Ode to Joy Flash Mob

You may have seen this already on YouTube, it has over 10 million hits, but it continues to be one of my favorites. Every time I bring it up, I wind up playing it at least twice, maybe even five times, I enjoy it that much.

What does this have to do with making a City, you may ask? Perhaps the City of Tucker sponsored Arts Council might pull off the same thing outside Local 7 during Tucker Days. Now THAT would be cool!

Turn the page to find the link!

An Informal Poll

Update:  

If you've paid any attention to this poll, you would've see how crazy the counts are.  Apparently this gadget on Blogger doesn't work very well as this has been a common problem.

We'll try again soon with a third party poll gadget and see if we can do better.

My apologies.

Which of the Three Cities would you prefer?

A Tale of Three Cities

A Tale of Three Cities

As a gesture of love and reconciliation, I've assembled three maps in an effort to bring together the three competing city hood efforts.  Currently, we have groups representing Lakeside, Lavista Hills (or Briarcliff) and Tucker.  Each have developed maps that overlap the others.  As we move through this process we will have to learn, at some point, to compromise.  Let this be the start of that conversation.

A pdf version of the maps can be found here.

One potato, . . .

The City of Lavista brings everyone together, into one, big, happy family.  This city takes its name directly from Lavista Road, which spans this proposed city from one end to the other.  This City would have approximately 135,000 residents.

Zero. Nada. Not Going to Happen.

Schools and the City of Tucker, Part II

Much of the interest in forming a new city is focused on the idea that a new city, or group of cities, could form a new, independent school district, wholly separate from the DeKalb County School District (DCSD).  It has been routinely and repeatedly stated by all the new city advocates that, under current law, there is absolutely no possibility of that happening.  To rephrase that, the new cities will have absolutely no effect upon the how the schools are managed, how attendance lines are drawn or how DCSD chooses to use its resources.

Zero. Nada.  Not going to happen.

So, if anyone’s interest in supporting the formation of a new city is mainly because of their hope that this could make a major difference in the local schools, they need to look elsewhere.  This thought has surfaced so many times, and has been so thoroughly discounted at every opportunity, it is difficult to understand why this issue will simply not go away.

Cluster Charter – Autonomy and Flexibility.

That doesn’t mean there are no other options. The one option available today is the Cluster Charter. The . . .

Q & A on Tucker Discussions

A member of Tucker Discussions, who I'll refer to as MNK, asked a set of simple questions on why we would want to become a city.  BD, who may be just a little bit biased, provided some answers.  You may or may not agree.

We need more questions like this.  The internet is proving to be incredibly effective as a real democratic process dealing with issues important to the community.  Twenty years ago, an open exchange of reasoned opinion and valid arguments, between interested and committed strangers, was almost impossible.  Now it can be everyday.  If you have questions, come here or go to Tucker Discussions and ask them.  You will be sure to get an answer.  You may not like the answer, but you are free to respond.  Become involved.  Let your voice be heard.  In the City, someone will hear you.

DeKalb County Property Taxes

Will a new city force our property taxes to increase?  

The most immediate answer to that is 'Not necessarily.'  Of course this a very complicated issue because residential property taxes will always be dependent upon the level of services being offered and the revenue stream from other sources, such as commercial property, business licence fees and hotel/motel taxes.  In other words, residential property taxes will result from the balance between residential and commercial properties within the city.  Residential property taxes will necessarily be higher in a city that has a very low commercial tax base, and will be much lower in a city with a high percentage of commercial property.  This would explain why new, and even existing, cities are always looking to add commercial property to their tax base.

As an aid to understanding taxes in DeKalb County, I have collected property tax rates from the county and each one of its cities for comparison purposes.  The tax statements are freely available from the DeKalb County Tax Commissioner's website.  They were chosen randomly from throughout the county and from nine of DeKalb's cities (Atlanta and Brookhaven being excluded) and all identifiable information has been redacted to protect the innocent.

Oliver Porter at the LCA Meeting, April 18th, 2013

Oliver Porter

The Lakeside City Alliance (LCA) held a community meeting April 18th at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation on Clairmont Road, where the featured speaker was Oliver Porter, a Sandy Springs resident and expert on the formation of new cities, who has been a critical consultant to Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and other new cities at their early formation.  He is the author of the book Creating the New City of Sandy Springs:  The 21st Century Paradigm. The website for his firm, PPP Associates, LLC, can be found here.  PPP stands for Public Private Partnership.

The meeting attracted perhaps 120 people, 40% of whom were of retirement edge.  The only elected representatives present were Rep. Michele Henson (D), Stone Mountain and Rep. Tom Taylor (R), Dunwoody.  The initial presentation was made by Mary Kay Woodworth and Kevin Levitas, which is documented in a Powerpoint presentation that can be found here.  Mr. Porter's presentation was followed by a Q&A session by the LCA Board, with some answers provided by Mr. Porter and Rep. Taylor.