Total Revenue
2009 $17,174,010, 2009 CAFR page 34
2010 $36,778,355, 2011 CAFR page 10
2011
$27,388,979, 2011 CAFR page 10
Remembering the $22 million budget we heard about in 2011,
we see an extra $5 million was actually received. Some of this is due to payments due and the gradual
development of fee type revenue generation like licenses, fines and death by
1000 permits. We also heard that PCID
contributes almost half our city revenue.
The CAFR reports federal and state grants as revenue after it
is received. In 2010 and 2011, the City
of Dunwoody received $620,443 in federal and state grants. There is more grant money in the
pipeline. For example, the $1 million
grant for the $2.3 million redo of Dunwoody Village Parkway will be paid after
the work is done. Many of these grants
have strings attached that require the City to do things most voters disagree
with, or believe are stupid and low priority.
The on-street bike lanes, concrete bike trails and public transit accommodation
are useless to subdivision dwellers who drive everywhere in their cars.
Agenda 21 implementation slipped in as the City formed. All the resources available to new cities
were provided by Agenda 21 funded and approved agencies and consulting firms.
The extra $1 trillion in federal spending is Obama’s printed
and borrowed additional stimulus money and in many cases had to be used to
extract matching funds of real money from taxpayers. For the Dunwoody Village Parkway, the federal
DOT bribe was $1 million grant to our $1.3 million match. For the Brook Run “trail”, the feds offered a
$100 thousand grant to our $320 thousand match.
When the City of Dunwoody was formed in 2009, the City
Council chose the path of “maximum free federal money” in exchange for taking
grief from its armed citizens for spending money on stupid things like “livability”
and “complete streets” requiring bike lanes, bike trails and promotion of
public transit. The early grants were
for plans, designs and consultants to ensure that these plans and designs were
Agenda 21 compliant. If you look at
Dunwoody’s Master Plans and then look at all other cities Master Plans, they
are the same. This “cookie cutter”
approach was developed by ICLEI, the local UN Agenda 21 implementer.
Every time the City Council votes to move forward on these
plans, they reignite the outrage in this unruly mob. All City Council members agree with the
voters’ view of real priorities, i.e. turn lanes on main arteries and
intersection improvements to relieve car traffic congestion. But, alas, there was no grant money offered
for things that made sense and they also signed up for this kind of development Several citizens have challenged City Council
members to stop applying for these squander-grants and even give the money
back….and they don’t get much of an answer.
If you break ranks, there are financial and political consequences Terry
Nall called Blacklisting.
The problem with signing up to “maximum free federal money”
sustainability bronze award status is its unstable foundation. Sustainable, Smart Growth cities with
“complete streets” presupposes that CO2 is a pollutant and man-made global
warming is real. Neither are true.
We don’t have to give up our cars to save the polar bears. It’s all nonsense made up by United Nations
funded junk science pin heads. The Agenda 21 implementation we are seeing is
thinly wrapped in a romantic “new urban planning” fairy tale. The fact is, trillions of printed and
borrowed federal dollars are funding this fantasy and taxpayers will suffer
crippling inflation when the dollar crashes from all of this overspending. Spending money on nonessentials breeds
resentment in voters who recognize things like bike lanes as
mal-investments. There are political
consequences for doing stupid things.
In the western states, Agenda 21 implementation includes the
EPA and Interior Department shutting off water to rural towns and farms, impounding
Wisconsin cheese to bankrupt dairy farmers and setting up tyrannical Regional
Governance in California’s largest cities to confiscate private property and
bankrupt the state with $ trillions in debt for public transit pipe dreams like
our own “Concept 3” for MARTA expansion.
In Georgia, the Agriculture Department is trying to close
100 free range chicken farms with unnecessary regulations. Obama’s Rural initiative is being implemented
by Georgia’s “Regional Governance”. It
supports EPAs “no dust” provision and the Department of Labor’s “no farm kids
working” provisions. I know these
Georgia farmers and they are all getting their pitchforks sharpened. Rural
Georgia needs to protect its water supplies from EPA seizure.
Back to Dunwoody Priorities, street widths in DeKalb and
Fulton Counties were never planned to be widened beyond their 2 lane
capacities. Some home set-backs on Mt.
Vernon are deep enough to have allowed this, but not all homes have this extra
depth to their front yards. Newer
developments have been built even closer to the roads. Current plans don’t include main road
widening for cars, indicating that, for now, Dunwoody is declaring itself to be
“not a major cut through city”, but it is a “ minor cut through city” and will
continue to be if the Perimeter area PCID expands.
When Alpharetta was built, they did a better job of widening
their main roads. John’s Creek’s
McGinnis Ferry Road was finally widened.
Roswell and Sandy Springs have some tight roads and Cherokee County has
time to purchase road easement for future expansion.
I think most Dunwoody residents believe Mt. Vernon Road and
Chamblee Dunwoody Road need to be expanded with turn lanes & intersection
improvements, but there are no grant funds for real needs.
My time with the Transportation Leadership Coalition
(Traffic Truth.net) taught me that taxpayer funded buses are absolutely
unnecessary. Bus service is cheaper and more reliable if it’s run by a private
company. That should mean that MARTA
could drop its bus service and we could close GRTA and private bus service
companies would take over.
I also learned that
DOT grants included retail development along rail and trolley lines, despite
the fact that retail is less than 80% occupied.
The T-SPLOST offered almost $1 billion in federal grants in exchange for
our $8.6 billion in real money.
Government has become accustomed to “slush funds”. These loopholes need to be closed. The mal-investment created by governments and
crony developers needs to be curtailed.
And finally I learned that all the cities who invested $
billions on public transit have not increased ridership much beyond 5 % over
the past 10 years and their roads are still congested. We are a low density metro area and will fight
for the freedom to remain so.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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