Voters should take advantage of this delay to become
“informed voters”. It would be novel to
have “informed voters” but these days, it’s becoming critical.
Taxpayers in the new city should save a copy of this bill
pdf, read it and pay close attention to the promise of additional fees and
permits.
After this Bill passes, what happens immediately is setting
the election date for a Mayor and City Council Reps. It is important to have candidates who
realize the cost trap of having consultants make all the decisions. A small group of politicos have worked to get
everything to this point and they will surely run for office. They may have already decided to go the
cookie-cutter route, so challengers should have lots of issues to run on. This
can be a very expensive proposition.
The expensive consultants who will want to do all of this
work for your new city council will install “cookie cutter” Master Plans
including over-the-top Land Use and Zoning along with Death by 1000 Permits and
fees you were never charged before. In addition, there will be powers to the
city to borrow money and issue Bonds without voter approval for all sorts of
“economic development” projects that subsidize developers and give tax breaks
to companies to move to Lakeside.
Before this occurs, I recommend that concerned citizens
form a group and put up a website to do the following:
1) Post
a copy of the latest version of SB 270.
All voters should read this and begin to ask questions
2) Post
a copy of the feasibility study that includes projected revenue and expenses.
Look at page 20 of the Lakeside feasibility study for estimated
expenditures. I recommend you take $1 million
from Community Development, Police and Parks and add it to Public Works and
Sewer replacement. The total should exceed $6 million for Police. Don’t add bike lanes or trails for at least 5
years.
3) Post
a copy of generic road and storm sewer repair costs and any estimates of how
many centerline miles of road and how many miles of storm sewers exist in
Lakeside.
4) Post
a copy of the total park acreage in Lakeside vs the total square miles (1 sq.
mile = 640 acres.) The consultants will push for 10%, but you may need road
maintenance more.
5) Take
a poll asking voters to read SB 270 and the feasibility study and other
information on your website and rank priorities from their point of view. The poll should run for a few months and
should include the most expensive items that are in the greatest need of
repair. These include: storm sewer
maintenance and replacement, road milling and resurfacing. At least half the
city budget should be secured for roads and sewers.
6) Look
at the websites for Dunwoody, Brookhaven and Sandy Springs to determine what
fees and inspections are required and what land use restrictions are
imposed. Look out for on street bike
lanes, and 10% land requirements for parks.
Unless these expensive items are tabled, you won’t get your roads and
sewers fixed.
7) Try
to get more park land, bike lanes and other fluff items postponed until after
you get the roads and sewers fixed.
Don’t put up with Delphi technique public input that guides participants
to pre-determined conclusions.
8) Do
all of this now. Get ahead of the
politicos and the consulting firms. That
will save you millions on studies, excessive design costs and tax dollar waste.
9) Suggest
that the city simply copy the cookie cutter ordinances from another city and
save a million dollars in consulting fees, remove the abusive sections
themselves and post it as a draft on the city website.
You can find the Bill at www.legis.ga.gov Click Legislation, Click Advanced Search, Enter Bill Sponsor’s Name, Enter Bill Type =
Senate Bill, Enter bill number (270). Get
summary page and scroll down to Current Version http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/display/20132014/SB/270
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea
Party Leader
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