Welcome to Atlanta Reconstitution. This site has been created to share timely and amusing public-domain reprints from some of Atlanta’s historic newspapers.
-
Archives
Reforms in Atlanta Government Suggested by Herbert R. Sands
Dec 31, 1912
The Constitution: Atlanta, GA – Tuesday, December 31, 1912
Provide a simpler form of government.
Give the mayor more administrative power.
Establish police substations over the city.
Abolish the police board and the park board.
Consolidate city and county governments.
Destroy confiscated revolvers. Don’t auction them.
Revolutionize the poor system of street inspection.
Abolish the smoke nuisance—it’s a bad advertisement.
Give more publicity to the making of the annual budget.
Get more “snap” in the members of the police department.
Regulate automobile parking in the narrow downtown district.
Make the chief of construction an appointive officer; not elective.
Abolish the grade crossings on the railroad tracks entering the city.
Forbid the fencing off of the street by contractors building houses.
Decrease the city water rate—the department is making too much money.
Make the annual reports of the different departments more complete.
Collect the taxes semi-annually, instead of three installments.
Put the electric wires underground now, when it would cost little.
Use combination poles, for street lights and trolley wires, at least.
Mike the police take “setting up exercises” to give them a soldierly bearing.
Have more street signs over the city, so that residents and visitors won’t get lost.
Demand an automobile license fee, ranging from $10 to $25, to provide funds for road improvement.
Standardize the salaries of city employees in all departments, according to their actual duties.
Construct “safety islands,” six or eight inches high, in the center of some of the most dense street crossings.