Georgia Regional Transportation Authority Chairman Joel Cowan asked a group of elected officials from across the state Thursday to help the new agency protect Georgia's quality of life.

“We not only need your expertise and your advice. We need your eyes, your ears and your voices,” Cowan said at the first meeting of GRTA's Elected Officials Policy Council.

DeKalb County CEO Liane Levetan will chair the EOPC, which includes city and county leaders from around the state. She asked them Thursday to roll up their sleeves and get ready to work on solutions to traffic congestion, poor air quality and developmental sprawl.

“This is not just another committee to put on your resume,” said Levetan.

Members of the EOPC will work with two other GRTA policy councils, which will include representatives from neighborhood/environmental groups and business/industry. The policy councils will study issues and make recommendations to the 15-member GRTA board.

“It's a two way street,” said Levetan. “GRTA is going to keep us informed, and we are going to give them our ideas.”

Officials on the EOPC spent their first meeting talking about what they hope to accomplish in the process. They used lap top computers to record their thoughts, which were then immediately displayed on a screen so the entire group could read them.

Wesley Weynens, a group facilitator from the Government Institute at the University of Georgia who will be working with the GRTA policy councils, said the computer technology enables everyone in a large group to participate in less time than it would take for them all to speak individually.

Weynens said he hopes to use such “computer discussion” techniques to incorporate the work of the policy councils into the GRTA Internet site (www.grta.org <http://www.grta.org>). Transcripts of discussions by the groups could be posted on the site, Weynens said, and citizens could add their own thoughts about issues facing GRTA.

For information contact Charles Walston, 404-463-3011, cwalston@grta.org, or mail to: cwalston@grta.org.

.