APRIL 13 - 26, 2018 • VOL. 10 — NO. 8
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Brookhaven Reporter
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After years of friendship, a Gold Girl Scout troop winds down Around Town PAGE 13
► Student protest leaders took different paths into activism PAGE 22
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION | P23-28
City on the lookout for new police headquarters
Cleaning up at Murphey Candler Park
BY DYANA BAGBY dyanabagby@reporternewspapers.net
PHIL MOSIER
Marianne Velker plucks trash from the Murphey Candler Park dam on April 7 during the “Sweep the Hooch” annual cleanup day along the entire Chattachoochee River watershed. She was one of many volunteers to come out for the event, organized by Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
Coping with a Crisis: Opioid addiction in the suburbs EXCLUSIVE SERIES
Opioid ODs are deadlier than mass shootings, but some high schools don’t stock the antidote BY MAX BLAU
I
n the spring of 2014, a student fell out of his chair in a 10th-grade classroom at Buckhead’s North Atlanta High School. A teacher quickly noticed he was unconscious and hardly breathing. After someone called 911, a paramedic arrived and, suspecting an overdose, administered an opioid antidote in hopes of saving the kid’s life. The antidote, known as naloxone, worked. In reviving the student, Atlanta Public Schools staffers suddenly found themselves on the front line of the opioid
crisis. Nurses realized they could either shake it off as an isolated incident — or prepare for future overdoses to come. Imagine a school without a plan for an active shooter in 2018. Yet there were four times as many fatal opioid overdoses than gun homicides in 2016. Those deaths have
Listen to our special podcast or watch the video of a deeper discussion about the opioid epidemic’s local impact. See page 11
left a haunting trail of news reports across the country that include students finding classmates sprawled out on school bathroom floors and paramedics responding to the overdoses of teachers. In recent years, the rash of in-school overdoses nationwide hasn’t spared Atlanta, as the NAHS incident showed. And graduates of local public and private high schools have died from overdoses to opioids that they first tried as students. Yet many schools — including ones in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and Brookhaven – have chosen not to stock the life-saving opioid antidote. See OPIOID on page 10
The search for a new Brookhaven police headquarters and municipal court site is underway. A Buford Highway residential neighborhood, already proposed for a townhome redevelopment, is one of several sites under consideration. The Ardent Companies is seeking to rezone approximately 15 acres on Bramblewood Drive and two parcels on Buford Highway for a 197-unit townhome development. The rezoning request was given the go-ahead by the Planning Commission at its April 4 meeting and now goes before the City Council. But the city is also looking at property on Bramblewood Drive to possibly purchase for the police and court building. Funding for the new headquarters is coming from $15 million in special local option sales tax money that was apSee CITY on page 30
City Hall building would be torn down in development plan BY DYANA BAGBY dyanabagby@reporternewspapers.net
Brookhaven City Hall would be demolished as part of a redevelopment plan for several Peachtree Road properties recently filed with the city. The project would replace the current City Hall building with a new six-story office and retail building. Delta Life Insurance Co. owns the just over 6 acres of properties at 4362-4400 Peachtree Road and filed for several zoning variances on April 4. The variances inSee CITY on page 19