Does DHA Represent Homeowners

There are 10,000 homeowners in Dunwoody and 1000 DHA members including 35 DHA voting board members and it has a website.  It includes elected officials and emeritus members.   

Membership is individual.  The DHA website allows Dunwoody Homeowners the opportunity to join and support DHA activities for $40 per year.  Many individuals do join to attend meetings and volunteer to work at city events including the Dunwoody July 4^th Parade and “Light up Dunwoody”. 

The majority of DHA members tend to support the city establishment including City Council initiatives, Chamber of Commerce activities and city non-profits like Preservation Trust.  Most appointed city board positions are filled by DHA members. They are better prepared to do these jobs, because DHA has continued to review most of the zoning applications scheduled for presentation to city boards

The danger of having DHA serve as the city board training camp is that they can develop ‘group-think’ and appears to have an ‘establishment’ bias.  Most are active in many other city activities and they tend to be Pro-City.  They do not challenge city decisions that are controversial.  They leave that to the actual homeowners who are affected.

Dunwoody voters have not supported all of the changes made in Dunwoody since 2008 including the Park Bond vote in 2011 and the T-SPLOST vote in 2012.  Save Dunwoody arose to oppose high costs of some “low priority” projects and the Charter rewrite that allows the City Council to do whatever they want without voter input.

The larger problem is that Dunwoody adopted “canned” ordinances written to implement UN Agenda 21. That’s how we got on-street bike lanes, multi-use paths. high density zoning and land use plans and “economic development”.  The current split lot and Manget Way lawsuits are a direct result of city staff decisions.  City staff is fully trained in Agenda 21 implementation.  We also continue to be pressured to expand our residential intersections to invite “cut through” access to commuters looking for shortcuts from I-285 to GA-400.  The intersection plans are done by expensive Agenda 21 compliant consulting firms.

They supported the current ordinances and codes. The Dunwoody “Establishment” includes all elected officials, the DHA, the Chamber of Commerce and their friends.  They have no mechanisms in place to “represent” homeowners, who are affected by city decisions.  Homeowners continue to be “on their own”.

The other problem is that community activists are usually less focused on tight priorities for limited city resources and more focused on adding things for the city to spend money on.  The most expensive items the city is required to upgrade and maintain are roads, intersections and storm sewers. 

We should have been spending $4 million a year on road maintenance, but we’ve only spend $2 million a year until recently.  The current City Council is attempting to move funds to roads to catch up.  We need contractors to do a better job at lower cost

The DHA did good job representing homeowners to the DeKalb zoning board.  But when the city formed in 2009, they didn’t question controversial city plans. They became supporters of all city plans.  The DHA could do more to find out what the other 90% of homeowners think by posting polls on their website that address current priorities. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader