The Athens Municipal Water Authority (AMWA) walked away from Saturday’s elections the clear winner over the City of Athens. You can see the unofficial results here, but believe me, when you take 4.5 out of 5 races you get to be called the winner.
Here are three leftovers from Saturday night after going through my notebook.
1. I got the chance to talk to Wylie Pirkle that night. The AMWA executive director was understandably thrilled with the results of the election.
“The voters put their trust in us to go and make this a better place,” he said. “We have a responsibility to react to the voters and I definitely think that’s what the voters said.”
“The voters heard us about how important water is to the future of the community.”
2. I also spoke with Mayor Jerry Don Vaught Saturday night. He was not as jubilant as the AMWA folks, but he was talking about moving foward.
“The citizens got to voice their vote and that’s what we wanted,” the mayor said. “That’s what was important.”
“The lawsuit is still there and the $4 million (demand) is still there despite what they say. They took it out of part of (the lawsuit) but they didn’t take it out of all of it. I am sure we will start talking more mediation. Hopefully they will want to go mediate and work this out. One of their board members just told me that he’s ready to sit down and work this out and I said, well that’s what we need to do. We don’t need to let more taxpayers’ money be spent on all this.”
3. The name to remember when it comes to moving forward on the water issue is Tres Winn, who beat Elaine Jenkins Saturday night.
After the election, the make up of the Athens City Council includes two men who voted to abolish AMWA (Jerry Don Vaught, Monte Montgomery) and two former AMWA board members who voted to sue the city (Joe Whatley and Charles Elliott).
In my mind, that makes Winn a pretty important swing vote on the council when it comes to decisions about the AMWA lawsuit and mediation.
Particularly since he is the only one who never took a public position on the water controversy.