Residents Ask: "What is the Problem?" and "Will Cityhood Fix It?"

Reasonable people, like Ed Ewing from the Amberwood
neighborhood, have serious questions about the methods
by which city advocacy groups determined that there was
an actual, real problem identified that cities will now fix.

If you share this and other concerns, please show up to
vote No on Nov. 3.  The city groups have a lot of people
convinced that a city will help them.  There must be enough
skeptics willing to show up and vote no or else we will
all find out the hard way that neither Lavista Hills
NOR Tucker  will be viable cities without raising our taxes. 

In reviewing the public comments portions of the Tucker, Lakeside and Briarcliff meetings before the House of Representatives back in 2014, we found some speakers who made some excellent points (and others who didn't make much sense to us at all.)  

We'll post some of those transcribed comments here and others we will post on our YouTube channel in case you want to catch up with all the things that happened as our Central DeKalb communities were faced with the issue of a cityhood referendum.

So, first, we give you the comments from a resident who found himself in the boundaries of both the Lakeside and Briarcliff maps (which were pretty close to identical except for Briarcliff wishing to take the Emory campus and take the city limits right to the borders of existing cities of Decatur and Avondale Estates.

Here is Ed Ewing from the "Amberwood" neighborhood inside the perimeter of 285, what's now being claimed by "Lavista Hills" and slated for a vote, along with the Tucker city vote, on your ballots this November 3, 2015.

Good afternoon.  I'm Ed Ewing from Amberwood.

 What is the problem?   

And would cityhood be the solution? 

Everyone knows there have been problems in DeKalb County.  But has anyone comprehensively defined the problem beyond a mere collection of anecdotes?  

No, the organizers are relying on "impressions."  A systematic, quantitative study would supposedly be "too expensive."

These are all smart, experienced, likable, earnest people but they are manifesting the all too common human tendency to rush to solutions instead of taking on the hard, unglamorous work of defining problems.  

What does a positive $30,000 feasibility study prove?  A financial feasibility study should not be confused with a viable, strategic plan, which does not exist at this time.   

To some, "plan" is a four letter word.  What do the 63,000 citizens in the proposed cityhood area really want?  LCA organizers have diligently counted all the community meetings they have held: some 75 or more, they claim.  But, have they actually conducted any polls, sampling the meeting attendees let alone the population at large? 

No, they are relying upon "impressions."

A political poll would be too expensive, they claim.  So, how many Facebook "likes" do they have?  600 something.  About 1% of the target population. 

In other words, 99% of the 63,000 citizens have NOT liked LCA on LCA's own Facebook page.

I'm afraid this attempt at "empire building" is all about what LCA wants.   

Vote no on Lakeside cityhood.  (now known as "Lavista Hills.")

Note:  The original person who requested that Senator Millar sponsor a bill to form a "Lakeside City" in DeKalb County was Steve Schultz, a community organizer who has his own, very successful political consultancy business.  This business, called Rosetta Stone, is notorious for making "robo calls" on behalf of their clients.  So, while it might be too expensive for the average person to make a call to every resident in the proposed area with a question or two about cityhood, for Schultz and Rosetta Stone, it would literally be just another day at the office. And yet they didn't do it.

Why?  Because this effort to form cities has never been about caring about what the citizens think.

Do you really think they are going to suddenly start caring now?