What Problem

As in "what problem are you trying to solve?" Around daVille this plays like a procedural series, with the bad guys being a bureaucracy of government pitted against the often naive public. Happens all the time. And it's happening right now with the scene of the crime being, once again, public schools. If it seems like  a re-run, that's because it is. 

And what is the problem? Money. 

Here's a shocker: DeKalb County Schools are running out of money. What they are not running out of is things to spend it on. That's growing, largely because they failed to properly maintain facilities. Turns out that "stitch in time" is spot on, but now it's time to pay for the other nine. DCSD has done more than neglect maintenance, they ignored the State of Georgia, particularly the State's requirements for funding local schools, which DCSD ignored because parents would come after them should they follow those guidelines. So why do parents turn down the money?

Because the State's funding all but requires large, 950+ seat, schools. At the elementary level. The rationale is higher efficacy of these larger schools--more, and better learning for less money. The issue is that a 950+ seat elementary school is not a "neighborhood school," it is an edu-factory. Maybe an edu-fantasy. But it is a full-on assault against Dunwoody's sacred cow: Vanderlyn Elementary. What makes Vanderlyn more precious than say, Austin, a neighborhood school that has already been traded in for a state approved mega-mill? Hard to say. But is the last one standing, and the reality is sinking in, even with Vanderlyn parents, that Vanderlyn Elementary is not long for this world. Some parents are simply hoping it stands until their children move onward and upward. 

That's their problem.

Our problem, with "our" being residents without children attending Vanderlyn who are financially supporting DCSD, even with all its inefficiencies. According to the State, Vanderlyn is one of those inefficiencies and has been for a long, long time. 

The over-arching problem? DCSD. It doesn't work. Not by any measure. Nor is it getting any better. That is the problem.

Dunwoody. Lost & Found.

Seems someone dropped something on the Dunwoody Parkway sidewalk right by the now shuttered Steak & Grace. A shell casing. A SIG 277 Fury shell casing. 

Just Lying There

And guess what? As you might expect, it has been fired.

277 Fury

And a very nicely centered firing pin that is. 

This particular round was developed by Sig in 2019, so this had to have been dropped after there was a city, with a city PD. Which touches on another interesting point. The 277 Fury is primarily a military round with little penetration (pun intended) in the civilian market though you can buy rifles chambered in that round. And they are pricey. The ammo isn't exactly cheap either with AmmoSeek listing one vendor offering reloads at $1.75/round, but most others well north of $2.00/round. 

So where do you think this may have come from?

Ableton Mableton

If you guessed the answer to "who said this?" was "the mayor of Mableton" then give yourself a pat on the back. The "tool" to which he referred is Artificial Intelligence. Using AI to provide broader, better services without an excess of money sponges. 

Broadly speaking there are two types of AI: Large Language Models (LLMs) and Agentic AI. The former gives answers while the latter gets stuff done. Both can make very important contributions to open, transparent, democratic governance. Seems to be what they're doing over in Mableton. 

With LLMs working on fully digitized records we, the people, can ask questions and get answers. Immediately. Accurately. Without spin. With proper configuration and training an LLM can properly redact sensitive information, far better than any money sponge, at a relative cost indistinguishable from zero. Suppose you wanted to know how many citations for code violations were issued in your neighborhood in the last three years. Nearly instant answer. Want to know how many tickets have been written to trucks violating a particular no-truck zone since the city was founded, organized by year and month, you can get that question answered. Want a copy of all contracts under the city manager's signing limit, by year and by each city manager? That is just a few keystrokes away. 

Agentic AI is even more powerful which is why it terrifies entrenched bureaucrats. Should we be running audits? Certainly. With Agentic AI this wouldn't be an annual event, not quarterly or even monthly, it would be continuous. It could be triggered by real-time events, like whenever someone with the city makes a charge on a credit card or P-card. Any inflow or outflow of money could painlessly trigger an audit and an audit report. Or, it could be done on demand, on request. Even by one of the We The People. Or, suppose you need to monitor T&Cs for bought in services, so you don't get surprised by vendors like, say, Flock. Agentic AI can do that. Is it worthwhile to monitor processes, say applying for a business license, to ensure proper, timely operation? That can be cone.  

Could this happen at the City of Dunwoody? This is what a technologist would say is "possible, but not probable," while a cynic might say "humanly possible, but not with the humans we have available." Don't hold your breath. 

Who Said This?

As quoted in the AJC

"[...]a tool that will allow us to do more with less. It's an equalizer in a way for us to be able to do all these things that, quite frankly, we would have needed more people to accomplish."

Who said this? Well, here's a clue: it was a mayor of one of those "mushroom cities" that sprung up after Sandy Springs. Want to guess which one? If you're guessing Mother Mayor of Dunwoody, well, you could not be further from the truth. See, Dunwoody is all about staff expansion, with no limit to the number of money sponges on the payroll. So you know nothing like doing more with less is welcome at our city hall.

Carts And Horses

Making new law...

...probably should not happen in a courtroom.

But the Colin Gray case did just that. He was found guilty on 27 charges including second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter related to the school shooting at Apalachee High School, where the alleged shooter was his son, Colt Gray. 

Then it gets weird. Prosecution relied on a law passed after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Justin Ross Harris for the hot car death of his son Cooper Harris, giving clear guidance to prosecutors and courts regarding the consequences of parents who cause their children serious harm or death. It has also become common over the last few decades for legislatures to append a section on legislative intent to laws they pass. This is lazy. If they cannot write a law that clearly addresses their intent, then maybe they are in the wrong job. Consequently, with the Colin Gray case, prosecution argued this law, as written, could readily be extended to others' children regardless of intent, stated or otherwise.

Much of the case hinged on the (often emotional) arguments about a father giving serious firepower to a son who was clearly suffering from serious emotional and mental issues, some directly related to glorification of school shooters. This approach was distanced from "safe storage," a concept that the City of Savanah had tried to codify but which was rejected at the state level, even though what was easily proved is that Colin Gray bought a gun and that gun fired the bullets at Apalachee High. 

What hasn't been proven, in a court of law, and beyond any reasonable doubt, is who pulled the trigger. Now we all know who did, but at this point, legally, that is only an allegation. Remember O.J.? After he got off on murder charges in criminal court, well, he was not a murderer, and you really could not call him that. After his civil conviction, you could. That's because you can't call someone a murderer until it has been adjudicated. Colt Gray has not had his day in court, so you cannot logically (legally) say that Colin Gray aided his son in murdering anyone. 

When the courts do not respect the law, why should anyone? Certainly they should do the right thing, but they must also do that thing the right way. In this case they failed.

Are You Sold On It?

Did you stop by the check-the-box event the city held at Vintage? Go for the lies...stay for the pies?

It was an impressive poster show. You know, all those timeless architecture-art drawings of things that just never seem to materialize. Remember the ones depicting the Village Parkway? Not there yet, eh? There were other informative materials, one looking like a memo, but for the fact that it is color printed on heavy weight calendared paper. The PIOH notice is printed on heavy card stock and you have to look closely to see it isn't laminated. Could they have made this more extravagant? Perhaps, but they couldn't figure out a way. 

The actual information was interesting, particularly the arch-art. First was the total absence of any information indicating the funding source for this, well, whatever the hell it is, maybe today's trend. But, one of the docents gladly offered up that the Fed's were funding this, but seemed somewhat dismayed when the questioner's reaction was: this is not good. Then there's the trees. Docent: "we're going to try our best to keeps as many trees as possible." This is city hall speak for: "those trees are toast." What's with the two strips of concrete? Well, that's the latest fad sweeping the country, and it comes with marketing buzzwords: separate the heels from the wheels. The docent, clearly a contractor, city bureaucrat, or someone who otherwise knew nothing about what goes on in daVille, was surprised to learn that our Lance-a-lots don't race around daVille, but they drive here, park their cars and bike all over the area, probably covering 20 or more miles at a ride. The look on the docent's face was almost as if he realized this whole project was bullshit and wasn't comfortable peddling it. 

One answer beyond the docent was contact information for the non-profits established to support this project. Unlike the origins of the city itself, where folks who live here came together and organized to form the city, there is no such community support for this project, or any of the others like it. So...no support...no non-profits. The outside funding tells the story. Outsider's money means outsider's plans and outsider's agenda. No where near local control. And those trees at the TFM/Walgreen's parking lot? They'll come down in a hurry and some city apologist, maybe Mother Mayor herself, will declare them "diseased." It has happened before. And that tree in front of Novo? It is like a Japanese death row convict, it won't know it's the day until the morning of.

 Why don't we all celebrate this project during Lemonade Days?

Learn Something New Every Day

A recent National Study of Millionaires by Ramsey is pretty eye opening, but it will be hard to grok by those folks who cannot distinguish between wages and earnings, or between income and wealth. Though it seems intuitively obvious to the casual observer, income is what you make, wealth is what you keep. 

So as it turns out lots of American millionaires do not make beaucoup bucks. They're not bouncing off the socio-economic safety net, but they're not all in the C-Suite. They do sock away money in 401K's and IRA's and they generally follow the practices observed in The Millionaire Next Door. Perhaps this is why the top five careers yielding millionaires are pretty mundane.

Obviously there is one standout: teachers. Teachers make the top five suggesting there is something more we can learn from them than we previously thought. It is generally well accepted that teachers are not highly paid. There can be some debate, but the fact is teacher pay is probably not on par with the average engineer or mid-level manager. Teachers do get some increasingly rare benefits---in Georgia, the TRS is a defined benefit program and it is highly unlikely the other four career paths offer anything but defined contribution. Nonetheless, quite a few teachers become millionaires on a teacher's salary. 

You should be inspired. 

Casting Call

The Professional Resisters (ProRes) leadership selected an interesting poster child in their fight against this administration's enforcement of U.S. laws: Seamus Colleton, an Irishman who entered under a visa waiver and overstayed...by somewhere close to two decades. This is a long time by any measure but when you consider the ProRes believe the statute of limitations on immigration offenses is somewhere between five, ten, maybe fifteen...minutes, well twenty years is virtual infinity. Hell, there are carpetbaggers here in daVille who think that after five years they're a native. 

The ProRes story on Colleton is simple: an immigrant seeking a better life, a chance at the American dream. He came here, settling in Boston, taking work as a plasterer. He got married and has two fur-babies. Then, down came ICE, and he is now detained thousands of miles from "home" (pick one) while his distraught pups sit at the door awaiting his return. 

Crocodile tears, right? Everything the ProRes say is correct. But then someone exhumed Paul Harvey. The rest of the story.

Did Colleton come to the U.S. for a better life? Absolutely, but the bar was set low. Why you ask? Glad you asked. That's because there was a bench warrant out for his arrest because he failed to show up in court to face drug charges. He had been apprehended with a sufficiently large quantity of drugs that he was all but certain to spend many years in an Irish prison. Does ICE have him detained far away from Boston? Yes. Yes they do, but only after they offered him the choice to be deported or detained. He chose to be detained. Here's where the dogs come into play. Tugs at the heart strings, doesn't it? You can almost hear Sarah McLachlan, can't you? You see, Colleton was fleeing more than just unpleasantries with the Irish authorities, he left behind a young woman, the mother of his 18 month old twin daughters. Nearly two decades of no contact whilst he pursued his dreams in America. No birthday cards. No Christmas Skype calls. And absolutely no child support. It wasn't until he was detained that he reached out and no one has a plausible explanation. His daughters, now nearly twenty years old, want him to return to Ireland. To face drug charges. They're pissed. 

If you step back, get a broader view of recent ProRes actions something interesting appears. They've made a pivot to white. It seems the casting call for street protesters was "middle-aged (or older) white women, angry preferred." What would Marshall McLuhan say? Since José Antonio Ibarra didn't work out as their poster child for the ICE is Bad campaign, maybe they shifted towards a whiter shade of pale. And where better than Ireland to find a pale-face? Bonus points for showing that ICE is actually going after an unlawful resident from Europe. Or is it?

And the moral to this story? When someone with a political agenda, or worse yet, a political business, tells you a story, be very cautious about what you believe. Think about that if you show up at Vintage Pizzeria tomorrow. 

Is It Enough?

In a recent discussion regarding the Flock contract, Mother Mayor opines:

"These changes don't feel insignificant to me. And, again, I support this technology, but ... we need to own the data, we need to control how it's retained and we need to control how it's accessed, and it feels like this latest round of changes just suck that right away from us."

Wow Mother Mayor, want to apply that kind of logic to the proposed changes to the city charter that open up a very wide avenue for unrestricted tax increases without the burden of putting that to the citizens of Dunwoody? See, you may not think so, but quite a few citizens, and taxpayers, in this city would say that these changes don't feel insignificant either. Yet you're out there on social media promoting and defending these changes with rather dismissive comments regarding how "this clears up some contradictions in the charter about assessments." Pray tell, what exactly are these contradictions?

The proposed changes clearly state that no referendum is required nor is any limit imposed for Special Tax Districts, general obligation bonds, and (heaven forbid) revenue bonds. Anyone who has been watching the shenanigans at city hall will expect a flurry of "Special" Tax Districts being created.

King John offers his $0.02:

Heneghan opinion - I believe this modification sidesteps the Charter requirement of a maximum ad valorem tax rate of 3.04 mills by not counting taxes for Special Tax Districts, general obligation bonds, and revenue bonds. 

One of the constant chants coming from the pro-Dunwoody crowd was "Local Control!" Said it loud. Said it proud. But how do we, the people, exert Local Control? If you would actually read the city charter, you might be called on, some day, to fess up to the fact that our elected officials are virtually powerless. That's why when there is an issue and someone invokes "Mayor Deutsch" your response, if there is one, is to tell them which city bureaucrat to email and to please cc the mayor. Why? Because you are prohibited from doing exactly what you told them to do. We elect folks who cannot tell anyone, except the City Manager (when he's around), to do, or even look into, anything. Nada. And both city managers have made it clear to our elected officials that he only has to keep four of them happy. Not ecstatic, just not pissed. 

So the only way, we the people, can exert Local Control is thru the ballot box--voting on referendums. You undermine that, you take that away, you are clearly stating that we the people should be subjugated, that we should be held powerless, and subject to the whims of unelected bureaucrats. You have made it very clear where you stand on the issue of real Local Control.

But here's is the closing question: is there any level of taxation where the Mayor, or these unelected bureaucrats would say is enough and any more is just too much?

Stretching Credulity

We wouldn't be here were it not for a period of mass insanity, or just an intense wave of polyannishness, quite a while ago, but here we are. And where is that?

Destruction from within.

The bureaucrats, and at least one elected official, trying to figure out how to walk away from foundational commitments to fiscal prudence, and modify the city charter to allow them to up taxes when they want, however much they want. 

One elected official has espoused the view that these changes are a "back door" tax increase, while another asserts it is a full frontal assault. Perhaps they are both right. It is a back door if by that you mean that bureaucrats can raise taxes without putting that to a citizens' vote. This is what is being proposed in the case of special tax districts, capital bonds and "revenue bonds" which sound a lot like payday loans and probably as responsible. Another perspective is this is being writ large in black and white, so there is no back door to it at all, this is pushing the ballot box out of the way by force. 

This does raise some questions, especially for those who "fell for it" back in the day. Is this what you were promised to get your vote? Didn't think so. And what about those special task districts? What do you think will happen there? Very likely you will see a growing number of them, not necessarily restricted to commercial districts. Imagine this: some bureaucrats decide that if folks in residential areas want cops to ticket speeders in their neighborhood, well, then, they'll call that a special tax district, jack up the taxes, and then maybe, just maybe, actually write some tickets. Or, maybe not. After all that is what they promised to do to get your vote. And, money is fungible, so they'll just be displacing the other tax revenues to their playthings. 

This has gotten out of [our] control.

The only voice of reason, the only ounce of integrity at city hall comes from King John. You would do well to listen to him.