For This Year's Spring Break, Cost Is the Name of the Game

In an interview at the the Student Learning Center at the University of Georgia Monday morning, sophomore Sam Hall admitted he was forced to change his spring break plans and settle on renting a condo with 12 friends for a week in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

            Although Gulf Shores is “the hip place to go for Spring Break,”  Hall explained it wasn’t his first choice of travel destinations.

            “Renting a cabin in the North Georgia Mountains was actually what I wanted to do,” Hall said, “but price became an issue and our group had to find somewhere else.”

Unlike the $400 a week the cabin in the mountains would have run, his Gulf Shores trip will cost each person a more reasonable $200, said Hall, a sophomore, business-finance major

            In order to afford the trip, Sam said he has cut back on eating fast food. He believes this is a sacrifice he feels is well worth a week of swimming, socializing and relaxing.

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Behind the Scenes of Life as an Editor

Being a mother of a 2-year old, a wife, and the sole editor of an online news site is no easy feat. 

Just ask Stephanie Gross, the 28-year-old editor of the OconeePatch, who spoke for an hour to a University of Georgia journalism class on Feb. 13 about her transition into journalism and the time balancing she must do to run the hyper-local news site.

“It’s a 24-7 operation, so there are times my family has come with me to the scene of a fire on a Saturday night,” said Gross, responsible for writing, linking and marketing content for the site.

With her background in telecommunications and her first job in radio, the 2006 UGA graduate told the class that there has also been a learning curve when it comes to aspects like writing style and public relations. But, she claims she is learning and improving these skills after starting as a guest editor two-years-ago

And while she described the nature of the job as “exciting, thrilling, and time consuming,” her first priority remains her family and balancing spending time with them, she said.

In Down Economic Times, Athens-Clarke County Government Becomes an Example of Efficiency

As costs become a bigger problem for local governments in a tough economy,  consolidation of city and county governments has become a recent trend, local government expert Harry Hayes presented to a journalism class at the University of Georgia Monday morning.

The Carl Vinson Institute of Government faculty member went on to explain, “with the economic crisis that we are in, people are looking at their local governments and asking how can we reduce costs, and so consolidation is a pretty hot topic around the country, and here in Georgia”.

Although Athens-Clarke County consolidated in 1991 due to a lengthy grassroots effort from local citizens, consolidation is hard to get passed “because Georgia is not one of the states with citizen initiatives” and “elected officials are faced with the opportunity to lose their job if people vote for consolidation," Hayes explained.

            Nevertheless, Hayes pointed to cities and counties like Macon-Bibb, Dalton-Whitfield and Milledgeville-Baldwin, who are all making efforts to consolidate their governments.

            Although Hayes has no way to rate the success of consolidation efforts, he knows of no movement in any area that has consolidated governments where they are trying to reverse its effect.