By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

It’s time to know Chris Owens, one of the three men running for Alpharetta’s Post 3.

A Georgia native, Owens began his professional career working for the city he now hopes to help run.

“I started in the engineering and public works department,” Owens said. He left to pursue his professional engineering license, where, during the course of a career, he ended up working for Lowe Engineers.

“95 percent of our work is for Federal and state agencies, such as the Army and Department of Transportation,” Owens said. “We do what civil engineers do. We design roadways and traffic engineering and design water and sewer utility systems.”

“It’s the underlying structure of our daily lives,” he added.

By working on the details that everybody takes for granted as we live our lives, Owens has seen how government works and would like to use that knowledge in his bid for councilman.

“Having worked for the City of Alpharetta and having state- and Federal-level clients, I believe I’ve seen a lot of good and bad ways to do things,” he said. “I believe I can contribute a lot to the city and the community.” He  must be doing something right, since he has announced he has picked up the endorsements of both Councilman John Monson and Mayor Arthur Letchas.

A Developer or Not?

In an early comment in this election, Owens’ opponent Tom Miller – a prominent community activist who has risen to his position by being vocal against excessive commercial development – accused him of being a developer and working for developers.

“I am going to assume that is Tom’s misunderstanding of a civil engineer’s role in that process.” Owens said. “I am not a developer. I am a civil engineer. My firm is not a development company; we are a surveying and mapping company. We design roadways and water and sewer utilities.”

“This guy makes his living consulting for developers,” maintained Miller. “He may not be employed by developers, but he consults for developers. His livelihood depends on working for developers. That’s troubling to me.”

City Planning

In typical engineer-thinking, Owens has plans for the city that many voters might not immediately see the necessity for, but are nevertheless important.

“I am a firm believer that the city should tie its land-use and transportation plans together. They should complement each other and they should be interdependent,” he said. By accomplishing this, the city would find a somewhat streamlined process that would look at the whole of an area when deciding land-use, including the transportation. For instance, if a large commercial area is to be added, what effect would that have on traffic throughout the city? What steps could be taken to remedy that traffic? Should the commercial area even go there?

Luckily for Owens, Alpharetta is going to be revising its land-use plan in 2010. So he may get his chance. Add to this that the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) – Atlanta’s transportation board that attempts to make sense of the metro area’s traffic systems – is currently updating its own transportation plan, and Owens must be a truly happy man, poised to make a big impact on the way Alpharetta functions in the coming years. He is currently serving as Mayor Letchas’ pick to sit on the ARC board as Alpharetta’s representative.

Other than the transportation issues, Owens is active in the community, especially in his church – the Alpharetta Presbyterian Church – and its athletics. “I want to extend partnerships with the neighboring cities of Milton and Johns Creek to share services and share efforts and energies in building an even better sports program than we already have,” he said, in a nod to the fact that shared services can lead to lower costs for each city. “The citizens of Alpharetta can only benefit from that.”