Athens Decides: Tim Denson

With his campaign promise to “Make Athens affordable again,” Clarke County School District Board of Education member (District 5) and former Athens-Clarke County commissioner Tim Denson is running for the second time to become the next mayor of Athens. 

“Athens is an amazing city, and it’s treated me so well. It’s been my home now for over 21 years, for me and my family. It is the best city in the world, but Athens does have a lot of challenges right now. It’s become pretty unaffordable, with a really high housing cost and a lot of other living costs. I believe that I have the experience, but also the vision and the history of getting things done that we need here in the mayor’s office,” Denson said.

In order to make progress with his goals as mayor, he hopes to use his former experiences to make connections and plans with the ACC commission, understanding how local government works.

“The mayor really doesn’t get a lot of things done unilaterally by themselves. They have to work with the commission. That’s why it’s important to have a mayor who has served on the county commission before and understands that process of how things move through committees because that’s really how you get things done,” Denson said.

Since he first ran for mayor in 2014, one of Denson’s plans was to continue and expand the fare-free transit system. Keeping the system in place is one of his top goals.

“I want to keep the zero fare public transit system. It’s one of the things that I campaigned on back when I ran for mayor back in 2014 and as a commissioner. Now we have the largest zero fare public transit system in the southeast, and I want to work to make sure that it is permanent and we actually expand that zero fare system to more places,” Denson said.

Denson has faced controversy in the past for proposing a 50% budget decrease for the ACCPD after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.  While there are currently no plans for a police budget cut, he does want to prevent the use of private prison companies in the county. Currently, the Georgia Department of Corrections works with two companies, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America, CCA) and the GEO Corporation, both of which have faced controversy regarding the treatment of detainees and staff in their facilities. While Athens-Clarke County itself does not use these companies for detention, he hopes to stop any possibility of their expansion into Athens.

“I don’t believe that anybody should ever be profiting off of incarcerating people. That gives an incentive for people to be incarcerated, because people can make money off of it. That’s something that I have fought against for years as a community organizer and activist.  I think that it would be best if we find alternatives that are not done by for profit companies,” Denson said.

He also wants to create a new program of co-responder units that would respond to non-violent crimes, cautioning that this idea does not mean reducing police activity for more volatile situations.

“We definitely need the police when it comes to violent crimes, or a lot of other issues. But we also have a lot of situations, such as when we’re dealing with homelessness, when there’s a domestic dispute, or maybe just a trespassing situation happening at a convenience store. Something where the best response isn’t necessarily to send an already super busy and super stretched police department, but instead have these co-responders who might be better suited to respond to those situations,” Denson said.

Denson wants to expand and connect the public infrastructure of Athens, including walking trails and parks around the county. Due to the time and resource costs, he wants to find new sources of funding to help these projects on top of current sources.

“My biggest priorities for connectivity are around our parks and around our public schools. That’s expensive, of course, and that’s one of the reasons that it takes a lot of time to get these things done. We need more revenue to get those things done. We have T-SPLOST, which is a one-cent sales tax that goes towards transportation projects. But there’s a lot of projects that are trying to go there. I want to find a new revenue source that we can add to that,” Denson said.

One method Denson proposes to fund public projects is a policy called inclusionary parking, which would allow developers to build fewer parking spaces than currently required, while contributing a portion of the savings to a public fund for infrastructure improvements. 

“We have something called parking minimums. That’s why you end up seeing lots of empty parking lots not being utilized. With my policy, instead of having to build 100 parking spots, they can build 80, or the amount they want. They can pay 50% of what it would cost to build those extra 20 and put that money into a multimodal transportation fund that we will then use to help pay for and expand public transit, sidewalks, crosswalks, multi-use trails and bike lanes throughout the county,” Denson said.

Denson’s candidacy for mayor aims to create a more affordable city that allows citizens to be creative without fears of economic instability.

“Athens has a great soul and culture. We’re a very creative city with people who are, a lot of times, willing to figure things out and have our own creative offerings for different things. I just love that. That’s one of the reasons I’m running on a platform of trying to make Athens more affordable. Because people have been able to do those kinds of creative things because Athens has been affordable for so long that they could work their job but still pursue these other creative, interesting things that they love. And if Athens isn’t affordable, people aren’t going to be able to have the time and the leisure and the ability to do that,” Denson said.

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