 candidates for the seat – Republicans and Democrats alike – will be on the general election ballot Nov. 3. If no one receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff between the top-two finishers would take place in early January.
In response to a question pitting all of the candidates, Collins polled 34% of the vote. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, was second with 18%.
Lawyer Matt Lieberman, also a Democrat and son of former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut – the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, was third with 14% of the vote, followed by Loeffler, with 12%. None of other candidates polled double-digit support.
When the top Republican and Democratic candidates were pitted against each other one on one, Warnock, Lieberman and former U.S. Attorney Ed Tarver outpolled Loeffler by more than 10 points.
Collins’ results against the Democrats were mixed. He defeated Tarver by three points, 45% to 42% but tied with Lieberman at 44% each and trailed Warnock by one point, 45% to 44%.
A hospital staff member tests for coronavirus at a drive-up test site at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany in March 2020. (Photo courtesy of Phoebe Putney)
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, the Albany-based hospital that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, will start using the antiviral drug remdesivir to help treat patients with severe health issues from the respiratory virus.
The South Georgia hospital is one of eight in the state to receive initial shipments of the drug that arrived from federal officials last week. The hospitals picked to receive the drug are among the most affected by COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic.
State health officials received 30 cases of the antiviral drug in the initial shipment last week that contained 1,200 vials capable of treating roughly 11 patients, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. A larger second shipment has also been sent to Georgia and will be distributed sometime this week, health officials said.
Phoebe Putney quickly became the COVID-19 outbreak epicenter in Georgia outside the Atlanta area as the virus sent waves of people to the hospital. While admissions for COVID-19 have declined in recent weeks, the hospital was treating 82 patients for the virus as of noon Tuesday. To date, 122 patients with COVID-19 have died at Phoebe Putney.
“Remdesivir is the first drug shown through clinical research to be a potentially helpful tool in the treatment of COVID-19,” said Steven Kitchen, Phoebe Putney’s chief medical officer. “It certainly is not a cure, but it does appear to reduce the severity and length of the illness in some patients.”
Produced by the California company Gilead Sciences Inc., remdesivir was granted emergency-use authorization earlier this month by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after a clinical trial that found the drug likely can help treat severe cases of coronavirus, such as patients who are on ventilators.
The drug has not been formally approved for use by the FDA, but the clinical trial found it may reduce a seriously ill person’s chances for dying and the amount of time needed to stay in a hospital. It was originally developed to treat patients who contracted the Ebola virus.
Other hospitals in Georgia that have received vials of remdesivir include Tift Regional Medical Center, Northeast Georgia Medical Center, Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, Grady Health System, Emory University Hospital, Emory University Hospital Midtown and Augusta University Medical Center.
As of noon Tuesday, more than 38,600 cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in the state. The virus had killed 1,649 Georgians.
A carpet manufacturer announced plans Tuesday to expand in Northwest Georgia.
ATLANTA – A high-end commercial carpet manufacturer in Chattooga County announced plans Tuesday for a $5 million investment that will double its payroll.
Try-Con Tufters, which began operations in 2005 in Lyerly, will build a 109,000-square-foot plant that will create 104 additional jobs, bringing the company’s Georgia workforce to more than 200.
“Try-Con Tufters has been a first-rate employer in Chattooga County for 15 years,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “We’re glad that Georgia has been able to provide the workforce necessary for their growth.”
“Try-Con is very appreciative of the state of Georgia, the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority, and Chattooga County for allowing us to grow and expand our business,” Try-Con Tufters CEO Milford Morgan added. “This expansion will ensure our presence in Chattooga County for many years to come.”
Try-Con Tufters specializes in making quality carpets for hospitality and contract customers from all over the world.
Job opportunities at the new plant will include operators, menders, and creelers. Interested individuals are encouraged to visit TryCon Tufters’ Human Resources Department at 5569 Hwy 114 for additional information.
Voters wait in line at a precinct in Cobb County on May 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Early voting for the June 9 primary in Georgia started Monday amid ongoing safety concerns stemming from the coronavirus pandemic coupled with close scrutiny over how the state’s new voting machines perform.
On the ballot are elections for federal, state and local offices plus the presidential preference primary, which has twice been delayed since its original March 24 date due to coronavirus. The general election will be held on Nov. 3. Runoffs, if needed, would be held on Aug. 11.
More than 40 sitting state lawmakers running for reelection in the General Assembly have drawn primary opponents. And several of the state’s 13 congressional seats are being hotly contested by Republican and Democratic candidates in metro Atlanta and North Georgia.
The three-week early voting period comes as county election officials roll out sanitizing and social-distancing measures aimed at reducing coronavirus risks in precincts, such as by cleaning ballot machines with sanitizing wipes and spreading out voters waiting in line.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday local precincts are spacing voters six feet apart while in line and providing poll workers with masks and gloves. Voters are being urged but not required to wear masks, Raffensperger said.
Precincts are also giving voters stylus pens to make ballot selections on touchscreens that are wiped before and after each use, Raffensperger said. Hand sanitizer is also available at precincts.
Raffensperger said he feels confident precincts will be ready to receive larger crowds on June 9 for Election Day.
“They’ll make it happen,” Raffensperger said Monday. “It’ll be a victory. It might be a rough one, but at the end of the day it will be a victory. People that want to vote will be able to vote.”
Early voting for the June 9 primary also will mark one of the first statewide uses of the new $104 million voting machines, which involve touchscreens and scanners that record a paper print-out of a voter’s completed ballot. The old machines in use since 2002 have been scrapped over cybersecurity issues.
State officials hail the new machines as more secure than the old all-electronic machines, while many critics have continued pushing through federal lawsuits for entirely paper ballots.
Purchased last July from Dominion Voting Systems, the new machines were on a tight timeline to roll out ahead of the March 24 presidential preference primary and saw a handful of glitches during a six-county test run last November.
Raffensperger said the new machines “are working great” just as they did for a shortened early-voting period that took place ahead of the then-scheduled March 24 presidential preference primary.
Beyond the new machines, coronavirus has upended the normal voting process in Georgia in ways that have spurred a huge push for absentee ballots and litigation aimed at delaying in-person voting.
As of Monday, Raffensperger said county officials had collected about 300,000 absentee ballots out of the nearly 1.5 million ballots requested statewide, a figure already dwarfing the roughly 223,000 mail-in ballots cast in the high-turnout 2018 gubernatorial election.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit seeking to delay the primary again to the end of June and for officials to shelve the new touchscreens in favor of paper ballots. The suit argued the screens cannot be cleaned often enough to prevent coronavirus transmissions at precincts.
Meanwhile, dozens of state lawmakers seeking reelection to the General Assembly have been handcuffed by rules preventing them from campaign fundraising while the legislature remains suspended until later next month – even as their primary challengers have been allowed to raise cash.
The fundraising prohibition has not affected candidates for high-profile congressional races, particularly for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
Roughly a half-dozen Democratic candidates vying for the seat held by U.S. Sen. David Perdue, a Republican, will be on the primary ballot. The primary pits several high-profile Democratic challengers including Sarah Riggs Amico, Jon Ossoff and Teresa Tomlinson.
Heated primary contests are also being held in the 6th, 7th, 11th and 13th congressional districts in metro Atlanta; the 9th Congressional District in Northeast Georgia; and the 14th Congressional District in Northwest Georgia.
The state’s other U.S. Senate contest for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat will not be on the June 9 primary ballot since it is being held as a free-for-all open election between candidates of all parties on Nov. 3.
