By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | There was one surprising vote from last week’s city elections in Gwinnett. One candidate, in Lilburn, went into office without a majority of the vote. He is Brian Burchik, who won a seat on the Lilburn Council with 48.1 percent of the vote. Lilburn, as far as we can tell, is the only city in Gwinnett where candidates can win an election with a plurality of the vote.
Burchik had 279 votes, six shy of a majority-plus-one of the 568 votes cast. Teresa Czyz finished second with 182 votes, and Michelle West garnered 107 votes.
As Lilburn Clerk Melissa Penate said, winning without a majority surprised a lot of people in Gwinnett. But recognize that it means that Lilburn didn’t have to have a costly run-off vote.
While we can advocate plurality voting, we would like to see the candidates get at least 40 percent before being declared a winner. After all, should 10 people be in a race, you could have newly-elected public official with 11 percent of the vote!
Congratulations, Brian, on your “stunning” victory!
Hunter
Ronald Hunter, a professor of criminal justice/criminology at Georgia Gwinnett College, has been recognized with a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. The award was presented to Hunter at the Hall of Fame Celebratory Brunch, held recently in Tallahassee, Fla. As a scholar, Hunter has presented numerous papers at regional, national, and international criminology/criminal justice meetings, and has published many articles and book chapters dealing with crime prevention, policing, research methods, and criminological theory.
How moviemakers will pull this one off is beyond me.
You see, the Clint Eastwood film about Pilot C.B. ‘Sully” Sullenberger landing an jetliner on the Hudson River in 2009 ……is being partially filmed in Georgia! The movie is simply called “Sully.” One scene where the young Sully is learning to fly an airplane was filmed at Pike County’s’ Peach State Airport in Williamson, Ga., as reported in the Pike County Journal.
Will they use the Chattahoochee River for the filming of the landing? If so, they’ll have to patch in lots of tall buildings along the banks!
It’s another way Georgia is benefiting from its provision giving a tax rate to films made partially within the state. It’s paying off more and more each year, with several films being shot partially in Gwinnett County.
To kick off a celebration of 50 years of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the federal agency recently recognized 50 projects of special significance that have enriched and shaped American lives. One of those was the New Georgia Encyclopedia (NGE), a program of Georgia Humanities Council in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the office of the Governor.
The Georgia Encyclopedia is the first state encyclopedia conceived exclusively for publication on the Internet. NGE has served as a model for other state encyclopedia projects seeking NEH funding.
Readers have commented for years favorably on the inclusion of an Encyclopedia in this publication. There’s reason: It’s authoritative, richly illustrated, and free to everyone.
Georgia Humanities president Jamil Zainaldin adds: “The NGE is quite an achievement, thanks to the tremendous usage of the site by educators, tourists, journalists, and others who care about our state’s history and culture.”
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