Below from Today’s MDJ. Adios Jerry!

Boarding house ordinance prompts move

Friday, August 3, 2007
By Kelly Brooks

MARIETTA – Less than two weeks after Cobb tightened its rules on overcrowded houses, Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, resigned from the 2004-formed Cobb Latino Initiative.

Gonzalez said the initiative served to advise Cobb government and the Cobb Chamber of Commerce on how to integrate the Latino community and establish relationships and open lines of communication.

Cobb politicians, he said, disrespected the group and its purpose by “not having an up-front, transparent discussion” regarding rule changes that clamp down on oft-overcrowded boarding houses and day laborers that commissioners held public hearings for July 10 and 24.

Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens said he “absolutely” told Gonzalez about the tougher boarding house rules the board unanimously approved on July 24.

“(Gonzalez) told me boarding houses were something that no one wanted,” Olens said, noting he is disappointed in Gonzalez for acting more like a politician than the leader of a nonprofit organization.

Commissioners on July 24 postponed action to tighten the county’s day laborer rules until Aug. 14 but approved a crackdown on boarding houses, which says one family (parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters) and two or fewer unrelated adults and their children or grandchildren may live in a home, provided there is enough square-footage.

“The whole notion of the county government defining what family means is really going to be problematic, I think,” Gonzalez said.

Olens echoed his previous defense of the overcrowded home rules, which he has said is not a racial issue.

“I don’t care who’s living in the boarding house, I don’t want them,” Olens added, reiterating previous statements that Cobb has encountered boarding houses occupied by blacks, whites, Latinos, and many other races.

According to the nonprofit leader, the initiative’s objective also was undermined when commissioners, without giving it a heads-up, in October 2006 approved implementation of part of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act that allows sheriff’s department officials to check the legal status of every inmate entering the jail through a federal database.

The October action has led to a fault in public safety, with “immigrants going around saying, ‘don’t trust the police,'” Gonzalez said.

“Cobb admitted it was an oversight on their part not bringing it up in the group. They said it won’t happen again,” Gonzalez said. “It happened again.”

Gonzalez said Olens did tell him about planned changes to Cobb’s housing and day laborer rules, but Gonzalez then told Olens the issue should be brought up in a meeting “to address the unintended consequences” of the changes.

Olens said Elise Shore, Atlanta regional counsel for the Los Angeles-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who at the July 24 meeting spoke against the boarding house rules and has said her organization would oppose a day laborer ordinance, has not contacted Cobb or tried to meet with Olens to discuss the changes.

The chairman said the actions of Gonzalez and Ms. Shore will not affect the pending day laborer ordinance.

Dan Vargas, a Latino advertiser, original member of the initiative and east Cobb resident, said he was equally angered with officials when he read Gonzalez’s heated resignation letter the day after commissioners passed the boarding house ordinance, but he had only seen “one side of the coin.”

“It was no sooner that I read it than another e-mail came to me with Sam Olens’ request,” he said, referring to a resurrected June 30 e-mail in which the chairman attached the proposed rule changes with a request for a discussion with the Cobb Latino Initiative.

The e-mail did not go through at the time it was sent, but Vargas said his anger subsided because “I can’t blame people for trying.”

Vargas noted that whether Cobb’s proposed day laborer rules are problematic is “up for discussion.”

According to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, 10.4 percent of Cobb’s population, or about 70,000 in a population of 680,000, is Hispanic.

Gonzalez said that from January 2003 to December 2004, the number of Hispanic registered voters increased from 1,063 to 3,800.

According to David Connell, who with Olens formed the Cobb Latino Initiative when he was incoming Cobb Chamber chairman, the informal group started with a handful of people, has since grown to about 60 or 70 and, in its approximately bi-monthly meetings, tries to keep lines of communication open with Latino residents.

The group has discussed and worked on projects regarding family health care, reducing crime rates and addressing language barriers.

“I personally think Jerry will come back, and I hope he does,” Connell said.