City Council Problems

When the City Council was elected, most ran on their track record as “community activists”. They carried that roll into the City Council making it almost unnecessary for special interest groups to lobby for giveaways. They were well familiar with these groups and active in their promotion and fund raising.

The City Council hired consultants to develop plans. The consultants were familiar with current liberal government fads, goals, tactics and buzz-words. They were also well schooled on UN Agenda 21 implementation of transit villages, land use plans and destroying the private economy. That aside, on their face these plans make no economic sense. These plans included loads of expensive improvements in privately owned strip malls and on non-profit occupied city properties. All of these plans are far too costly to implement. The Council presented the consultant’s expensive plans to the voters. The voters didn’t object to the strip mall plan, because they weren’t paying for it. The citizens did soundly reject the Park Plan and they are in the process of rejecting the Transportation Plan. It would have been smarter to renovate the streets and intersections in front of these strip malls within the operating budget; then give Georgetown a plan to bring their building facades into compliance with our current Williamsburg architectural standards.

It showed that, as a group, the City Council was incapable of discerning what was expected, appropriate, prudent, affordable, wise and possible. Instead, they got caught up in the federal government giveaway scheme to implement UN Agenda 21. They did not establish priorities based on utilization (everybody drives on roads, relatively few play baseball). They did not consider the future replacement cost of roads and sewers. They did not consider the financial entanglements associated with housing 501c3 entities on city land. They assumed responsibility for non-city organizations and spent city funds to develop plans for strip malls and non-profit entities. They failed to realize that although we like these non-profit groups, we did not create the City to bail them out. These non-profits entered these agreements with DeKalb County, knowing the properties would be minimally maintained. The Council was naïve to rush to their rescue without thinking it through. Now, non-profit supporters are rallying to support the Bond Issue. Their voices are loud, but their numbers are few.

Budget Cuts – The New Normal
We all grew up in cities with municipal recreation resources. When recessions and depressions hit, local governments cut budgets to live within their current revenue. It’s happening now. Cash-strapped cities are trying to close recreational facilities and are facing petitions from small user groups to fix them up and keep paying for them. In the meantime, private businesses have flourished offering recreational venues for a reasonable fee. Privatization of recreation is here to stay. Cities must cut spending and are targeting these facilities because they are low use, low priority items. I don’t expect to see cities and counties expanding their footprint beyond their core responsibilities. We’ve seen cities under fire for sponsoring the Arts, when the display or performance was viewed as offensive. Cities with these non-core entanglements should add moral support, promotion and endorsement to the fundraising campaigns of these non-profits; they should strive to become totally independent.

Zoning Problems
We have approximately 8000 owners and 4000 renters in Dunwoody. We have 10 Apartment Complexes. The City bought the 16 acre PVC Farm for $5 million (a little high at $312,500 per acre). They did it to keep a developer from buying it and building an eleventh apartment complex. The property was zoned for apartments and the seller had the legal right to sell it “as zoned”. Now we have another small park and we really don’t know what to do with it. The best we can do is remove the PVC pipes and turn it into another small neighborhood park.

Bad Economy
Most of my emails tell me to buy gold and can goods, sell all my stock immediately and get out of U.S. dollar denominated assets. The Obama administration has, so far, doubled government spending and is printing money to keep the government cash infusion bubble going. If investors pull out of the U.S., we will have another crash. If spending cuts are actually ever made, federal payments to states, counties and cities would likely be the first to go. We need to be cautious and avoid assuming any debt at this time, until this is resolved.

Home and Land values are taking another hit. The money printing and continued double-spending by the Federal government is creating the current inflation, which will worsen. We will have another downturn. If the Federal government runs out of lenders, the Fed will buy the Bonds. When local and international investors pull out, the dollar will crash. The Fed will monetize the debt and hyper-inflation will begin. . If the dollar becomes worthless and crashes, hyper-inflation and plummeting real estate values will occur.

In the late 1970s to early 1980s, a lot less money printing caused double digit inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Stocks crashed, Bonds became worthless and the mortgage interest rate was 13%. A replay of the 1970s is our best-case scenario. Assuming that our economy will simply remain weak but stable is not likely.
The fundamentals have changed since the 1970s. Our debt monetization caused the high inflation of the 1970s. In 1982, the Federal Debt was $1 trillion, our economy was very strong and able to pull out of the recession. Now, our debt is $14.3 trillion and unfunded liabilities are $80 trillion. Our entire country is worth $100 trillion in private hands. The electronics manufacturing renaissance that pulled us out of the 1980s has been given to China.

A Sinister Plan
The federal government is broke. Anybody who thinks they can continue to funnel money to local governments is crazy. Why would Ray LaHood try to bribe us with billions of dollars in federal funding to get us to pay $100 billion for a public transit bailout if it were not to begin to build the infrastructure outlined by U.N Agenda 21 ? This is a sinister plan to establish a global government, revoke property rights and reduce the planet’s population by 80%. Those left will live as slaves in transit villages of small stacked apartments close to rail lines. The global government, environmental, population control crazies hand picked Obama to implement this plan. Nobody on the Council even knew this. Even so, the absurdity of taking on a $130 million debt for non-essential parks didn’t occur to most of them either. Like the terrorists, the UN Agenda 21 crowd uses civilians as shields. They add parks, ball fields, green space and lots of expensive construction, just for a little more government borrowing.

Tea Party Thoughts
The Tea Party is opposed to government spending more than it collects and spending large chunks of tax revenue on items that are not core government responsibilities. Obviously, all those who benefit from government’s sloppy thinking would disagree. Ordinary citizens who believe government should be more careful spending tax dollars and live within its means would agree.

Economic Impact
In the long term, our plan saves the economy. Demand drives our private economy. As the Fed’s money printing makes the dollar worth less, prices rise and demand falls. Government stimulus just creates bubbles that eventually break and turn into recessions. The economy will really not recover until all of the bubbles break. Our best hope is to reduce government spending, freeze the “Debt Ceiling” and not increase taxes. It will result in a contraction of public employee headcount, but government can’t afford them anyway and what most of them are doing is actually harmful. The debt ceiling freeze is irrelevant to the economy, because the private economy is only driven by demand, Be prepared for the stock market to take a hit, because government spending is figured in to stock market prices Continued government spending is critical to those in the government who want to implement UN Agenda 21. After subtracting the government stimulus and adding in the government hiring freeze and layoffs, the market will look for private market demand and will factor in the fact that the debt ceiling freeze will work. Then, as private demand replaces government demand, the market will take off to celebrate the wicked witch is dead. The day traders will go to the starting gate. The rest of us will see our 401k accounts go down and then go back up.