Your Tax Dollars At Work

Workin' hard for profiteering businesses. Yep, we have a seemingly unlimited number of tax-payer funded bureaucrats knocking down insider-awards for doing the business of CoC for businesses. Aren't you happy to be paying your taxes?

Are You Ready For Some Football!??!

Watching the boob toob has become more confusing than ever. Scientists are cautioning against going normal with the head scientist over at the CDC over-riding her own scientists because her science is more potent. And yet...football, high school, college, pro-s, it doesn't matter are in full-bore, packed stadium, maskless, screaming hordes. Obviously football has a the Iron Dome of CoVid running at full power.

So what's up with that?

It IS odd. A year ago games were being cancelled. #COVID. Those that weren't played to cardboard cutouts. Restaurants were going away, or going curbside. All queues, indoors or out, were at six foot spacing. Masks for all. And that was just with CoVid which hit our shores in early 2020.

Fast forward. The Delta variant, more transmissible than the original and impacting younger cohorts more severely. Yes, there is a vaccine, but death rates are rising. Hospitals are filling again though the truth leaks out that it isn't ALL, or even a majority, CoVid. But by all measures, including the usual pockets of hysteria, all things CoVid are as bad as a year ago. But not for football. Stadia are packed. Popping the Mercedes Benz eyeball constitutes "ourdoor" and no one is mentioning the crowds at the restrooms or the concessionaires. 

So what's the REAL difference? Well, if you look to who is still screaming about the gloom and doom, of inadequate vaccination rates, or necessity of booster shots, that would be the same folks who last year were positioned on one side of the great political divide and well, inertia. Football, and football fans in particular, could care less about political posturing. THEY are ready for some football. And that is exactly what they're going to get. #RATINGS.

Earnest Leaves Dunwoody

"I came! I saw! I got blowed up!"
-- Earnest P. Worrell

Arrive Perimeter has, with gas and a spark, been transformed to Depart Perimeter. Who could have smelled that coming?

Arrive intends to demolish the site ASAP and if yelpers are to be trusted it should not have taken an explosion to get that [wrecking] ball rolling. But this is the kind of "quality" development the city encourages in Dunwoody, so rest assured, apartments will be rebuilt on that site. It is an odds-on favorite that these will be bigger and the beneficiary of tax handouts from the city.

You gotta wonder how Dunwoody's "urban renewal" team is engaged.

Dunwoody Chamber Of Commerce

Dunwoody doesn't have one. Perimeter does, because Perimeter has footprints in three cities and developers and profiteers need an umbrella organization to coordinate efforts across all three. Dunwoody doesn't have a Chamber of Commerce because our tax dollars (residents, because developers don't pay taxes) are covering the paychecks of city bureaucrats who do everything a chamber would do. Everything a chamber should do. And more.

Don't believe it?

Look here. That's right, a city bureaucrat picked up an award for resident-funded CoC activities. And city bureaucrats are so proud they've issued a press release on receiving an award for going above and beyond doing CoC PR. A press release on how well they do press releases.

This is an outstanding example of a city bureaucracy that should be shut down and anyone surplus to needs should be made available to the greater PR community. Perhaps even a re-constituted Dunwoody Chamber of Commerce. Think the dwarfs can or would make that happen?

Ever Heard Of Google?

Or Yelp? Zomato? Open Table? 

Like, you know, when you're looking for a place to eat or shop? For the fun of it, just Giggle "Dentist near me" or "Best hamburger." It worked in the later years of the 20th century and it works even better now. 

And yet...

We have profiteers with their bureaucratic minions at city hall who are hell bent on promulgating visual pollution thru rampant, devil-may-care signage throughout the city. Why? Because they can. And just why can they? Well, first they have greater pull at city hall than anyone actually living in this city. Then there is the brutal fact that they do not have to justify anything. All they have to do is say "this works, we want it, so get those ordinances in compliance and do it NOW!" Do illegally located sandwich board signs really work? Who knows. The profiteers have no data, no idea. Who cares. They don't care and they don't need to even consider joining us in the 21st century. As long as the profiteers want it, the city bureaucrats will take a knee. No skin off their collective nose since most don't live here and may not even drive by the garish eyesore they've created. 

And the dwarfs? Well...who knows what they're doing and who they're doing it for.

Whose We?

Escaping containment, that blivet of paternalistic condescension, President Biden,  squizzed out some priceless arrogance:

"We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us."

regarding the reticence of some to get their Fauci Ouchy. Condemnation heaped on the deplorable "you-s" who refuse to be directed by this greater, smarter, self-appointed and now controlling "we." 

We, the little we, have seen this before. Hell, we see it all the time. Like when some corporate SVP or C-level shows up to speak to the little people, littering the talk with "we" even when really just congratulating themselves. In their case it is political, an attempt to portray a large team, and themselves a part, when everyone, even the bobble-head toadies in the first row, know it is really all about them, the speaker, not you and certainly now "we."  And it would be easy to pummel out-of-touch politicians and executives but we, the little we, know this rhetorical device for what it is: manipulation. 

And it isn't just coming from those far above us. In many cases, including our own little burg, it is coming from bureaucrats who see themselves as positioned far above us. 

This is coming from our own little potentates of their Direktorates at city hall, including the Direktorate of community development and the Direktorate of economic development. From the latter we get:

 "We sort of have two Dunwoody's right now. We have single-family, suburban residential neighborhoods, and then we have Perimeter Center (largely made up of office and retail space [AND apartments!]), and they don't always work with one another. Sometimes they work against one another."

Let's unpack that "we." To be very clear when this bureaucrat is using "we" he is NOT including the little we, that very same we that came out in droves to vote Dunwoody Yes! His "we" are the crony developers and profiteering businesses and if there is any consideration for the little we it is only to acknowledge the annoyance they might inflict--like complaining about the gnats during a Tybee Island getaway. Wouldn't it be great if you could just get rid of them?

That needs a bit of unpacking as well. When factions "work against one another" what role does he play and what side does he take? Well, again, that would be whatever side is in opposition to "single family suburban residential neighborhoods" as he and his supporters in the development and business community can no longer satisfy their greeds without displacing the little we. And make no mistake he will throw the little we under the bus in a heartbeat because it is no skin off his nose. He doesn't even live here.

And that is the real problem. This city has been taken over by outsiders. It is run by outsiders, for the benefit of outsiders to the detriment of the little we. It is time for the little we to rise up just as they did when breaking bonds with DeKalb County. It is time to shut down these Direktorates, time to ensure every operation within the city benefits those living in the city and that those operations even remotely for the benefit of developers and profiteers be operated by those groups outside of city hall.

And maybe it's time to require that folks running this city have some skin in the game. Just like the little we.

Good Witch? Bad Witch?

GLINDA

And so, what the Munchkins want to know is, are you a good witch or a bad witch?

DOROTHY

But I've already told you, I'm not a witch at all. Witches are old and ugly. (High pitched giggles are heard) What was that?

GLINDA

The Munchkins. They're laughing because I am a witch. I'm Glinda, the Witch of the North. 

DOROTHY

You are! I beg your pardon! But I've never heard of a beautiful witch before.

GLINDA

Only bad witches are ugly. 

This is probably one of the most subtle insults on the silver screen outside of just about any Rosalind Russel dialogue. Bad witches ugly. Good witches beautiful. Which witch are you? The homely one? Perhaps somewhat handsome? Somewhere on the spectrum. Not that spectrum. The spectrum that starts at ugly ending at heart stopping gorgeous. 

Where's our Dotty? Who, or rather what is our Dotty? Our Dotty? That would be local control. So, is our local control a good witch or a bad witch? Which witch is it? Or is it a witch at all? Or, like witches in the storybooks is local control just a convenient myth?

Since local control is THE foundation of this city this topic warrants a bit of pondering.

It has become painfully clear that our elected officials, the seven dwarfs, are not in control of much of anything that goes on at city hall. They have some of the best seats at the theater but they're not the actors on the stage, not the director, not the writer and certainly not the producer. They ARE the groupiest of groupies. They get the best seats. Befitting their egos but not conferring any real control over our locality. Try this thought exercise: identify the dwarf that will raise a hand and fess up to instigating, driving and directing all the local zoning changes to support developers' goals for Dunwoody Village. What's that you hear? Munchkin laughter.

So who is running the show? And where are THEY from? And do they live with the consequences of what they do to OUR community? Are they good witches? Or, are they bad witches?

Well, the general label applied to our masters at city hall is "bureaucrat." Witch might seem more appropriate, but we're stuck with bureaucrat. And they're not from around here. They're from the North (community development) and the South (economic development) and seemingly every where but here. You do a little bit of very simple internet searching and you'll begin to wonder if any bureaucrat at city hall from the very top down currently living OFF this city actually lives IN this city. To be honest it appears that we Munchkins are being ruled by witches from somewhere else working on behalf of someone else. This should be shocking. It is insulting. It is ugly. At least we don't have to ask if these are good witches or bad witches. And if local control is truly foundational we know why this leaning tower is about to topple. On us. Not them.

They're Going To Do It

The folks who want to bring Dunwoody-calibre dysfunction to East Cobb are at it again. Still yet. They ARE going to get their city. And that's not all.

They ARE creating MORE GOVERNMENT, layer cake or junk-in-a-box, it is MORE GOVERNMENT.

They ARE going to create a DEVELOPERS' AUTHORITY that will hand out your tax dollars to developers who will destroy your quality of life at the same time robbing your children's schools of needed money.

They ARE going to build a government of outside bureaucrats who will operate unsupervised and infrequently observed by your elected representatives.

They ARE lying: about "local control"; about your tax dollars, where and how they're spent; and about preserving damn near anything you value.

But make no mistake: they ARE going to get their city. Unless you fight and fight hard. Because there is significant money at stake, relationships to be made and power to be leveraged to the benefit of those behind this effort. 

Now if you're in favor of a city then by all means, listen to a city manager, a manager who has directly benefited from the creation of these fairy ring cities. He certainly should be a fan-boy. If you, as a resident, a taxpayer, a voter, would like to get an idea of what is in store then drop in at a Dunwoody council meeting or better yet, chat up a few of the folks living around Dunwoody Village. 

You may be of the mind that you can, that you must fight this. That you can win. You may be right. You may be able to fend off "Jaws 2" and certainly many are rooting for you. It IS a good fight, victory is uncertain and the enemy, and they ARE your enemy, is relentless. Good luck and godspeed.

That Didn't Take Long

The ink is barely dry on the MOU and the developer is already man-splaining to the Developers'  Authority that they, the developer, ain't gonna stick to the deal. And what did the bobble heads at that Developers' Authority do? That's right, they bobbed their heads up and down in all-but-violent agreement-to violate the agreement. 

Now the developer trotted out some authority on senior development to justify their actions (like they really needed to do that). Well to be accurate, they didn't trot anyone out, instead preferring to leave their alleged experts behind the curtain of anonymity. But, they're developers, you can trust them, right?

What they were probably doing was letting everyone know who is really in charge and it ain't even the bureaucrats down at city hall or the Developers' Authority. It sure as hell ain't the dwarfs. The developer has made it clear that the dwarfs get one vote and after that vote the developer can change anything they want, whenever they want and it doesn't matter how ludicrous the change might be.

And this change tops the charts. The original requirement, leasee required to be over 55, was simply and effectively enforceable. Developers, in general, don't like that and in this case will not accept it. Instead they will lease to anyone, any age, so long as someone says "yeah, that's for my dad, he's over 55...yeah...that's the ticket." Of course that is virtually impossible to enforce. 

And you would have thought that the $7M stolen from our children would have been enough. You would have thought wrong.