Good Morning Gwinnett Podcast

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Adrian Green says “I spent 22 years as a firefighter, emergency medical technician, fire apparatus operator, fire academy instructor, and eventually a Fire Inspector in the Gwinnett’s Fire Marshall’s Office,” Green said. “It gave me a greater sense of community and the people I’ve had the privilege to serve.”He has served his community in an additional way by celebrating the heroism and character of many people. Two groups of individuals stand out in his work: emergency services heroes and what he calls the “heroes to be” — young students in Gwinnett’s schools.Green’s reputation as an artist was known among his fellow firefighters. Before he retired from the DeKalb Fire Service, Chief Darnell Fullum asked him to paint a mural for the lobby of their headquarters.“It started as a joke about how I would just retire and paint pictures ‘til I got old,” Green said. “When Chief Fullum asked me to paint the mural, we laughed it off.”SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Cosmo's Pizza & Social is a pizzeria and sports bar in downtown Lawrenceville. We have been in business for almost 20 years. Social is an expansion to the original Cosmo's and offers a more adult environment with plenty of TVs, events and live entertainment on weekend. Come out and join us and enjoy a our new small plate menu items, outdoor games, giveaways and prizes and live music. For more info, visit www.pizzaoncrogan.com.SOURCE: www.Patch.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Lawrenceville and Auburn will kick off the local celebrations with events taking place Friday night.FIREWORKS: Your guide to Independence Day celebrations in and around Gwinnett CountyENTERTAINMENTFIREWORKS: Your guide to Independence Day celebrations in and around Gwinnett CountyTodd ClineAuburn’s Independence Day celebration will take place at 5 p.m. at 1369 4th Avenue with “family fun, food, games, live music, activities, kids zone, and fireworks at dark.”Meanwhile, Lawrenceville’s Prelude To the Fourth event will take place at 5 p.m. on the Lawrenceville Lawn with performances by Riley Biederer and Electric Avenue and fireworks beginning at dusk.Residents can bring lawn chairs and blankets, but the city will mandate social distancing. There will also be food vendors located at the Lawrenceville Lawn, Bicentennial Plaza and City Hall.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com An agreement has been reached to let one of three bail bonding companies, which had sued Sheriff Keybo Taylor over his decision to not renew their certification to issue bail bonds in Gwinnett, resume handling bonds in the county.The agreement means Anytime Bail Bonding of Gwinnett Inc. can resume work they did before Taylor decided to not renew the company’s certificate of authority in January. But there are catches that will be involved.One of those entails the company adopting a new name and another is founder Scott Hall has to part ways with the company.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson as signed an agreement to support R.E.D. which stands for Rehabilitation Enables Dreams. RED creates a classroom atmosphere inside the courtroom and treats program participants as students rather than criminals. RED’s curriculum is structured to develop a student’s social, civic and financial literacy through task-oriented learning, engaging workshops, and interactive educational modules. Students are paired with appropriate mentors based on our individual-needs intake assessment. Mentors support students in their personal development and guide them in the completion of program requirements. Upon graduation, student’s records are expunged and they are referred to higher education institutions and/or employment opportunities. A summary of our curriculum can be found below.D.A. Gatson and her team along with other law enforcement divisons and judges are dedicated to turning courtrooms into classrooms.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County sheriff's deputies handle arrest warrants and help catch bad guys in the county, but the Sheriff's Office is looking to tackle another issue facing the Gwinnett County community: mental health.On Tuesday, Sheriff Keybo Taylor announced the creation of a new Mental Health Task Force. The task force is meant to serve as an intermediary force, helping people experiencing mental health issues get assistance rather than simply locking them up in the county jail."The MHTF Deputies will undergo extensive training in areas such as crisis intervention/de-escalation skills, recognition of mental illnesses, personality disorders, psychopathy, and other pertinent subjects," the Sheriff's Office said in an announcement. "The team will respond to mentally ill individuals in the community who are presenting in an acute crisis symptomatic of severe mental illness rather than overt criminality. The MHTF team will provide essential support to fellow metropolitan law enforcement agencies, and our Gwinnett County judicial system as well as mental health treatment organizations that serve our community."SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com A national grocery chain plans to hire 100 workers for a new store location in Gwinnett County.Sprouts Farmers Market, marketed as a natural and organic grocer, will open August 4 at The Exchange at Gwinnett mixed-use development in Buford. The store is hiring for both full- and part-time positions, including cashiers and clerks.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com After nearly three years of talking about opening a homeless shelter, Homefirst Gwinnett is just about to cross the finish line.Officials with the group, which was established in summer 2018 and is part of the United Way of Greater Atlanta’s Gwinnett County wing, said they anticipate opening their shelter in Norcross sometime this summer. It will be the only homeless shelter in Gwinnett County once its doors open.“It feels tremendous,” HomeFirst Gwinnett Director Matt Elder said. “This has been a long time coming. We were ready to get everything going last March or April and then COVID hit and changed everything so dramatically.“With the way our shelter is set up to have the three bedrooms and common areas, COVID made it far too difficult to try and make that work.”An exact opening date for the shelter — whose location is not being publicized by HomeFirst Gwinnett in order to protect the privacy of the people it will help — has not been set yet. Once it does open, however, it will be able to help up to 20 residents at a time.That includes both mothers with their children as well as single women.“They can stay up to 90 total days,” Elder said. “They’ll have full wrap-around case management services like mental health and substance abuse. We have a clinic run by Good Samaritan Health Clinic (so) they’ll have access to affordable healthcare and then we’ll bring in other partners for support services in addition to that.”SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Randall Toussaint is the Director of Economic Development at Partnership Gwinnett. Randall oversees the organization’s project management team and cultivates project wins for Gwinnett County in five target industries: Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Technology, Life Science, and Corporate Headquarters.Randall previously served as the Director of Corporate Solutions & Cybersecurity at the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and as the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation’s Business Development officer for the technology sector in Fort Meade, Maryland.Randall also led urban planning and economic development programs in College Park, Maryland and served as the Vice President of Economic Development in Forsyth County, Georgia. Randall’s career in Georgia also includes tenure as the Assistant Director of the Clayton County Office of Economic Development in Jonesboro, Georgia, and a Program Manager at the Savannah Development & Renewal Authority. Randall has over a decade of experience in the fields of urban planning and economic development. He is a former Fellow with the US Department of Housing & Urban Development and a former legislative liaison with the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. He holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from Savannah State University and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Morehouse College.Randall lives in Gainesville, Georgia with his wife and two children.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the owner of a major shopping center near Mall of Georgia into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to court filings.Washington Prime Group — which operates Mall of Georgia Crossing in Buford as well as 101 other shopping centers nationwide — made its filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, according to USA Today and other news outlets. The company itself is based in Columbus, Ohio.Mall of Georgia Crossing is home to 25 tenants including Target, Hobby Lobby, Staples and Best Buy. Chapter 11 bankruptcy would allow the mall to stay open and Washington Prime to remain in business while it restructures its debt.SOURCE: www.Patch.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett Solicitor General Brian Whiteside raised questions Monday about the Gwinnett County Public Schools Police Department's handling of security at the May 20 county Board of Education meeting.Whiteside said he'd heard reports that officers with the school district's police force were not immediately taking reports from attendees at the meeting who claimed they had been harassed or threatened.The May 20 school board meeting was delayed by 40 minutes because of a standoff between board members — who asserted that the district had a policy put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic that required people where face masks in GCPS facilities — and a large group of parents who refused to wear face masks or, in the absence of wearing a mask, leave the meeting.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com The board created earlier this year to advise the Gwinnett County Police Department and county commissioners on policy matters is on the cusp of finalizing its recommendation that Gwinnett leaders decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.The Gwinnett Police Citizens Advisory Board voted last month to recommend county commissioners to change Gwinnett County Ordinance 66.3, which deals with marijuana possession. It will present the written copy of that resolution, effectively “memorializing” last month’s decision according to board chairman Sean Goldstein, at its June 15 meeting.The recommended change is to make possession of less than an ounce of marijuana a county ordinance violation, punishable by a fine or community service, rather than a criminal act.“We had already voted, but we still have to send that recommendation to the commission, so obviously we have to memorialize it,” said Goldstein, who is an attorney. “We have to put it in writing basically. We had never done that before since this is our very first recommendation ... so basically what we did is our vice-chair, Marqus Cole, was tasked with memorializing, writing down what our recommendation to the commission was going to be and we’re going to have a discussion regarding the actual written format of the recommendation to the commissioners ...“It’s just finalizing the decisions that were already made on May 18.”If the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners adopts the recommended change, the punishment for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana would be either a $150 fine or up to 20 hours of community service, according to a copy of the proposed resolution that the Daily Post has obtained.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Northside Hospital Gwinnett needs a $400 million expansion simply because it's become too crowded, according to a state filing last week by the facility's parent company.Last month, Northside Hospital filed a letter of intent with the Georgia Department of Community Health to build a 10-story patient tower at its Lawrenceville facility, the largest hospital in Gwinnett. A second filing on June 2 reported by Atlanta Business Chronicle explains why.Northside Hospital Gwinnett's "inpatient utilization" — essentially, its occupancy — has hovered between 80 and 85 percent over the last few years, according to the filing as reported by the Chronicle. Ideally, inpatient utilization for a teaching hospital should be 70 percent.SOURCE: www.Patch.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County residents can meet with officials working on the sprawling Rowen research and knowledge community project in eastern Gwinnett to learn about the development this week.The Rowen Foundation will host a community meeting to discuss the project from 6:30 until 7:45 p.m. on Wednesday at the Dacula Park Activity Building, which is located at 2735 Old Auburn Avenue in Dacula.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County Solicitor General Brian Whiteside will offer past defendants a chance to get misdemeanor charges on their criminal records hidden from the public eye this weekend during a Juneteenth kick-off celebration that the Promised Land community in south Gwinnett is holding.Whiteside announced his office will gather information from past defendants who qualify for "Records Restriction," and give out information on how to get records restricted, during the free-to-attend celebration. The event will be held from noon until 5 p.m. on Saturday at 4540 Lee Road in Snellville.As its name suggests, "Records Restriction" is a way for someone has been accused of committing misdemeanor crimes to get those charges hidden from public view — as long as they meet certain criteria, such as never having been convicted of the crimes at trial and not pleading guilty or nolo contendere.