VALDOSTA — The People’s Tribunal, a civil rights group, wants answers.

An updated petition and march concerning the push to rename Forrest Street has stalled. The effort to name the street Barack Obama Boulevard has been paused but not stopped, said the Rev. Floyd Rose, tribunal president.

Following a petition given to the Valdosta City Council asking Forrest Street be renamed, the tribunal submitted two open records requests, one for the five-year history of renaming streets in Valdosta and another regarding the petition’s 114 signatures, Rose said.

More specifically, the tribunal is asking for the city to explain why the 40 signatures they received from residents in an apartment complex abutting Forrest Street cannot be used, Rose said.

“We’ll see how that goes, and if the response is negative, then we’ll march,” he said. “We’ll just put people in the streets.”

The People’s Tribunal initiated its proposal mid-July alleging Forrest Street was named after Ku Klux Klan founder and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Some contend the residential and commercial road was named after black businessman Elbert Forrest. Research shows Forrest Street was originally written as Forest Street with one “r.”

Rose said the tribunal “just wants the city to go by the rules that were set out in the charter. I don’t think they want to do it because, first of all, if they wanted to do it, they’d just do it.”

Rose wants Forrest Street to be named after former President Barack Obama and only Barack Obama, he said. He said he will not accept the road being renamed after another black leader.

“I will never accept that because they don’t have any reason at all not to name it after the first black president of the United States, and most of the people who live on that street now are black,” he said. 

The tribunal’s petition included 114 signatures all in favor of the name change but the city has asked the group to gather more acceptable signatures.

The signatures are counted one per parcel, meaning only one property owner or tenant from each parcel may sign, City Manager Mark Barber said.

The tribunal is asking for the city portion of Forrest Street, running from Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to Inner Perimeter Road, be changed.

With 284 parcels in this area, 171 signatures are needed before city leaders can consider the request, Barber previously stated.

Barber said a resident does not have to have a Forrest Street address to sign the petition. He or she may reside on an abutting street.

The city ordinance states the petition must be signed by “60 percent of property owners and/or residents abutting the public street for which the name change or closing is requested.”

“Residents abutting” would mean any renters in an apartment complex could be included if the tribunal chooses to select that particular area to be affected, Barber previously stated.

He explained a home may have a Mary Street address but the property could abut Forrest Street, for example, and the signatures of the residents would be valid. 

In a previous Valdosta Daily Times article, Barber stated if a house is owned by more than one person, then all property owners can sign the petition, should they choose.

He later stated if a home has two owners, such as a husband and wife, only one or the other may sign.

Of the 114 signatures that were previously submitted, 40 were accepted and Barber said the city is working to get those verified. He is unsure if that process is complete, he said.

To verify property owners, the city typically utilizes a geographic information system for confirmation.

“Let’s say 100 Forrest St., we pull the property record, and if that property name on the tax assessors roll matches that of what they signed on the petition, we know then that’s the owner; that’s the thing we use to determine that,” Barber said.

The utility billing system is used to determine the legitimacy of a tenant’s signature, he said.

“That won’t be 100 percent, either, because some people do set up their water bills in other people’s names and just pay the bill for them; some landlords include the utility payment in the rental payment.

“That would probably be the next step as we start going down the process like that until we get the signatures verified,” Barber said.

City officials would need to visit each resident to ensure the validity of the signature after looking into Lowndes County tax records, he previously stated.

Barber said he believes the majority along the affected area of Forrest Street are tenants causing the verification time to be a little longer than usual.