Atlanta Council fiddles while city burns

Here’s the bottom line: The Atlanta Detention Center — otherwise known as the city jail — at the south end of Peachtree Street downtown costs taxpayers $30 million a year. That’s net, after you’ve already factored in payments from MARTA, the U.S. Marshall’s office, immigration authorities and the other agencies that lease inmate bed space from the city.

The city — or, more precisely, the mayor’s office — wants to sell the jail to Fulton County in a lease/purchase deal to stem the flow of red ink. Fulton, still under a federal court mandate to ease overcrowding at its own jail, theoretically wants to buy the city’s 1,150-bed facility.

As Councilman Howard Shook observes: “This deal is a no-brainer.”

But you wouldn’t know it from having sat in on recent meetings in which Atlanta Council members have spent excruciating hours asking dumb-ass questions, getting testy with administration officials and generally wallowing in irrelevant minutiae.

Beware: What follows is something of a diatribe. An informed diatribe from a payer of Atlanta taxes, but a diatribe nonetheless.

Having spent the past 20-some years covering local government, I’ve probably developed a lower tolerance for elected officials asking bone-headed questions and making comments that betray a poor grasp of basic finance — especially when they come from folks who clearly know better and are simply wasting everyone’s time.

For instance, at a meeting on the jail two weeks ago, Councilman C.T. Martin insisted that the administration break down the resale value of every feature of the property, including the front steps, the elevators, the hallways, etc. I hope I needn’t point out that that shit doesn’t even make sense.