What Changed?

A recent front page article in the Blue Bag Rag, which really shouldn't have been published, simply reveals the state of stupidity at city hall. It's ostensibly about Flock O' Cameras, but it is so full of nonsense one can only suggest that you "lift the pants, it's too late to save the shoes." 

Where to start?

Oh, let's start with the money. Where does this article say it comes from? Well, it is claimed to be PCID funded, the same PCID that back in the day was quite proud of getting 19 dollars of OPM for every dollar they ponied up. So...yep...outsider money to do what outsiders tell you to do. Sounds like city hall has a pretty loopy definition of "local control." But...wait for it...later the article mentions concerns about a private company using public money to surveil the public. Where the hell were these concerns in the first place? If city hall's greed overcame these concerns back then, why not now?

What changed with the Flock agreement, when, and why wasn't it noticed until now? With the army of money sponges we have at city hall, when they actually come to the office, why did we not have a single bureaucrat to monitor the T&C's, and changes thereunto, for outsourced responsibilities? Maybe we should fire a great number of useless bureaucrats and find someone who can bird-dog outsourcing contracts. Sounds like a win-win.

Then there is the big constitutional so what? You're in public, on public infrastructure, with a vehicle identification that, by law, must be visible. As a federal court has pointed out this violates no constitutional right, even if it were the government doing it themselves. Now, if a private company were to do this, constitutional rights don't apply because those rights protect us from the government, not from each other. 

And then we get to the real issue, or at least part of it, the issue that has the Blue Bellies running this shit show clutching their pearls: ICE. Mentioned ICE twice in this rather short article. First that ICE seems to have accessed some data from the Sandy Springs' (our big sister) Flock O' Cameras followed later by reported assurances from Flock that they don't do that. Heaven forbid that ICE should use every resource available to do their job. Maybe Dunwoody considers itself to be the gold standard of governance, one that ICE should emulate: just don't do your job. Don't even try.

It is a curiosity that city hall doesn't want to get criminals off our streets. And you only need pull the thread a bit before the whole sweater of "undocumented immigrants" unravels. Do they have a driver's license? Acquired by what means? Falsified statements and documents? And you want motor-voter, don't you?

Then you gotta bottom-line it. Are these spend-then-tax Blue Bellies really only pissed because they, well really PCID, are paying and ICE is free-loading? Well, as far as we know that may be the case, because no one seems to have asked if ICE is paying for Flock data services. Maybe if ICE went down to city hall and said "let's make a deal" and threw some money their way, they'd be cool...like ICE. That's how we got interstate lanes in folks' front yard. OPM and other people's agenda. City hall's definition of local control: we take their money and we control it.

How Do They NOT Know?

Here's a news flash:

"DeKalb County is encouraging state lawmakers to allow rental registries to enable local governments to maintain lists of properties and their owners."

DeKalb's CEO piles on with:

"many code violations occur at rental properties, but it’s difficult to enforce municipal codes when the county doesn’t know who the property owner is"

Wow. Let's see. Maybe the property owner is the one listed on the title. Maybe? Or, could it be who you, DeKalb County, sends the property tax bill to? You do send out a property tax bill, don't you? And if it doesn't get paid, then you auction the property, right? And don't you know then who owns the property?

Whether it is a rental property or not, a code violation is a code violation and it should be addressed as such. Hard stop. And you know who to contact about it because you know where you send the property tax bill. Even if the property is mortgaged, you know who owns it.

So what is this really all about?

What's Wrong With This Picture?

No Yellow Line Down The Middle

 

You Gotta Wonder

You gotta wonder how many folks in Kingsley were around when the citihood movement spun up.

You gotta wonder how many of those folks were involved with Dunwoody Yes! or Citizens for Dunwoody. 

You gotta wonder how many of those folks voted yes on the referendum.

You gotta wonder how many of those folks actually read the city charter before they voted. 

You gotta wonder how many have ever read the city charter.

You gotta wonder how many are surprised how things have turned out at city hall.

You gotta wonder how many still think benign neglect of DeKalb was worse than Dunwoody's willful negligence.

You gotta wonder how these folks took the decision to hire a lawyer.

And finally...

You gotta wonder where DHA has disappeared to.

Smile

Smile Like You're Trying Not To Laugh

 

Owner-Occupied

The Life South property appears to have more lives than the Cheshire Cat. Gone are the hundreds of apartments as are the false claims this would be meaningfully age restricted. Now we hear about 40 or so townhomes that will be "owner-occupied." But will they? Really? Can we believe anything spewing forth from city hall? Well, if the Cheshire Cat were actually there, there might be one grain of truth.

Is it even possible to guarantee a development is owner-occupied and not easily converted to "investment rentals"? As it turns out, yes. Yes it is. However, this cannot be done without some effort and it cannot be done with a mere HOA, as restrictive as they seem to those who suffer under them. It will probably take a condominium, a much sturdier and respected legal entity. 

For insight and at least one existence proof, we need to look east. To Athens GA. Athens is a very interesting real estate market and in fact is interesting in almost all aspects. It is not uncommon for parents to buy a condo for children, often sequentially, attending UGA. Afterwards, many became student rentals. There is also a significant number of small time investors who will buy a condo for the rental income. You can identify condominium communities with significant rental units by the decayed appearance and associated depreciation over time. Just like a regular apartment. After all it is a business.

One condo community, perhaps a unicorn, has legal support for exclusive owner occupation of the community's home. This is supported in the founding legal documents of the Condominium (what a novel idea). From the Declaration of Condominium:

(A) SINGLE FAMILY USE. All units shall be restricted exclusively to a single-family residential use. No unit or any limited common element, or any portion thereof, shall at any time be used for any commercial, business, or professional purposes. The common elements shall be used exclusively for the recreational and service purposes for which they are intended. No units shall be used for any rental whatsoever, with the exception that (a) the rental of a unit shall be allowed during the period of administration of any Estate of the owner thereof, not to exceed three (3) years of rental, and (b) rental of a portion of a unit by the owner-occupant thereof. Upon the death of said unit owner, the property must be offered for sale to an owner-occupant, occupied by an heir, or leased only in accordance with (a) above. Each lease is subject to approval of the Board of Directors, and prospective lessees are required to indicate to representatives of the Board of Directors that they have read such Rules and Regulations. 

You can, sort of, rent your unit, but only if you're willing to die for that opportunity. Amending the Declaration of Condominium requires a supermajority of unit owners, providing the best insurance that it will remain owner-occupied. The units in this Athens condo carry premium prices relative to other communities simply because it is owner-occupied, and individuals, for their own wants or greeds, cannot change this. Owners know that without this provision, their wonderful, owner-occupied community can be converted to a rental community. And if it can be it will be. 

The question is simple. Will the city, thru its zoning process, require air tight legal structures to guarantee these units are exclusively owner-occupied? If they don't, their statements about "owner-occupied" are lies. One someone's behalf.

Homestead Season

We're entering tax season, income and property, as early in the year is your opportunity to investigate your homestead exemption options. The standard exemption you get for just living there, but there are many more. At least in DeKalb county. Some are for various service members, some are for disability, and some are age. The key element of some of these exemption classes is the homeowner is exempted from any and all school taxes, a vast majority of the total tax burden. 

Naturally, those adhering to the notion that more government makes a better world detest these exemptions claiming that everyone should pay because we all benefit from an educated population. There is an implicit, and false, assumption in this argument: that public schools, who are levying this tax, are actually educating all those kids. They address the fact that public schools are handing out diplomas to kids lacking the intellectual stamina to read all the way to the end of a sentence, by simply ignoring the fact. In their world, no fact that does not support their dogmatic beliefs simply does not exist. You can't argue with that. 

Beyond the standard exemption almost all the others are means tested, and for some olde fartes in daVille this inflicts the pain of envy, because in neighboring Cobb County, you simply age into it.

Combine these high taxes, the highest in the state, with bottom-of-the-barrel education outcomes and looming prospects of school redistricting and you must wonder about those homeowners who say they moved to Dunwoody for the schools. What were they thinking? Well, they weren't. That's the only reasonable explanation. Is the commute really that much worse? Hardly. The schools are better. Are the taxes higher? Nope. The schools are cheaper. Are the houses inferior? Not by a long shot. You don't have to jump through hoops for that homestead exemption. 

If you live here, fine. Just don't move here because the schools are so good and such a great deal. They're not.

No Other Option...Really?

Fortune magazine reports that Gen Z students are making it into college "unable to even read a sentence" and this worries professors. Their concern? It could lead to a generation of anxious and lonely graduates. 

Let that soak in.

Fortune doubles down:

"It's leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations."

Here's another choice: maintain (or raise) your entrance requirements and your expectations, and simply do not accept applicants who cannot even read a sentence. Professors have lamented that critical thinking is no longer a valid issue, which makes sense when you're dealing with folks who struggle and usually fail to find the period at the end of any given sentence. 

Then Fortune triples down:

"With students struggling, academies have been forced to adapt---a move critics describe as 'coddling'."

Of course when they cannot read a sentence asking them to read a few dozen pages is like asking them to climb Everest without a Sherpa, which is nearly as difficult as going half an hour without a screen. But folks, including some of the non-reading Gen Z cohort, are suggesting that college is not for everyone, and they are self-identifying as not college candidates. It is worth noting that college administrators seem to disagree, perhaps because their jobs depend on the myth that your life is worthless without a college degree. A degree that is increasingly not worth the cost and approaching objective, absolute worthlessness. 

Is it ego? Is it greed? Is it self-interest over all else? All of these? Why would anyone, Fortune magazine or the academies, not recognize the vast number of young Americans who are not college-ready, and that lowering standards to well below high-school levels is exactly the wrong thing to do?

Door Knockers

You've had a job, haven't you? Of course you have. Most likely you've had a job requiring a pre-employment drug screening. Equally likely that job did not require post employment, suspicionless drug tests. Almost as if a drug free workplace is a one day event, with that day coming before you're actually at the workplace. Afterwards nobody cares, so...toke up.

It is the same as politicians. They come out to press the flesh before the election, with feigned sincerity they do their best to fool you into voting for them. Afterwards they really couldn't care less about any of that, any of you. Sure, they may have these "public input" online push polls gathering "data" you'll never see, just so they can say they're still "in touch." Hardly.

Want proof? You need look no further than city hall. Do you think those nattering nabobs have a clue about your issues...your concerns? Only if you're as clueless as they are. Are you?

Life On The Train

Suppose there is a train, running at a constant speed down a straight, level stretch of track. The train sports an engineer and a conductor. Passengers are split equally between men and women, and includes a small group of blind men. All of the men sit on one side of the train while the women are seated on the other as the women detest Allspice and the men are not fans of Chanel No. 5. A specially outfitted car carries a circus elephant that had been left behind to recover from a head cold. 

Along the track there are four observers one at each end and two in the middle with those at the ends and one in the middle on the same side of the tracks. The engineer likes to blow the whistle constantly because he's an imbecile and it makes him smile. The conductor collects tickets and breaks up fights. Sometimes.

So, train's moving, whistle's blowing. The bloke standing at the end of the tracks behind the caboose, with the train moving away hears the whistle and knows it is flat. At the other end that bloke hears the whistle coming towards him and knows it is sharp. The blokes in the middle hear it coming towards them, then moving away. They hear a whistle that is sharp, briefly on pitch as it passes, then becomes flat as it moves away. The exact same train observed at the exact same time and three different observations. Which is correct? Do you take a vote? The two blokes in the middle heard the same thing, while those at each end heard something different to the middle and the other end. The conductor, and all the passengers, hear an incessant but on pitch whistle. So who's correct? Turns out they all are. Four observation locations, four different observations and all four are correct. At the same time. 

These observers aren't just listening they are looking. In the train windows and inside the train. The three blokes on the one side see passengers. They are all men, so they conclude it is a train full of blokes. The lone observer on the other side sees windows full of women, concluding it's a mobile hen party. The conductor walks down the aisle looking to one side and seeing women, to the other are the men. The conductor knows there are both men and women on the train. Do you take a vote? Three blokes saw a train full of men, one saw only women, and the conductor, who is actually correct, sees both men and women. But who gets believed?

The blind guys who have never seen an elephant, literally and figuratively, send their most trusted member to the circus car to feel out the situation. Almost half an hour later he returns and tells the blind that an elephant is a huge creature with two tails, a small one at one end, a large one at the other. They both "wag" and each has a wet spot beneath. He offered other details regarding leathery hide and tree-like legs, but it was the two tails that fascinated. Even some sighted, who had never seen an elephant, were convinced this was indeed a wonderful animal. Others, who had seen elephants, claimed the "big tail" was actually a very long nose, that operated like a monkey's tail...it could grab things. Unsurprisingly, no one who believed two tails was ever going to believe the Pinocchio story. 

Is there a point to this? That, dear reader, is for you to decide.