Like A Cold Sore That Won't Go Away

Dominium, so aptly named, is persistent if nothing else and is acting with Trumpian sense of entitlement and ownership of facts: "no one under age 55 will be able to live there,"  where "there" is an incredibly out of place high-rise apartment on Ashford Dunwoody. Like Trump, who has his own facts, he has a reality problem with Congress. Seems the 104th passed something called HOPA (Housing for Older Persons Act) which explicitly defines the rules for 55+, including the 80/20 rule and that only one resident need be that old.  This is an actual "act of Congress" that Mr. Dominium has no control over, so despite his protests, the actual fact is that, by law, folks under 55 can, and very likely will, live in these apartments. Otherwise, honestly (that's a stretch) why would anyone build three bedroom apartments? 

The fact that this man's proposal is so inappropriate that even advocates of urbanization are against it is concerning. What is more concerning is the bureaucrats at city hall that are actively advocating for this proposal. The folks are on our payroll, and they have not a single clue about, and even less consideration for the people living in this city. They don't know us. They don't care to. They don't work for us. So who do they work for? And what is the power these outsiders have over city hall bureaucrats?

Maybe it is time for a "power down reset," rebooting this operation with lots of new faces. 

Make It Stop

Can he? Will he? These two blatant violations occurred on the same fine morning.

Another Red Light Runner

Frito Bandito: Ride Into The No-Truck Zone

And then, on another day that ends in "Y" we have another helping of Fritos.

You Can Set Your Watch By His Violations

Is anybody at city hall ever going to do anything about this? Didn't think so.

Try Again. This One Isn't Working.

Happens often. Laws never enforced.

Job ONE! Never DONE!

Writ Of Mandamus

More on the writ later, but first let's set the stage...

As many of you may know there has been a dinosaur zoo operating in Dunwoody for a few years now. Not live dinosaurs or even fossilized bones but the inflate-a-date variety. Now the city is shutting down the dino-zoo and that is making fur fly over on fece-book with most seeing dino-extinction as a sin against god and humanity. Mostly because their kids liked it. 

This would be a real teaching moment if it weren't taking so long. Some are just now learning that Dunwoody takes an "enforce on complaint" approach to anything they deign to address and with any action subject to their assessment of the complainer, the alleged offender and the alleged violation. This has led some to call for an open records request to identify the dino-hater presumably to go after them, but be honest, isn't guessing more fun? Others are seeking their very own inflate-a-dino to defy "the man." Others cannot fathom how an inflatable is a sign. Some want to "throw the bums out" suggesting write-ins for the unchallenged in the upcoming election. The zoo-keeper confesses to knowing the rules but has been doing this for three years which may not be the best thing to immortalize on the interweb. The mayor is going to "look into it" which is politician-speak for "I'm outta here" as there is much that any city politician would not want the electorate figuring out as they dig into this affair. Let's learn that anyway.

We'll start with the "sign, not-sign" confustication by looking at the actual ordinance, specifically Section 20-34 - Prohibited Signs:

Except as otherwise provided by this chapter, the following signs are prohibited within the city:

(1)Dilapidated signs, including sign structures.

(2)Animated signs, including balloons, streamers, air or gas filled figures, signs that move mechanically as a result of human activity, wherever located.

There you have it, no ignorance, no excuse. Those dinos are prohibited and in violation of city ordinance. You should also know that this ordinance passed unanimously, 7-0, with much self-congratulatory backslapping and support from many if not most of the current politicians. So what exactly is the mayor looking into? An unread ordinance that was voted for? How often does that happen?

Suppose the mayor does look into it. Can the mayor actually do anything? Let's see what the city charter has to say about that, specifically Sec. 3.05. - City council interference with administration:

Except for the purpose of inquiries and investigations under Section 2.08 of this Charter, the city council or its members shall deal with city officers and employees who are subject to the direction or supervision of the city manager solely through the city manager, and neither the city council nor its members shall give orders to any such officer or employee, either publicly or privately.

It is impossible to believe that anyone who voted yes for the Dunwoody referendum ever read this (or ever will) as this prohibition is kryptonite to all those Dunwoody zionists preaching local control. Dunwoody is modeled more after DeKalb Schools with powerless elected officials than after DeKalb county where our elected officials have real staff, real responsibilities and offer the electorate real control. In Dunwoody, voting in new bobble-heads only affects the entertainment value of council meetings. 

The third leg of this stool is the "enforce on complaint" practice. Here we look to Sec. 3.04. - City manager; powers and duties enumerated:

The city manager shall have the power, and it shall be his or her duty to:

(1)See that all laws and ordinances are enforced;

Job one: enforce all laws and ordinances. In what world is that: just sit on the sidelines until someone complains? No one should be complaining because if the city manager were getting the legally mandated job done there would be nothing to complain about. Why? Because if all laws and ordinances had been enforced then this one in particular would have been enforced three years ago. Isn't what the city is doing to us the very definition of dereliction of duty? And since the only thing mayor and council can do is upgrade the city manager, which they are not doing, they too seem to have dropped the ball. And none of this seems to bother any of them.

This brings us to the writ of mandamus, a court order forcing a government to do its job. Maybe it is time to pursue that path as we're living in the municipal equivalent of a failed state where clearly defined responsibilities are being ignored in deference to...who knows what. This city's failure has conditioned folks to believe that ordinances don't matter, which means your vote doesn't matter, because the council vote doesn't matter. Just ignore what you don't like and hope no one important complains. And had the city done its job these dinos would not have been up long enough for folks to come to believe if something is popular or you get away with it long enough then it cannot be illegal even when it is. Is that what we want to teach our children? Because that is exactly what this city is doing.

Speed Is NOT The Problem

Looks like someone did not play nice with one of Billy Boys toys. 

But speeding is clearly not the problem. How do we know? Because the solution is obvious: put cops on the street to enforce our speed limits. But the city manager and his top cop are NEVER going to do that and no one seems to know why. What everyone does know is that there is not nor will there ever be enforcement of our traffic laws. Not speed limits. Not no truck zones. Not...

Too busy checking in on the prostitutes and their hotel partners in Perimeter Center. 

Whose Phone Is Ringing?

Perhaps the real question is "whose phone should be ringing?"

Recently there have been calls, unanswered calls, for the removal by resignation of Dunwoody's self-proclaimed Top Cop. But these callers may have the wrong number or at least not all the right ones. Does Dunwoody need a PD shakeup starting at the top and including the upper ranks? Absolutely. 

But this would miss the mark.

As required by the City Charter the police chief reports to the city manager. The same city manager who has, by inaction, endorsed the incompetence and misbehavior permeating his (and it is his) police department. Clearly the calls for the Top Cop's resignation fall short of the mark. These fish rot first at the head and it is stinking to high heaven. The calls should be for the removal of the city manager. When, if ever, will our elected officials answer that call?

Can We Quote You On That?

The AJC quoted our Top Cop as saying:

"As law enforcement officers, we are and should be held to the highest standards of conduct whether on or off duty. We will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident and the actions of our officers."

Wow. Lot to unpack there. Does the Top Cop's "highest standards" include running a porn operation? Police shootings of members of gen-pop, including fatalities? Civil rights violations? Enforce DWB but no patrolling of school zones, again with the fatality connection? Those are symptomatic of a very perverted view of "highest standards."

The clear signal of furtherance of the disaster is "we will conduct a thorough investigation." Danger Will Robinson! Will this be like the whitewash coverup of the porno ring? Perhaps there is a higher, nobler authority. The Georgia State Patrol was called to the scene and perhaps, just maybe, this is a good time to involve the GBI. Now you might be thinking that a statewide organization might be keeping track of errant officers.  Maybe you're thinking of POST? Because they tend to let a lot of very serious incidents fall through the cracks and off the record.

It is hard to tally up the full cost of this systemic incompetence, but it starts with the salaries of the city manager and top cop, both of whom should be fired. With cause. Then there are the legal fees being paid to defend this incompetence, often a losing cause resulting in further payouts. One must really wonder what it takes for the mayor and council to take the actions necessary to clean up this mess.

Work Really Cuts Into His Day

You probably have a job. All in that would consume 40, 50, maybe more hours of your week. Especially if you hold a non-clock-punching, exempt position, leaving little time for fun, games and time with the family. Unless you're heading up the police department in one of the built to suit (developers and businesses) faux-cities.

Like Dunwoody.

Dunwoody's Top Cop (his words, not ours) is also an instructor at Guardian Leadership. This is in addition to his very own consultancy advising wanna-be-s on how to become just as good a cop as he. In between he's been the globe-trotting cop FROM Dunwoody. So is it any surprise that when he actually is in town and at least somewhat attentive to what is going on in his own department he is penning or just signing off on white-washing reports to deflect his and his department's culpability for extremely unsavory goings-on?

Is this really what the city wants? Apparently, as the city manager has done nothing about this, has said nothing about this, and so it must be concluded, at the very least, he approves of this.

So what to do?

Fire the city manager, with cause, for dereliction and replace him with someone committed to serving the residents of this community. His replacement's contract will ensure this is a condition for ongoing employment and given the disastrous experiences we've had with run-of-the-mill city managers this will require vigilance and frequent review. The first action of this manager would be cleaning house. In the PD and throughout city operations. Hard as it is to believe, in little over a decade we've allowed bureaucratic bloat to spread like kudzu. 

So how to do this?

This will require some significant changes in our elected representatives at city hall. Very likely some, perhaps most, are not salvageable and require replacement. With significant improvement over the current office-holders. 

Only then do we stand a chance of making the best of a very bad situation.

Should He Resign?

Hell no!

He should be fired. With cause. Same fate should await his boss. But it should not wait a single day longer.

Are We Getting Smarter?

Are we getting smarter or did we import it? Doesn't really matter does it?

One of the things Dunwoody did shortly after gathering up some tax money was to buy a bunch of solar powered radar speed signs. As we've pointed out at least some of these are located in a suboptimal location partly because solar panels don't work so well in the shade. Other observations include the City's steadfast refusal to locate these inside a school zone allowing the City to be rather dismissive when the public asks about speeding in these zones. They honestly cannot answer because they've refused to look.

That may be changing. At least out by the Linear Park.

Southbound CD currently has a sign situated on a shady turn pointed at traffic speeding from Spalding towards lovely downtown Dunwoody. It is north of the cross walk practice dummy and barely in sight of any indication there is a school zone in the offing.

The new location is just south of the "School Zone Ahead" sign. And in the sun.

When fleeing daVille, the current sign is at the uphill section of the Fairfield Oaks which had been hacked up by the City in an effort to grab a few rays.

The new location is actually inside the school zone just past the hilltop and yes, in the sun.

To what do we owe this Sudden Onset Sanity? Some say it was just a matter of time. Perhaps if you mean by "matter of time" you are referring to the amount of time needed to upgrade our City Manager and Assistant City Manager but that sure was a long time coming.

Thank goodness it is here. Now maybe we'll see a trend of Good Things done the Smart Way. Dare we hope for download page on the City website where we can download data from these radar signs?

Stumpy

If you remember way back when...when the buzz in daVille was all about a park with pavement and a parkway without (or at least with less) then you may also remember the wringing of hands over the loss of trees. Collateral damage due to the annihilation of the median where they were growing. We were told this cost was easily justified as a small sacrifice to build bike lanes for Torpy's One Percent*. We were also told that trees are the ultimate renewable resource. Funny how that's not being said to slash and burn farmers in the rain forests of South America.

But back to renewables. As it turns out these trees are quite renewable. A full six have been renewed down to mere stumps

with another ten standing brown and dead awaiting the arborist's axe. This represents a significant DOA rate, perhaps as high as thirty to forty percent. With that kind of failure we will be renewing these resources for some time before we see any shade on those sidewalks.

The City's stump generation program suggests that Smart City Staff did not obtain these renewables with any reasonable guarantee. You know, like what most folks get when they buy from a reputable nursery. Maybe they were too focused on getting pavement and sidewalk contracts to the right folks to realize if you don't get a warrantee you are likely to get selections most in need of one. Seems like the closest they ever got to anything having to do with trees was sipping Champagne with execs from Treetop.

But that was Staff operating under the direction and supervision of an unlamented former City Manager. Now we have a bloke smart enough to get into Georgia Tech and with the work ethic needed to cross the stage and pick up his diploma so there is a good chance we'll have some renewables renewed before next summer.





*Bill Torpy's At Large is behind the AJC's Pay Wall.

Hop Scotch

For a City like Dunwoody the Manager's position is a stepping stone, a way stay on a trajectory towards bigger (budgets) and better (seats on boards). We are not likely to change this so we need to accept it and act accordingly.

When a position is transient, as this one is, the larger organization needs to understand that in the first half of a given tenure the person holding the position is very likely to align their actions with the best interests of the organization. Toward the second half these ambitious individuals will begin to act in what they perceive as the best interests of their next position which will open a gap between what is best for the job at hand and what is best for the aspirant to get another job.

This behaviour is not unusual but it is another reason why structural changes must be made in our compensation system. No one who has been paying attention to the goings on at City Hall should be surprised that our City Manager is moving on to another city and a seat on Chatcomm's board but they might want to reflect on some of the statements made about, and handling of, the CAD-to-CAD epic fail in which Chatcomm played a significant role. We were seeing second half behaviour and getting second string performance.

Let's not make that mistake again.

Just Compensation

Since the City formed TOD has consistently observed that for the City's three top positions we hired in haste and have suffered in an increasingly uncomfortable leisure. In one case we endured a breach so great that nothing less than permanent separation was acceptable. The other two...not so much. Yet.

Though not a singularity, the bungling of the Schneiderman investigation did not carry the consequences it should have or would have in other localities. And for years now we've endured the comedy of errors commonly known as CAD-to-CAD as our City Manager slowly realizes that wink-and-nod deals that work with real estate development don't work so well with computer systems development. Turns out computers don't blink.

Now folks are calling for action mostly in the form of a new City Manager. Some consider this harsh whilst others observe that the City Charter allows for little more than a nuclear option. Even the current City Manager, when justifying why he should not be subject to ethics oversight, argued that since he worked at the pleasure of the Mayor and Council such oversight was unnecessary. True dat.

As surprising as this may seem firing the City Manager won't fix the real problem. Without more fundamental changes the next City Manager will likely be as bad as the one we're currently saddled with and may even be worse. We need a better fix.

There is an old saying "You get what you pay for." Bullshit. You pay for what you get. And if you're smart you make sure of exactly what you are getting before you pay. That's what we need in this City: a compensation system that rewards results.

It works like this. Top City staffers (that would include the City Manager, Police Chief and City Attorney and their direct reports) will receive  two thirds of their W2 compensation as salary with the rest in the form of performance bonuses. Plural. The next layer of staffers will receive an eighty-twenty split.

The bonuses are earned by delivering against tangible, measurable objectives agreed upon in bi-annual employee-manager work sessions. In the case of the City Manager, this would comprise agreed upon goals that are aligned with the policy direction established by Council. Long term policy initiatives require that Council establish intermediate milestones. Had this been done with the CAD-to-CAD project the City Manager would not have been able to pull the "it will take three months" wool over Council's eyes. It would also mean that failure to perform would come directly out of the pockets of those who failed to live up to their commitments.

Throughout the organization these goals must be aligned with Council's policy objectives and vision for the City. They must also be prioritized as should Council policy and vision. And they should be allocated in such a fashion that each employee has a clear understanding of what must be done to earn competitive compensation and what can be done (stretch goals) to earn more. It is a track record of achieving these stretch goals and nothing else that leads to increases in overall compensation. You earn your pay and you earn your raise.

By establishing this compensation plan and publishing the objectives, priorities, policy and vision updated whenever there is any change we will establish a level of transparency and accountability that will go a long way towards making Dunwoody a city that operates in the way we were promised.

Legislation By Enforcement

We've all been watching, many in horror, as our President has trampled the Constitution with his post-facto executive changes to his signature "legislation". He is doing this primarily by way of selective enforcement most recently protecting existing "Cadillac Coverage" for corporate executives. Apparently it is just too hard to craft the rules that address gold plated coverage for those with golden parachutes.

This is not just an affront to the Constitution. It makes a cruel joke of the entire legislative process. What good is any law if the executive branch exercises what is effectively a line item veto subject to individual whim and fickleness? What good are any laws if they are subject to re-writes by a single individual or administration?

There is good reason for significant concern when we're talking Federal Law and the President but it is no less important when it strikes closer to home. We have ordinances that commonly go unenforced. We've all seen the rental sign for the basement apartment up the street though it is zoned single family residential. We have public statements regarding our otherwise entertaining urban chicken ban indicating it will be enforced only upon complaint. We have an overlay district in the village that bans neon signs yet this collage is but a few of the gaudy display available on any given day.

A law that goes unenforced is not a law and breeds contempt for other laws and those who enact them and unlike the situation with the feds here at home the executive (in)actions rewriting our ordinances do not come from an elected official. Consequently voters have even less say regarding this questionable practice.

What's For Breakfast?

Eggs Benedict is an American breakfast dish that consists of two halves of an English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce.

We've probably all heard the story about the chicken and the pig at breakfast--the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. For those engaged in high tech it is all too easy to see the current City Hall cock-up as yet another IT project fail and leave it at that. King Warren would certainly approve.

But that kerfuffle is just one example of the systemic problems permeating all aspects of the Hutmacher Café. It boils down (a reduction in toqued-up terms) to the fact that the City Manager and all His Staff may be involved (they certainly are when it is time for praise and a raise) but not a single one is committed. So from Executive Chef down to Bus Boy the team at the Hutmacher Café suffer inflated egos and bloated self-esteems. They gleefully serve up what they call Eggs Benedict complete with overcooked eggs and a congealed sauce atop a burned muffin but missing even a hint of anything resembling pork. Then they arrogantly proclaim it worthy of a breakfast at Brennan's. It certainly carries a Brennan's price.

And the Mayor and Council? What say they? Well, they fawn over this unsavory mess and the service that delivered it by heaping unwarranted praise on the Chef and Wait-Staff. It may well be the best rendition of Eggs Benedict they have every tasted but this says as much about them as it does the over-hyped tripe coming from the hell's kitchen of the Hutmacher Café.

Mayor and Council may be easily fooled but the public is increasingly aware that the Hutmacher Café serves up little more than a cold, slimy version of Eggs Benedict-Arnold.

DunAnon

Whenever three or more are gathered to complain you would think you had inadvertently walked in on a twelve-step meeting. You're probably in a church. Folks are milling about, chatting and sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup until the meeting is called to order. Attendees speak in a fashion reminiscent of a testimonial. It is a church after all. More than not speakers begin with something like: "My name is Bob. I've lived in Dunwoody since before God invented rocks and I'm here to say..." and then roll into a less-than-complementary observation or a why-question.

Such was the case at a recent townhall meeting sponsored by the newly elected Dunwoody Councilman. The event was video taped and YouTubed by (no surprises here) Councilman Heneghan. Fran Millar was in attendance as was the outgoing Councilwoman. The format was open mike with the audience encouraged to voice their concerns. No surprises here either.

The WOW! factor comes from the blogosphere with one local opinion outlet characterizing the crowd as haters--an opinion seconded on another site. There was indeed an audience comment berating bloggers who strike thru snide comments as engaging in grade school humour. OK. To be fair they actually will give pretty much anyone a blog* which most bloggers use as a modern day megaphone for their opinion. But hate is a pretty strong word to level against folks who are also voicing their opinion albeit in a different forum that others may see as outdated.

There was also some dead horse beating and some critical comments regarding City sins of omission and commission. Testimonial from no less than Fran Millar supported one corpse flogging and called out the City on one act of gross negligence. One would therefore think it might be difficult to lambast those hosting and attending this meeting by pointing out that listening is insufficient while at the same time neglecting to point out that is nonetheless necessary. Or perhaps not?

It appears that Dunwoody suffers a greater chasm between internal factions than one would conclude from a fairy ring of yard signs, red tees or red letters. After the constant pleas for citizens to become engaged come the protestations when those who do and have engaged are not properly aligned in their thinking. Or maybe these folks are not as savvy as those of us equipped with a keyboard, an opinion and just a bit too much time on our hands**.

While it is two hours of your life you will never get back it may be worth your while to watch the videos and decide for yourself if these folks rise to the level of haters. It is also up to you to determine if listening is necessary but not sufficient or if engaging your neighbors and constituents is just another unnecessary distraction undermining good governance.

* Making it hard to determine exactly how many bloggers were in attendance. 
** You mean like those of us here at TOD?

Light Up Dunwoody

Remember Hope and Change? Remember Yes We Can? Remember Dunwoody Yes!? What these have in common is an ephemeral foundation of hope fueled bravado and a wonderful sense of self. And more than a heapin' helpin' of a condescending understanding of just who knows what is best for everyone.

Here in the Wold we have a shining example of how poorly these enthusiastic hope-filled endeavours age with nightly displays right up in the village. Go see for yourself.

What you'll find is a sight that to many is somewhat garish. The picture doesn't do it justice so you really should go see for yourself.

Now you're probably wondering what's the big deal with a business using its storefront for, well, business. Seems legit. But you would be wrong.

You see when our little group of community organizers decided they should be deciding they decided that NEON signs are verboten in the Village Overlay. But if you get a chance to stop by you'll find these aren't NEON lights. They're just UGLY lights.

Now maybe the existing ordinance shows what happens when folks who think they know what they're doing and don't try to do something they really can't. Maybe it shows the cracks in a political ecosystem based on earning merit badges in your local HOA, at church, then moving to DHA before finally earning enough patches to sit on Council.

Maybe this display really does violate existing ordinances and that is even more troubling. After our recent contentious election there are now calls for governance. But what can that really mean? Does Council enforce our ordinances? Hell, do they even author them or simply sign off on documents drafted by staff? Should we call in the Mayor to put an end to these violations? Could he if he even wanted to?

Or is the simple fact of the matter that there is no place for governance nor statesmanship in Dunwoody. We're being managed not governed so ask your boss, the City Manager, if this way of Lighting Up Dunwoody is OK or not.

Dunwoody 2.0?

Hardly.

Whenever version numbers are truly meaningful and not just a marketing tactic a major release has some key attributes beyond feature additions or changes to the UX.

Often the new version is incompatible with data and configuration files used by the previous version. In almost every case an upgrade tool or import plugin facilitates migration to the new version but it is labourious and not without risk. Such incompatibilities are an inherent element of forward progress.

An important side effect of these large increments in functionality is the load placed on the existing platform. It is not at all unusual to find after a major upgrade that the system is slow. Often to the point of being unusable. With each major upgrade there is an associated increase in the minimum performance and capacities to support this newer and better version. In cases where a system upgrade is driven by the adoption of a newer version of software it is not at all uncommon to replace the underlying platform and hardware at the same time the applications are upgraded. Experience has taught many a techie that is ultimately what occurs so you might as well cut to the chase.

Though some may think we have a major version upgrade the facts cannot support the assertion. What we've done is swap out one of our key apps and it isn't clear if that is a bug fix version, a minor feature release or even a feature downgrade for the sake of system stability. It is very unlikely that app is a major version upgrade and if so it remains only one of seven apps.

And since initial boot up we've done virtually nothing to the underlying platform and hardware. Now some may contend that replacement of an improperly installed platform component was an upgrade but this was really just routine maintenance like swapping out a failed spindle. We didn't switch to SSD or cloud storage and while we may have installed a bigger replacement the only discernable difference is that the whole operation cost a lot of money and was only a little more inconvenient than it was avoidable. At the end of the day the total cost was much more than would have been required to replace the entire platform at the time. Had we only known.

But it does point to a circumstance all computer users know: systems are not immune to the second law of thermodynamics and move constantly towards increased entropy. Systems rot. Platforms rot. As these platforms rot otherwise perfectly well behaved applications become slow, produce errors and ultimately fail. Often not due to any failure in the app itself but because the underlying platform is failing.

There are a couple of common ways to address platform rot. The first is to weed out the failing components and replace them with new components that are compatible with the remainder of the pre-existing platform--there is a market for EIDE drives albeit on ebay. This approach retains whatever perceived value exists in the platform but locks the overall system into a constant decline towards obsolescence. This is why an entire platform evaluation is often done when an individual platform component fails. It has so often proven to be a false economy to scrimp by spending on a single component when the incremental cost of a platform replacement is dwarfed by the generational increases in capabilities and performance a new platform offers. In other cases the root cause of specific component failure lies with another defective component--if you must keep replacing the fuse then the problem isn't the fuse. Consequently it is not uncommon to replace the underlying platform while retaining the existing applications which are then only upgraded as user-facing situations warrant.

We already have one sign of platform rot and responded in a very limited fashion by removing the defective component. Now we have a new and more disturbing sign of rot. Two of our key apps attempted to access data regarding the genesis of Project Renaissance and unrelated budget item details. Both sets of data should have been readily available but platform errors indicated these were missing with no indication that they had ever been stored or reliably backed up. As these are unrelated data items this is indicative of systemic failure. It is also clear that this platform does not support ECC memory and it appears parity checks have been disabled. What is not clear is how long our key apps have been operating with incomplete and inaccurate data. However there is no doubt that as this situation progresses it will continue to degrade ultimately resulting in errors of such consequence that the previous platform failure will pale in comparison.

Given the current state of affairs we are not only not at Dunwoody 2.0 we don't even have the platform in place to get there.

Is This You?

When "the City's staff" engage in a coordinated, concerted effort to drive from Dunwoody those citizens they find unacceptable, is this you?

Or what about the kind of fidelity to honest government wherein a City Manager claims public review sessions were held yet the City Clerk responds to an open records request with "no record of any meeting". Is this you?

Or perhaps the commitment to public safety displayed by an apparent policy of shoot-to-kill for traffic offenses. Is this you?

Then there is the questionable ethics of a five million dollar pot-sweetener land deal using City taxpayer funds. Is this you?

Or the corporate welfare that manifested itself as a sweetheart deal between the City acting as a land developer and a nearly bankrupt home builder to ensure the builder's financial well being. Is this you?

And the botched closed-door "executive" sessions resulting in over a hundred thousand dollars of useless expenses which also cost the City Attorney his job and convinced a sitting member of Council to decline a bid for re-election. Is this you?

The shameless grubbing for grants that transformed a one hundred fifty thousand dollar site-appropriate nature trail into a million dollar interstate lane without any public vetting. Is this you?

Incessant "scope creep" that some are now calling intentional? Is this you?

The zealous militarization of a yet-to-be-proven competent police force that already shows a propensity for selectively harsh enforcement and (ab)use of deadly force. Is this you?

Or the constant hiding behind anonymizing labels and titles when there is legitimate need to address controversy yet leaping to the forefront to take credit or grab a pay raise. Is this you?

When you elect a Council and Mayor who sit by and watch these deplorable actions taken in their name or worse yet applaud them then THIS IS YOU.

Make Independence Day Meaningful

It has been pointed out there is a snowball's chance in hell of getting an updated City Charter that creates anything even faintly resembling a democratic form of government for Dunwoody. The subtext, which we all know, is that we have what we have because the few and the powerful who pushed this City into existence wrote the original charter and installed the original bureaucracy. They still have the power, they like it that way and you can't change it.

But there is something we can do. We can put a stop to the hypocrisy, to the charade that is an insulting slap in the face of the citizens of Dunwoody and of every democratic form of government on this planet. We can update the charter to eliminate the election of the Mayor and Council. Not the actual positions, just the election. They have rendered the ballot box worthless so let's all act like grown ups and accept it.  We can stop this madness. We can do this because those in power will let us.

This may not be easy to figure out. While we may be smart we don't score very well on the Edison-Tesla Innovation Scale but then again pride has never prevented our purloining what we like from other cities so we should take a cue from Dorset, Minnesota.  But only a cue. While they did select their Mayor at random they used a most inferior technique--drawing a name from a hat. There is a far superior option--a raffle. Raffles maintain the underlying random nature of a draw but add that something special that makes it all things Dunwoody. It makes money for our bureaucrats to piss away.

For those who believe anything remotely resembling political office must somehow be subject to manipulation an open raffle allows any one person to buy as many tickets as they wish. Given enough money someone could all but buy a position. It may not be democratic but it sure as hell lines up with local politics round these parts.

While we're at it let's modify the term to a single year. It isn't as if there is much of a learning curve for positions that rubber-stamp whatever the City Manager puts before them and single year terms will serve to maximize the raffle revenue. It's not a federal grant, but in this Smart City it's what our masters call "win-win"--they win and...they win!

And we should hold the drawing at the end of the Fourth of July parade with immediate transfer of office between the seated Mayor and Council and the newly selected. This transfer of title symbolically represents the permanent transfer of real power from the voters to just another bureaucrat and signifies that government of the people, by the people and for the people has perished from this place.

After all, isn't that what our forefathers fought and died for?