Bond. Trails Bond. Apparently the any-debt-at-any-cost crowd are crying in their martinis. But no worry, if you can afford to live in Dunwoody you can afford a top shelf martini. Or so went the logic.
Problem is, that kind of logic did not resonate with the crowd who, almost 15 years ago, voted to create a city they thought would be characterized by fiscal responsibility, limited government and local control. As it turns out, the city charter minimizes voter input and local control except in those instances where a referendum is required for city bureaucrats to "grow the city." Such was the case with the rather deceptively named "parks bond" referendum.
The postmortems have already begun and the do-over committees are probably forming so, well, let's pile on.
Start with the name. It is deceptive on many levels. First it was to cover parks, which almost everyone favored and highway lanes (even more deceptively) branded as "trails." Worse yet, there was not a list of specific projects with pricing, just a bucket of items like a list a four year old child hands to Santa but no where near as specific as "I want an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle!" More like "I'll have the whole bag and I'll take what I want when the mood strikes me." There is enough confidence in what goes on at city hall and how they operate to make some folks wonder if what would come out of the bag would be PATH's choices over the community choices.
And city hall knew that PATH's choices were not popular amongst the populace which is why they bundled it with parks and refused to allow an up-down vote on each independently. Separation would also have required they expose exactly how much they intended to allocate to parks and how much they would direct to PATH. So they chose to piggyback something bad on something good as if they were the US congress or something. Works when voters aren't directly involved. Not so much this time.
There was mischaracterization on both sides. The debt-averse crowd characterized the bond as a "blank check" which the mayor curtly dismissed by remarking, correctly, that it is not a blank check. Left unsaid was that it is better characterized as a slush fund (see previous observation that no concrete prioritized list was provided). The pro-debt crowd characterized the debt-averse as being "anti parks" without recognizing that the referendum included "trails" without constraint on parks vs "trail" priority or expenditures with no protection against PATH running away with all the money.
Then it got personal with the debt-lovers characterizing the debt-haters as olde fartes who were frozen in the 1970s and against any change. This kind of attack is not noteworthy other than it invoked the Dunwoody version of Godwin's law. This degenerated to invitations to move if you don't like debt-funded changes or a Dunwoody that is nothing more than a cookie-cutter copy of neighboring cities. A bit like watching the folks with all the shiny objects trying to convince the millionaire next door to keep up with the Jones'. Entertaining to watch for the first couple of rounds but quickly turns painful.
One can never have a contentious political debate without yard signs and one cannot have yard signs without someone removing the opponents' signs. When some debt-averse signagers pointed out that their signs went missing the retort from across the chasm was "the city did this." Not clear if that is true but everyone should certainly hope that it isn't. A city that shows disdain for their own responsibility to police signs in the Village should probably not be pulling down political signs advocating against the city's wishes. Not a good look.
The pro-debt crowd used a common tactic to dismiss the 53% tax increase that the bond payoff represents by claiming you have to compare that increase to your total property tax bill. Actually, no you don't. You see, the only taxes that the city can directly affect is, well, the city tax. Kinda obvious if you think about it. So when they propose to add more than 50% to their bill they are just looking for a way around the charter restriction on millage rate, which turns out to have been a very good idea to prevent runaway spending. It got funny when the pro-debtors started insulting the other side because some of them weren't aware of what services were provided by the city vs the county when they argued for better priorities. See, you can compare taxes to school and county taxes but you must be oh so clear about the services.
One thing neither side mentioned was that the bond tax is regressive. Apartment owners do not get a property assessment freeze (homeowners do) and they do not get a homestead exemption (homeowners do) so they are going to pass the increased cost directly to renters, driving up rents. And this is when the city is promoting more and more apartments as "affordable housing" while at the same time proposing a tax that will make rents less affordable. It is really amusing when blue fiscal policy runs counter to the blue agenda.
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