The Questions Tucker Civic Refused to Ask

Sometimes you can learn as much about a person or organization based on what they do NOT say or AVOID saying, as you can learn from listening to them talk about the things that matter to them.  That was the case at the March 21 candidate forum for District 2 Tucker council candidates.

We learned about this notification:   

"Come hear from all four District 2 run-off candidates! ... by Tucker Civic Association. Submit your questions for the candidates by Noon on March 21 to: Malisa Anderson-Strait: district2@tuckercivic.org."

  

So, we submitted the following email with questions.  

__________________________________________________________________________________

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 1:04 PM, XXXXXX  (Save Tucker!) wrote:

SORRY THIS EMAIL IS A TAD PAST YOUR DEADLINE.

PLEASE CONSIDER ANY OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS FOR TONIGHT’S DISTRICT 2 FORUM AT TUCKER RECREATION.  THANK YOU!

 

For Katherine Atteberry,

1. How will you handle possible conflicts of interest between your role on the city council and your employment with Jacobs Engineering?
2. It was reported by one of the current council members, Michelle Penkava, that you assisted with writing our city charter.  Who else was involved in that process?   Was it the fault of the charter or a faulty interpretation of it that has left a third of the residents without representation during these important first few weeks of operation?
3. Did you help Tucker 2015 sell the city idea to residents as a “city lite?”  Are you aware that it is unconstitutional?  What can be done to rectify this situation where the charter is in conflict with the state law on cityhood?  

 For Matt Robbins,  

1.  Are there any conflicts of interest that you might have that would prevent you from being able to Vote on, or discuss, issues while representing District 2?
2. How long have you lived in Tucker and what, in your experience, sets you apart from your opponent in this race?
3. Were you informed about any decisions that needed to be made urgently that would justify the start of the city without our district being represented?

For Monferdini,

1. What do you know about Google Fiber coming to the area that we have not seen in the press?   
2. Brookhaven city officials have worked to start a new charter school.  Dunwoody is interested in their own, or a combined multi-city school system.    What do you think the city of Tucker can do, if anything,  in order to improve the educational opportunities for the children in our community?  And do you think that would ever be a priority for you?
3. Tucker has traditionally been a community of mostly single family homeowners, many who have lived here for generations.  But, District 2 will soon have the largest influx of renters once the property inside the perimeter is built according to the CID plans.  Do you see this influx of short term residents as being a positive or negative for Tucker?  

(Note, we did not include questions for one of the candidates because we were past the requested time for submissions already.)
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  And we received this response:  

 

Hi XXXX (Save Tucker!),

Thanks for submitting your questions; I will confess I set the deadline to align with my lunch break and I've already submitted all  the questions to Sonja for this evening (we definitely already have more than can be answered in the time frame allocated!)  but I will share these as well. 

The format for this forum is that all candidates will answer the same questions so we will not be able to ask them the way you submitted them but there might be a bit of overlap with some that have already been submitted that will work for all four.  

If you want direct answers from the candidates I am sure you can email them directly, and that is also why we have the meet and greet portion of the evening set up! 

Malisa

 _____________________________________________________________________________ 

 And, that response was fine, except for the fact that we ran into the new Tucker Civic President at the candidate forum and she said that the questions were not intended to be specific and we may wish to ask them ourselves via email later. 

We suggested that Tucker Civic email the questions to the candidates and let them decide if they wish to respond or not.  The President of Tucker Civic stated that we had also missed the noon deadline which we acknowledged.  (The meeting was at 7:15 p.m.)


 _____________________________________________________________________________

*  Thank you Matt Robbins, Canddate for District 2 and still in the runoff for March 29,  for this next bit of information:   But, then the President did something odd ... she provided "ALL" of the questions in a list to the candidates so they could distribute on "Social Media."  The list was said to have included both the ones asked (marked with the astrix*) and the ones supposedly not asked at the forum for lack of time. 

But, guess what ... The list of questions compiled by Save Tucker! was no where to be found.  The questions were not asked and they did not make it to the short list  provided after the fact.

 What questions did they ask?  Well, in our opinion as well as others, it appears they just made up some things based on very inappropriate assumptions they have made about a part of Tucker they appeared to be unfamiliar with.  We are highly skeptical that these questions were truly submitted by anyone from District 2. 


For the future, let's hope Tucker Civic will not ask for questions only to use their own.  It requires some effort on the part of those who are looking for answers and then frustrates them because you are further ignoring them, adding insult to injury.  

Don't pretend to care.   People will see through you every time!