By Michael V. Hannigan/HCN
The Athens City Council unanimously voted to approve Athens ISD’s request to close the portion of Dul Averiett Street adjacent to Bruce Field Monday night.
The decision came following a lengthy public forum that saw speaker after speaker advocate for closing the street. One speaker did advocate against the action, but the audience was overwhelmingly in favor of the closing.
Some council members had concerns with closing the road during their March 14 meeting, but all wound up behind the move in the end.
Councilman Joe Whatley said the public outpouring was influential.
“I had some reservations on this in the beginning just because the congestion of the traffic,” he said. “But we’ve had our forum here tonight and it’s served us well, and I think the public has spoken loud and clear on this.”
Councilman Tres Winn advocated for supporting the AISD request from the start and told the council, “If we don’t vote to do this based on inconvenience (of driving around), we have to take a hard look at ourselves.”
Mayor Jerry Don Vaught said, “When I got on City Council almost nine years ago, my whole thought was that I wanted to make Athens change, I wanted to help it progress, help it grow, and I wanted it to prosper for all the citizens of Athens. AISD is doing that. They are working as hard as they can to make their school district grow, prosper and survive. We, as councilmen, have wanted the same thing for the City of Athens. We need to support AISD.”
Following the vote, Superintendent Blake Stiles said, “I think this is a step the city made to team with the school in order to make progress. I think that the facilities that are going to be brought to this community are going to enhance it. It is going to be great for our kids and great for our community.”
“The next step is to continue working with the architect to finish the drawings. We were kind of in a holding place until we found out what happened with this,” he added.