Election Day: This is an odd Dope, since Flagpole went to press on Monday, without any election results. Check Flagpole.com if you don't know who won already.

Timber!: Morris Communications, owner of the Athens Banner-Herald, is no longer owner of the building that houses what's left of the daily newspaper. The company recently sold One Press Place to two brothers from Vienna, Austria, for $10 million—which Morris has devoted to paying off a portion of its crushing bond debt—and the new owners are making some changes before they start leasing the vast expanse of office space not occupied by the paper's dwindling staff.

Those Austrian brothers clearly haven't spent much time in Athens. Last week, crews ripped out a dozen trees from the plaza in front of the building. Real estate broker Ed Nichols, who is working with the new owners, said the previous owner let them grow so tall that no one could see the building from Thomas Street. The Austrians want people to see the building, rather than a forest, he said. The Dope thinks it's probably the other way around.

Reduce (maybe), Reuse (sometimes), Recycle (if you feel like it): The Athens-Clarke Commission will vote Tuesday on a mandatory recycling policy for businesses and multifamily developments. The policy, several years in the making, would require businesses and apartment complexes to provide a place to throw things away, other than the trash, so that apartment-dwellers don't end up chucking their beer cans and pizza boxes into a Dumpster bound for the landfill.

At the commission's July 19 agenda-setting meeting, Mike Power of Power Properties took issue with the mandatory nature of the policy. He said he would have to lay off employees to cover the cost of complying and called fines for disobeying the law just more taxes.

"Voluntary compliance would be much more business-friendly," Power told commissioners. "We would happily voluntary recycle."

Which raises two questions: What good is a law if no one has to follow it? And if you're going to follow it anyway, what's the problem? To appease Power's complaints, Commissioner Kathy Hoard suggested a bit of Orwellian wordplay—simply renaming the policy. "I don't see why we have to call it mandatory," she said. "It's not using the word mandatory," Commissioner Doug Lowry responded. "It's the fact that we're making it mandatory."

Landlords and property managers are fighting the requirement, even though many of their tenants want convenient recycling. The lack of recycling facilities at apartment complexes is the single biggest obstacle to reducing the waste we bury, so it's essential to provide them if we want to avoid expanding the landfill again. This vote will be a litmus test for whether the mayor and commission stick by their professed progressive values or fold under the dreaded "anti-business" label. Let's hope a reasonable compromise Hoard proposed to keep the policy mandatory but push back the implementation date holds up.

Caterpillar Labor: The New York Times had a very interesting article July 23 about a labor dispute between Caterpillar and employees at its Joliet, Ill. plant. It starts: "When it comes to dealing with labor unions, Caterpillar has long taken a stance as tough as the bulldozers and backhoes that have burnished its global reputation. Be it two-tier wage scales or higher worker contributions for health insurance, the company has been a leader in devising new ways to cut labor costs, with other manufacturers often imitating its strategies. Now, in what has become a test case in American labor relations, Caterpillar is trying to pioneer new territory, seeking steep concessions from its workers even when business is booming."

The construction equipment manufacturer is seeking a six-year wage freeze and a pension freeze for the plant's 780 employees, who earn $12 to $26 per hour, depending on seniority, according to the Times. Caterpillar made a $4.9 billion profit last year, which works out to $39,000 per employee, or more than the company plans to pay the average worker at its new Athens plant.

Executives have said taxes and labor laws like Illinois' are why it's looking to open plants in the South, where Georgia's right-to-work laws will make it difficult, if not impossible, to unionize the Athens plant. They have a point that, in a global economy, production costs, including wages, must be globally competitive. Still, with all the hoopla surrounding Caterpillar choosing Athens, the article makes one wonder whether the jobs will be much better than Walmart at all.

Speaking of Walmart: The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that the retail giant is looking to come into a planned commercial development near Lindberg Center in Atlanta's upscale Buckhead neighborhood. It's the second urban location Walmart has proposed in Atlanta—the other is at a run-down strip mall in Decatur—in addition to the existing Howell Mill Road store. So, while all's quiet on the Walmart front here in Athens, don't think Selig Enterprises' Oconee Street project is dead yet.