Twenty Five Til Three
The vote for yet another round of cities in DeKalb comes up on Three November this year. And twenty five? Well that is the number of holes lining Dunwoody Parkway awaiting the much ballyhooed renewable resource otherwise known as "trees."
What does that have to do with the Tucker and Cliffside votes? Well, it is just another symbol of "be careful what you wish for." There is much irony and no small amount of hypocrisy in these fledgling cities.
See, we got ourselves an incredibly expensive teardown and rebuild when what we asked for was a simple re-furb. The original parkway plan called for some serious repaving and restriping but there are those in this here locally controlled city what would have none of that. It was Complete Streets and nothing else. Bear in mind these are Torpy's One Percenters who are demanding that any pavement touched be retouched with bike lanes even they won't use. As mentioned earlier, the protests over loss of mature trees was beaten down by the mention of renewability of these plants. Yet there we have it--twenty five gone missing and in need of replacement.
And where are these masters of our local control? Are they clamoring for action? Are they taking action by volunteering to plant replacement trees? That would be a no. So where are they? Well as it would happen they are over at the park, along the massive concrete highway that had to be installed where a nature trail was called for. Why there? Why now? Turns out that their concrete highway thru paradise required a bit of clear cutting and concrete can get bone sucking hot when left in the sun. What is their solution? Plant trees. So after foisting an unwanted Parkway upon us and a Highway thru the Park they turn up at the place they didn't say would need trees to plant trees when they should be planting trees in the place they said trees would be renewed.
Again, what does this have to do with Tucker and Cliffside?
Well, you are probably quite tired of the chant of "local control" and while the yahoos behind these two examples are local what motivates them is far from it. The come to City Hall with the full faith and backing of national groups that have conveniently supplied the ordinances we should (and did) adopt to complete their dream. How local is that? Want to complain? Too bad because you weren't around for the Master Plan (wherein they have appointed themselves Master) and it is a done deal. Case closed. Hard stop.
Not local. Out of control.
Then there is the myth of small government is better government. Do you live in a neighborhood with a HOA? Think that's all right mighty fine do you?
And what is your definition of better? Well it best not be transparent, ethically pure or scandal free, because just with Dunwoody and Brookhaven we have amassed some evidence to the contrary. None of Dunwoody's land deals have been very transparent nor has the escalation of two aforementioned construction projects that went open loop. Then there was the great ethical crisis resulting in the loss of a City Attorney and a member of Council wisely choosing not to run for re-election. Ethics charges. Costly investigation by independent outsiders. Sound familiar?
Brookhaven is no better, what with the commitment to zone strip clubs out of town followed by highly compensated capitulation. Exactly what was being bought and sold there? Or dare we even mention Lysol-gate?
You are going to hear about the Three P's: Police, Parks and Pavement. Well, in Tucker they've at least determined that DeKalb PD isn't bad at all and they'll focus on zoning. The reality is that an enforce on complaint policy will be instituted basically meaning that enforcement is basically nil. Even a Mayor's wife will not be able to get your city to address the non-compliant deck at her back-yard neighbor's house.
The Pro-City folks will continue their small/local chant but you may want to ponder, just a bit, the gist of what Liane Levitan said: when you add more government you just have that many more politicians to keep track of.
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