Good Morning Gwinnett Podcast

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County commissioners are discussing the possibility of using a county ordinance to reduce the punishment someone could face for possessing small amounts of marijuana, including eliminating jail time.Commissioner Kirkland Carden pitched the idea of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana to his colleagues on Tuesday. It doesn’t make marijuana legal, but rather the idea is to target possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, allowing police to issue a citation rather than arresting the person and taking them to jail, which can take the officer off the streets for several hours.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County Public Schools recently ordered 32,000 laptops for students, Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks told the county’s state legislative delegation recently in a videoconference.Wilbanks said the new Google Chromebooks should arrive sometime around next month.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com A Gwinnett County resource to help residents struggling through the coronavirus pandemic just got a boost in funding.The Lawrenceville Response Center, which opened last April, this month received more than half a million dollars in additional funding, including money from the city and the county.The center raised $175,000 through donations which was then matched by both Lawrenceville and GwinnettCounty

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Amaadi's journey as a wellness practitioner started at home, because movement was a must in her family. When she and her brother were young, their mother would wake them up before sunrise to bike or jog around the neighborhood before school. So, movement has always been a part of her life. Her mother made sure of it.She added healthy nutrition habits to her movement practices in college while studying Spanish. There, Amaadi became a vegetarian and delved into researching food and how the body reacts to it. Combining the two were the building blocks for developing a body that felt efficient, healthy, and strong.Amaadi is a mom to three sons, a NASM certified personal trainer, group exercise instructor, nutrition lifestylist, and holistic healing advocate. After naturally healing her own abdominal separation (diastasis), she became the first Black Tupler Technique® Trained Professional. Now, as the Belly Therapist™, she focuses on educating and supporting the natural healing of this condition among women postpartum. She also helps women celebrate their bodies while healing their bellies.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Parents who support both keeping J. Alvin Wilbanks as Gwinnett County Public Schools’ superintendent and keeping in-person learning available for families who want it gathered at the district’s offices on Tuesday to make their voices heard.Nearly three dozen parents, who said they speak for a larger group of families who could not attend the mid-day rally, chanted “We support Wilbanks,” and expressed concerns that the school board could tip into micromanagement and put the district’s accreditation at risk.“(School board chairman) Everton Blair is a product of this school system, and a damn fine one at that under the leadership of Mr. Wilbanks,” one Archer cluster parent, Holly Terei, said. “How in good faith can you be a product of such a fantastic educational institution, and then in the same breath call the person who rose that institution from the ground up a racist? Or that they get paid too much? Or they’ve been here too long?SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Peachtree Corners could become the birthplace of new self-driving technology used in cars sold to the public in the near future.The Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners, the Gwinnett city’s publicly funded innovation lab, recently purchased a Ford Edge vehicle with self-driving capabilities. The city will allow private companies to test their autonomous driving systems in the car.Instead of driving on a closed course, the car will travel on Technology Parkway alongside other vehicles and pedestrians.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com “Helping communities thrive is at the core of what we do, and we’re pleased to lend a hand in a place that so many Boehringer Ingelheim employees call home,” said Randolph Legg, president of the pharmaceutical corporation’s U.S. Animal Health business and a director of BI Cares, in the news release.The Gwinnett school district has about 177,000 students and slightly more than half qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on their families’ incomes. About 45% of all Gwinnett students are learning digitally this semester.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com The Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale Health Department is preparing to open a mass COVID-19 vaccination site at Gwinnett Place Mall this weekend.The health department said the site, which will be located at the former Sears location at the Duluth area mall, is set to hold a soft opening on Friday to handle a small number of patients so any logistical issues can be worked out.The plan is to open the site further on Saturday, with more than 1,000 patients set to be vaccinated on that day."This site will be a dedicated, static site where the Health Department will continue to vaccinate Georgians for the remainder of the operation," health department spokesman Chad Wasdin said.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Gwinnett County Public Schools is hosting a virtual event for district students who plan to become teachers. It will include a celebration of the high school seniors who have signed a letter of intent to teach in Gwinnett after earning the required degrees or certificates.The annual event, known as teacher signing day, will be at 7 p.m. Monday.Katie Blum, teacher of the year in Gwinnett, is slated to speak. The event will feature scholarship presentations, opportunities to meet with Gwinnett leaders and professional organizations as well as a college fair.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com There are 19 confirmed cases of the UK variant of the COVID-19 virus that have now shown up in Georgia, and Gwinnett County is one of the places where the variant has emerged, the Georgia Department of Public Health announced on Monday.In all, there are nine Georgia counties — all of which are in metro Atlanta — where the UK variant, also known as COVID variant B.1.1.7, has shown up. In addition to Gwinnett, the other counties are Carroll, Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton and Paulding.The cases range from in age from 15 to 61 and include eight men and 11 women. The state did not list how many cases of the variant were found in each county.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Self-driving scooters are on a roll in Peachtree Corners, where residents will continue to see them cruising through Atlanta Technology Park without a driver.The e-scooters debuted in May 2020, giving approximately 8,000 employees a new way to traverse the 500-acre technology park. The Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners, the Gwinnett city’s publicly funded innovation lab, worked with micromobility device company Tortoise to deploy the scooters for a six-month pilot program.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Adam English enters his third year as the Vice President and General Manager for the Gwinnett Stripers in 2021. He was named to the position in November of 2018. This year will be his 17th in professional baseball.English joined the Stripers following six seasons leading the ticket sales department for the Sacramento River Cats (Triple-A, San Francisco Giants). Hired as Sacramento's Director of Ticket Sales in 2013, he advanced to Senior Director of Ticket Sales and Service in 2015 and spent the last two seasons as the Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service.During his tenure, the River Cats drew 3,598,210 fans to Raley Field for an average of 8,466 per game. Sacramento ranked in the top five in Pacific Coast League in attendance in each of his six seasons, and led the 16-team circuit in total attendance in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2016, the River Cats were named by Forbes as the most valuable franchise in Minor League Baseball.The Lexington, Ky. Native led the Stripers to an 8% growth in attendance in 2019 prior to the pandemic halting the 2020 season. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Transylvania University in Lexington.Adam and his wife Kerstin have one son, Truett, and a Boston Terrier named Charlie. He loves rooting on his Kentucky Wildcats, traveling, and Kentucky Bourbon.

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com ATLANTA - State Rep. David Clark, R-Buford, said he will not be forced to take "any unnecessary medical test" after Georgia House Speaker David Ralston ejected him from the House floor Tuesday for refusing to take a COVID-19 test.Clark hasn’t taken a single test for the virus since the 2021 General Assembly convened on Jan. 11, a violation of rules the House adopted at the start of the session, said Kaleb McMichen, Ralston’s spokesman. The rule requires lawmakers to undergo testing twice a week, whether or not they are at the Georgia Capitol."What I will not do is be forced to have a COVID test, or any unnecessary medical test, done without a basis for doing so," Clark said in a statement on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon. "The seat that I hold for District 98 is not my seat, but the people’s seat. I work for you, and I cannot in good conscience watch expensive tests that should be given to Georgia citizens who desperately need them be wasted for nothing more than political optics at the Capitol.SOURCE: www.GwinnettDailyPost.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com Lawrenceville is one of the latest Gwinnett cities to consider banning smoking products from its public parks and recreational facilities.At a work session of the Lawrenceville City Council earlier this month, Deputy City Manager Steve North recommended an update to the city’s park and recreation ordinance to reflect the county’s tobacco-free policy implemented in October 2020. This amendment would allow both county and city police officers to enforce the county’s policy, North said.The use of cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and vapes are prohibited in parks and recreational facilities under the county’s tobacco-free policy. The policy makes an exception for smoking cessation aids, but all other methods of nicotine delivery could result in a warning or citation.SOURCE: www.AJC.com

www.GoodMorningGwinnett.com The five-member Gwinnett County Public Schools board of education unanimously Thursday chose Everton Blair Jr. as this year’s chair, kicking off a new era after the departure of former chair Louise Radloff, who served nearly half a century on the board.Blair, 28, two years ago became the Gwinnett school board’s first Black member. No other members were nominated for president at the meeting. His win was met with applause from a socially distanced audience of dozens in the board room at school district headquarters.ExploreMore stories about Gwinnett County Public SchoolsSteven Knudsen, who joined the school board at the same time as Blair, nominated him for president, with newly-elected member Karen Watkins seconding the nomination.SOURCE: www.AJC.com