By Mayor Dan Williams
mayordan@ci.athens.al.us
April 25, 2008 05:22 pm
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The annexations that are occurring in our county have been the focus of our attention for the past few months.
While these actions by cities outside Limestone County have been troubling and disturbing to some degree, we need to take stock of our community in order to know where we now stand in relation to where we were a few months ago, and determine what actions we now take, and in which direction we need to be headed. We may need to revisit our Master Plan.
Our city has grown at a fair rate for several years, and we have not had the problems that are associated with rapid, uncontrolled growth as other cities have had.
Huntsville experienced terrible growing pains several years ago, and I remember the Parkway being completely rebuilt and businesses relocated or destroyed by growth and progress. I remember Madison’s growing pains when growth outstripped the city’s ability to provide services to its citizens. It seems it was at this time Huntsville made the decision to surround Madison with their city limits as has now been accomplished.
Athens continues to grow and do well today, even though the news of the annexations sometime overshadows the good things occurring in our community. Your mayor, City Council, and our city’s employees are proud of what has been accomplished in Athens in past years. Home building is down this year from the last, but it is still way ahead of most of the nation.
Tax revenues continue to increase over last year and will probably come very near to meeting our projections for the budget. We are still able to provide our customers services in a reasonably efficient manner. Our schools continue to provide quality education for the children of our community.
Our recreation programs serve a huge number of children and citizens of all ages. Our city and county provide services to our elderly citizens with programs that are second to none.
Athens provides police services from a new station, and we will soon attend an open house at our new fire station on the east side of town. Certainly some of the future growth in Limestone County will occur in Athens, and we are constantly concerned with finding ways to improve the quality of life in our beautiful city.
We must find ways to keep doing the things we are doing correctly to make Athens the place people want to live. We need to stop doing things that would cause people to not want to live here. The guest speaker at Thursday’s Greater Limestone County Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Meeting, Dana Lee Jennings, Director of the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association, spoke about the largest industry in Alabama and the nation, tourism.
Figures for 2006 show Limestone County took in $65,972,157 in travel-related expenditures. This was a 17 percent increase over the previous year or about twelve million dollars increase from 2004.
The travel-related earning of our citizens was $23,645,088, and there were 1,136 citizens in direct/indirect travel-related employment.
Eating and drinking establishments accounted for 28 percent of direct-travel expenditures, followed by transportation, lodging, and retail trade.
The travel dollar supports America. Tourist or travelers buy transportation services to travel to places for recreation, entertainment, amusement, and meetings and they spend money for these services.
The money they spend pays wages, salaries, profits, and taxes to people who provide those services, and they use the money to support their schools, shopping areas, entertainment and recreation areas, and every other aspect of their community.
We live in a new economy, and people can live anywhere they are attracted to a good quality of life and a sense of place. People become aware of cities with quality of life through tourism.
The same quality of life that attract tourists, also attract potential residents. Quality of life through tourism is a good economic development strategy.
Athens is a great city for all of us, and we must continue to make it better for ourselves and other people looking for the best place to live.
We shouldn’t be pessimistic about our future due to outside annexations. Athens and Limestone County citizens have been here since 1818, and I’m optimistic about our future.
We can determine how to maintain and improve the quality of life we now have in what I consider to be the best city in the world.
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