Save Tucker!

We're not sure what is going on here, but thought you would like to know about these local non-profits that are in danger of being dissolved.  Is the new city government planning to take over all these responsibilities so that volunteers will not be involved in matters that we previously had a lot of local control over?  (like zoning, permitting, etc.)  A simple review of the Secretary of State's website shows something is going on in Tucker since the community voted to become a city - all of its notable non-profits are now at risk of being administratively dissolved.  You can try it for yourself here . It is also interesting to note that many of our newly elected council members, including the Mayor, have been linked to many of these groups or relied upon their endorsements and support in order to get into office in the first place.  But, here is an overview of what you will find: Tucker Civic: Has not paid its annual dues to the state of Georgia s...

In addition to the Presidential Primary, today is the first election for the new city of Tucker. Here are your options: Credit:  Info. from Tucker 2015 website. MAYORAL CANDIDATES  FRANK AUMAN   (Smoke Rise) LORNE D. CHEEK  (Tucker) BRUCE K. JACKSON  (Smoke Rise) DISTRICT 1 CANDIDATES  (Smoke Rise) POST 1 HONEY VAN DE KREKE (Smoke Rise) POST 2 JON CARR  (Smoke Rise) WILLIAM (BILL) ROSENFELD  (Smoke Rise) DISTRICT 2 CANDIDATES  (Brockett/Northlake) POST 1 * KATHERINE A. ATTEBERRY   (unable to verify) FRANK E. NIX, JR. (Tucker / Brockett) MATT ROBBINS  ( Tucker / Idlewood) THOMAS WALKER   (Tucker / Brockett) * Save Tucker has been unable to verify this candidate's residency status in the district he/she is wishing to represent.  Contact the DeKalb Elections Office for details if you wish to view the qualification data used by the county .  Phone: 404-...

At the District 2 Candidate Forum, Tucker Civic posed a question to a candidate, Tom Gilbert, about his ability to serve as a city council person if he was originally opposed to the incorporation of Tucker as a city.   We would like to remind our friends at Tucker Civic about something they may have forgotten ...  their only official statements about cityhood for Tucker have been AN TI-CITY.    Re ad on f or a reminder ... BRUCE PENN,  PRESIDENT, TUCKER CI VIC Beth White Ganga, vice president   Reprint of statement first run in the online newspaper, The Tucker Patch. Bruce Penn, president of the Tucker Civic Association, and Beth White Ganga, vice president, have released a statement about a proposal from the Lakeside City Alliance to create a city that includes western Tucker and the consequences it could have on the Tucker community: Several years ago, the Tucker Civic Association initiated a community-based exploratory group to det...

We understand that the city vote is over, but we still think the Tucker community deserves to know the truth about how we got where we are today ...   a city voted for in a referendum and elections  taking place in under a month (March 1), runoffs March 29.  We got here based on a lot of involved people ... some of whom we are now finding out don't even live in Tucker at all . On the home page of Tucker 2015, you will find this photo (below) which appears to feature the smiling, happy faces of the T uc ker residents who fought to in corporate the small town community into a city, right?  Well, look a gain... most , if not all, of the m are not Tucker re sidents at all. The se are not the ONLY Tucker city supporters with residency issues!  Stay tu ned ...

You may have heard about the security breach recently with the Secretary of State's office and your voter information file, but ... did you know there is a more direct link between the new city plans and that data breech ? It seems that Tucker 2015 , all about local control, couldn't find the right "local" person to run their political campaign, so what did they do?  Well, they hired a political consultant firm that just so happens to be located in ... Lavista Hills .  More work to be done in DeKalb by the FBI. And, it wasn't just any ol' political consultant, this particular consultant, which residents were never told that their feasibility donations might be used to fund, just so happens to be the same, small firm, Apache Political , that received one of the very confidential data disks from the state Elections Office.  It's not clear if they received it via their work as a consultant, via another affiliation with a blog site on pol...

According to ABC News, an audit will be conducted to review the voter files and data in the Georgia Secretary of State's office. Save Tucker! notes that the website in questions is also connected with the consulting firm said to have worked with the Tucker 2015 group in securing their recent victory in the cityhood referendum.  Read the admission at the end of the article, "Lavista Hills: Doomed from the Start" by Mike Hassinger:  here .  The company Apache Consulting worked on the Tucker campaign, but the owner says he lives and works in the Lavista Hills proposed city limits. The Peach Pundit reported that it "threw away" the disk that had the voter data on it, which they had received sometime in October, prior to the city vote for both Tucker and Lavista Hills.    Georgia to Hire Auditing Firm After Voters' Data Released ATLANTA — Nov 20, 2015, 8:41 PM ET ( By Kathleen Foody, Associated Press ) Georgia's secretary of state said Friday that...

The three year battle is over and a new chapter begins for the residents and future politicians who live here in Tucker, GA.  The community that was almost completely divided by the efforts of a neighboring community and hindered by the antics of its own county commissioner is now the official city that many people already thought it was.                                                                          The city of Tucker, reaching east from Interstate 285, would cover more than 33,000 residents in three districts, with two council members elected from each district. Credit: Map data @2015 G...

Vote No on Nov. 3 to Frank Auman, a jive talking lobbyist who doesn't even live in the current boundaries of Tucker. His front group's new map takes on expansive territory with a shaky financial plan that could put the entire region at risk of a state takeover and permanent division. With a $4 million budget for administration alone, the boutique city would add a new layer of bureaucracy that will only add to the corruption problems already impacting DeKalb County and the entire metro Atlanta region. Frank Auman was hired based on a plan that originated in the office of former County Commissioner Elaine Boyer, now in federal prison for defrauding her constituents. Don't be fooled by her plan, Tucker. Vote NO on NO-NO-NOVEMBER 3!

This pretty much explain why we have not heard a peep out of the former Tucker leaders:  Michelle Penkava, Frank Auman or Anne Lerner.  They are the official names registered as "Tucker 2015," which seems to be already dissolved, or in the process of being dissolved.  According to the notice provided on the Secretary of State's website (which anyone can run a check on any business free of charge), the group had only 60 days from May 9, 2015, by which to renew their registration as a non-profit in the state of Georgia. Written into their own registration papers is a clause that states what happens if the business is dissolved.  It says the money will be distributed to a 501 (c) 3 company that serves the same or similar purpose (like Lavista Hills Yes, for example). So, first we found this: And then we see a renewal that changes the attorney's name on all the paperwork back over to Michelle Penkava's name.  And the attorney's address on Brockett Road is...

You have likely heard people in the pro-city group Tucker 2015 talking about how long it takes to get a permit in DeKalb County,  right? Or, maybe you heard Lavista Hills leaders talking about the permitting issue and the Tucker city group basically retelling the same story but with a lesser ability to sound convincing that this was truly an issue for our mass concern. Naughty or nice?   Are the Tucker leaders actually accepting a gift or trying to take something out of Santa's hand?  Either way, the results were only something to believe in if you also believe in fairies, elves and Elaine Boyer's advice. If you did try to press them for details, you would have thought that this entire idea about them taking over this services  must be a joke because if you ask them for details, they suddenly clam up.   Blank looks on their faces, they would look at each other... stumped for how to respond. Decide  for yourself.  Here's what we asked at a...

Note:  This method has been used to run a variety of public meetings in DeKalb County, not just in our schools.  It's designed to lead audiences and therefore the public at large to pre-drawn conclusions that they later believe was actually the will of the people. A meeting on cityhood was held in 2014 at S.W. DeKalb High School.  Many people later claimed that they felt "manipulated" by the group leader or that their actual statements were misrepresented.  A common characteristic of these meetings is the "write your question down and pass it to the front" method of public comment that we saw so much of during the city meetings around the county.  The leaders at these meetings are able to then pick and choose which questions to ask or which ones to ignore.  Or,  in some cases, they asked the person who wrote the comment to raise their hand for some  point of clarification.  If the person did raise his/her hand, they were subject...

originally published in the Tucker Patch. When we first started our inquiry into the proposed city of Lakeside and its impact on our community of Tucker, we were leaning toward cityhood as a possible solution.  And, Tucker Civic quickly told us that it was not in the cards financially.  Fast forward to today and they are advocating as individuals (the groups has no official position) for cityhood even though we have taken on enormous areas not considered Tucker and lost significant portions of our commercial districts. And, here we are today being painted as the anti-city force.  We've never been anti-city.  We just want what is best for everyone and we are more and more doubtful that these particular types of cities will solve any problems. Here's a look back at how we first became involved: (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( LETTER TO TUCKER CIVIC ABOUT POTENTIAL FOR CITYHO...

In a post dated March 20, 2015, Tucker city advocates (unsigned) state the following: "Areas removed from the Tucker map include the entire Livsey voting precinct, Shadow Walk Lane, Pittsburg Plaza (QT shopping center), Tucker Square Shopping Center at Britt Road and Chamblee-Tucker, Briarglen Court, houses on Thornbriar Road in the Midvale Elementary voting precinct, and Scyler Way and Scyler Place." We're indicating those changes on the map below:  The map on the Tucker website is identified as the "Committee" drawn map and does not reflect the changes that were reportedly made by a last minute amendment by Sen. Fran Millar.  So, no one knows for sure what he asked to change and whether those changes were approved and written into both of the city bills which had already been through committees in the House and Senate. However, if you look at the map on the Lavista Hills website, it appears to NOT take in some of the areas that Tucker 2015 ment...

NOTE:  Special called meeting of the DeKalb Delegation will take place in the Coverdell Administration Building starting at 8 a.m., on Wed. March 25. We are relieved to see that the latest version of the Tucker bill has updates to the city council voting process.  Here is the new language: (3) Two councilmembers shall be elected from each of the three council districts and shall hold Council District 1, Post 1; Council District 1, Post 2; Council District 2, Post 1; Council District 2, Post 2; Council District 3, Post 1; and Council District 3, Post 2, respectively. Each person desiring to offer as a candidate for councilmember for such posts shall designate the council post for which he or she is offering. Councilmembers shall be elected by a majority vote of the qualified electors of the respective council districts voting at the elections of the city. In the event that no candidate for a council post obtains a majority vote of the qualified electors of the council dis...

Updated map to show where voting precinct fits into the school zone map. And, for the record.... Evansdale, by the way, could very easily be included in the city of Lavista Hills and STILL end up being rezoned for another school district, like nearby Tucker.  The inclusion was, from the beginning, a factor related to their magnet program, not the location of their school.  If this community really wants to stick with Lakeside, they need to work with school officials who are planning to centralize all magnet programs so they are more easily accessible from both ends of the county.  It is not a city issue at all. Now, if you are talking about passing a referendum for city school systems and someone has told you that you must be in a city in order to join a "better" system than the one we have now, that's another issue entirely.  And, if the rest of the county is not aware of that plan and you are not talking about it, either, then you are favo...

 Maybe we have leaders in Tucker that are so unique, they don't worry about when their terms begin or end.  Or maybe we have citizens so trusting of their leaders that they don't worry about things like voting for leaders on a regular schedule, or nominating people to take on critical roles for groups that are given a lot of power ... ... like the Tucker Parent Council, which was suggested as a group that should help name our next Superintendent of Schools. ... Or, the Tucker Together group that was the supposedly "non partisan" and "non biased" overview group to present Tucker's options when faced with an invasion  from nearby Lakeside City Alliance leaders ... Or, the Tucker 2014 group that was the advocacy group for cityhood that no one ever voted on in terms of their mission or their leaders  (even though we we re told by Tucker Together that we would be able to make this decision as a group).  This is the "group" that turned out to b...