It could be both. It seems the city's bureaucrats have managed to get the attention of some in the public. It is negative attention, but when you're narcissists even negative attention is better than none.
The bureaucrat's goal is the same as always: get their greedy hands on more money. In this case by way of bonds. That we will pay off, because developments don't pay taxes. So their snow job starts with a long list of projects that they (rather arrogantly) say are merely proposed and may not be the final projects. Does anyone really think this is anything other than bait-and-switch? And yet it appears they have, out of thin air, generated a laundry list of "unfunded capital projects." WTF? These un-elected bureaucrats have created their own "need for bonds" by making up projects? And where did the ideas for these originate? Maybe with well-connected Friends and Family.
Is anyone out there finally realizing that this city is operating from the DCSD playbook and doing about as well?
The DeKalb County School System is ditching over fifty-eight hundred diplomas because they don't like the way they're printed. Not that the printer screwed up. No typo-s were found. What they don't like is the name on them. These "bad" diplomas have the name of the superintendent they just fired and there is no abiding that.
This is so stupid it's funny.
They are still paying the super they fired and lawyers are tee-ed up to make sure they pay even more. And all they had to do is set a very, very slightly later termination date to save the costs of binning these and the ensuing rush job for replacements. Simple arithmetic suggests there should have been about twelve hundred more so maybe the schools' inability to retain and educate has saved some money. But sometimes you get the feeling board members are playing checkers when they should be playing chess.
When all is said and done isn't the most important name on any diploma that of the student who earned it?
The final press for the City of East Cobb has gone full court with the AJC dutifully parroting proponents chatter about "local control." They even go so far as to drag out the stats on how many voters are represented by a County Commissioner vs the number represented by a member of city council suggesting smaller is better.
At best this is disingenuous, perhaps rising to the level of now verboten disinformation. Paul Harvey might point out that commissioners have more responsibilities and capabilities and city council (and the mayor) will be legally prohibited from doing much beyond ribbon cuttings. Imagine you could vote for the head coach of your favorite team. Would you give that up so you could only vote for one of the cheerleaders?
That is what this city charter, like all those coming before, does. Give it a read.
Seems there was a bit of an altercation in Dunwoody Village with a belligerent brandishing a firearm while an employee escorted her out of the premises. In and of itself that might be a little bit frightening, but what is even more concerning is the reaction of the employee. Seems they didn't want to file a report. Why? "Because things like this happen all the time."
What does that say about the efficacy of law enforcement? Maybe if we had community policing we'd have a community where these things don't happen all the time.
In a recent letter to the editor the writer pushed back against the movement to force schools to install traffic enforcement cameras in school zones. His point, well made, was that turning this function over to private profiteers would result in a company putting profits over safety. This touches on the point that it is always about the money.
And that is a touchy point that should be touched a little harder. It begs the question: what exactly are we paying for this city to do? Specifically when it comes to the police farce it certainly is not to provide enforcement, particularly enforcement to ensure the safety of our roads and neighborhoods. When they refuse to protect our children in school zones then we need to consider alternatives. Maybe instead of privateer's cameras we should give traffic enforcement authority to our school systems' SROs. Let them keep our streets safe and let them keep the public safety enforcement revenue in public hands.
Folks often go on about the hypocrisy of sinners in church, but where would you like the sinners to be? Don't you expect the mentally ill to be in contact with mental healthcare workers? But, you don't expect the inmates to be running the asylum. Unless it is the DeKalb County School System and their Board of Education.
In that case what you get is a completely broken accounting system, totally in conflict with GAAP and state requirements, which has been broken since time began. But what we also get are the folks running this insanity who refuse to play by the rules. The financial rules.
You'd think a CPA would know better, would do better. You'd be wrong.
Got it yet? No. No. This isn't about the disastrous vote for cityhood. Most of the disappointed Dunwoody-Yes-ers have moved on to warmer waters. No, this is about DeKalb County Schools.
For some mind-boggling reason folks in this county, without fail, vote in favor of every eSPLOST put before them. Even when it doesn't even include a single mention of what the money will be spent on. Now we find out that money from the first five may (or may not) have been spent but it sure as hell wasn't maintenance of our schools as they are sinking into a literal cesspool. Still think that "yay" vote for eSPLOST-VI was a good idea?
Then there is the board, so bad it is an insult to every dysfunctional bureaucracy in the modern world. You DO know that YOU voted those fools in, right? And remember what Bush said after Trump was elected? "I'm not looking so bad right about now." The Jesters are probably thinking the same thing as the current District 1 either posts vapid puff pieces or worse yet goes before groups to discuss what is going on, only to continually say she's not going to talk about that right now. A spin on "trust me" which speaks to a level of trust that hasn't been earned. How 'bout that vote, eh?
Maybe next time there is a chance to vote the outcome won't be quite this stupid.
You gotta wonder. Really. This city has a crisis of leadership. City Hall is snowed in by a blizzard of well-earned lawsuits resulting from (what ought to be criminal) incompetence at the highest levels of city bureaucracy. Hey, if the DeKalb School Board can do it why can't our city council? No stones?
And stones are the new shiny objects city bureaucrats are using to distract the rather short-term attention of our elected officials. They want to ban gravel driveways. That's right. They've got nothing better to do than dish out grief to residents for something that cannot offend more than a very, very few folks, most of whom need a life. Or a HOA. And city hall is on track to exempt businesses and developers (of course) so this is targeted exclusively to residents, and to be clear, single-home-owner residents. You know, the folks who voted this happy horseshit into existence in the first place.
The silliness has started with one on council remarkably remarking that pervious gravel driveways require maintenance to remain pervious. JMJ and WTF! OK genius, tell us, is that better or worse than a concrete or asphalt driveway that requires no maintenance to remain impervious? But they haven't even begun a legal definition of "gravel." Does crushed granite count? It does look quite a bit like concrete and tends to minimize dispersion, though it is never as impervious as concrete. And, it might actually be to the homeOWNER's liking. No matter. They haven't determined what materials, granite, marble, sandstone, pumice, etc. count as gravel. Nor what size: sand, marble-size, grape-fruit. Not even shape. Flat, like flagstone? What is the smallest a flagstone can be before it is just gravel? How about round river rocks? Got a size limit on those? Or is it just any non-concrete, non-asphalt drive? Do they have a clue? Do they care? Is this just a shiny, distracting object? Or are they all just stoned?
So, after they outlaw your preferred driveway, whatcha gonna do? Well ponder this a bit. They cannot regulate a driveway when there, well, is no driveway. After all do you really need anything more than grass or other ground cover? Probably not. You can you even mark it off with landscape lighting, or...
Pretty Sweet, Huh?
And just think, that newly verboten pea gravel could just be plowed under. Those stones are good for the grass and grass is good for getting stoned.
But more than likely this is nothing but an attempt to distract everyone from the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars being pissed away trying to cover for gross incompetence at city hall. And that is the most concrete bullshit there is.
One video, a couple of typically worthless board meetings and one letter from the state DOE and Cheryl Watson-Harris has been thrown under the bus, another victim of systemic incompetence and malfeasance in our largely unsupervised school system. Is this what happens when the Wakanda Salute cult loyalty falls apart? Or is this what happens when the Sovereign DeKalb County School System sees a significant portion put at serious risk. Or perhaps Watson-Harris committed the most mortal of sins against Holy Church of the Takers: she let a serious crisis go to waste. Richard Woods pointed out Federal largess had been allocated to their discretionary spending, that it could (some say should) be spent to fix these schools (including DHHS) and yet it sat unused. This was just a slap across the face, though it is quite mysterious that these takers had, well, not. He also put them on notice that the state was to withhold approval of their development, and consequently spending, plan. Now this caused an uproar and probably triggered the firing. Given this school district's track record of ensuring lucrative contracts go to friends and family (former superintendents have been indicted) you have to wonder exactly whose lifestyle was suddenly at risk. Certainly not the students suffering in facilities that would be condemned if you or I or any business owned them. And this stinks more than the sewerage bubbling up at DHHS.
Posts
