Below from Today’s MDJ. Adios Jerry!<\/p>\n
Boarding house ordinance prompts move <\/strong><\/p>\n Friday, August 3, 2007 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<\/a>, resigned from the 2004-formed Cobb Latino Initiative.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens said he “absolutely” told Gonzalez about the tougher boarding house rules the board unanimously approved on July 24.<\/p>\n “(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.<\/p>\n 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)<\/a> and two or fewer unrelated adults and their children or grandchildren may live in a home, provided there is enough square-footage.<\/p>\n “The whole notion of the county government defining what family means is really going to be problematic, I think,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n Olens echoed his previous defense of the overcrowded home rules, which he has said is not a racial issue.<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n According to the nonprofit leader, the initiative’s objective also was undermined <\/a>when commissioners, without giving it a heads-up, in October 2006 approved implementation of part of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act <\/a>that allows sheriff’s department officials to check the legal status of every inmate entering the jail <\/a>through a federal database. <\/p>\n
\nBy Kelly Brooks <\/p>\n