Petition Signers Say They Were Tricked by "Neighbors for Lakeside City"

Sen. Millar

Sen. Millar should know better.  When he claimed that 80% of the Livsey precinct wants to be in the City of Lavista Hills (aka Lakeside City), he already knew that there are people claiming the petition takers lied and even harassed them in order to get them to sign.  Some said they were made promises having to do with attendance zones and Lakeside High School.  Some even said they were told the only referendum would be the Lakeside one so it would be the only way to have a vote at all.

In short, they were sold a bill of goods by some people whom they can never actually hold accountable and might not ever even see again.  Some of the petition signers spoke limited English and later said they signed just to stop the person from returning to their home every day to ask if they had changed their minds and were ready to sign.

High pressure, low morals.  Great combination for disaster.  

And, this "Neighbors for Lakeside" group that was taking names was spear-headed by none other than another member of the Tucker Parent Council.  Why does this one particular attendance zone have such strong advocates on BOTH sides of the argument?  Good question.  Since they won't tell us, we'll have to guess that perhaps there are some political stink tanks lurking around these parts and they are running a big game on all of us.  Controlling both sides  of the city debate allows them to push forth an appearance of a real conflict with lots of community input on both sides, ending with a compromise both sides say they can live with.  But, all along, our voices ... the real people who live here ... are the ones being ignored and pushed aside.  And our tax dollars will fund more of their games if we let them get away with it.

Here's an email that we were carbon copied on last year.   It was written by a Tucker resident who encountered the petition takers for Lakeside City:

Dear State Legislators,

  As you consider the merits of a Lakeside City bill this year for DeKalb County, GA, please keep the following in mind: I live in the area that was added to Sen. Fran Millar’s bill at the last moment because someone who came to my neighborhood on three separate occasions was successful in convincing many of my neighbors that they had to sign her petition if they wanted any chance to vote whatsoever, even though they had all told her they did not want to be any part of a city of Lakeside.  She told them that a city of Tucker was not going to be voted on this year and that there was no chance that we could remain unincorporated unless we had a chance to vote no.   

I graduated from Tucker High School proudly and my sisters will go there one day as well.   We live only a block away from the back of the school and I cannot imagine how these LCA individuals could be so bold as to try and tell you and the rest of Georgia that we would want to be in a city that operates in this deceptive manner. 

Lakeside is a rival school, but even the students I know who have gone there would never want to be so rude and insulting to us as this “Neighbors for Lakeside” petition taker was.  I believe many people were tricked into signing and they will be very upset when they learn what has happened.  We will all vote no and I am sure most others throughout Tucker and even Lakeside feel the same.   

I would question the validity of the names you received, especially if they are in a computer format because what we were given was a hand printed form to fill out ourselves.  Anything else is not a valid representation of how we feel or what we were told.  

Thank you,  

XXXXX  (name withheld for privacy)