Dunwoody GA Tea Party Update I

Thanks to Voters

Congratulations again to Mayor-elect Mike Davis and City Councilor-elect Terry Nall. We thank our members and friends for supporting them. We also thank everyone for voting NO on the Park Bonds. Taking on a 6:1 debt to income ratio isn’t a good idea and Bonds are never a good idea..

The First 6 Months

When we started in June 2011, we had a few simple goals. The first was to give voice to the majority of Dunwoody voters on pending city issues. It was clear that the City Council was proposing plans that were too expensive and were starting with the wrong priorities. So, we marched in the July 4th parade and about half the crowd was with us. That was an amazing response.

The next goal was to recruit, vet and support new City Council candidates to replace the current Council. I was one of many who approached Mike Davis to run and we both knew Rick Callihan might run. Terry Nall and Kerry de Valette were gifts. They determined on their own to run for the same reasons we, as a Tea Party, were active in recruiting candidates. Our meetings with Terry and Kerry told us that these were capable, talented, honest citizens who did have an accurate reading on the pulse of Dunwoody voters. They were also very smart and very conservative. We endorsed Mike Davis, Kerry de Valette, Terry Nall and Rick Callihan as Tea Party candidates. We functioned as a team. Our candidates were invited to attend most of each other’s events. Our Tea Partiers worked on candidates campaigns as well as our Vote No Park Bonds issue. Everybody put out each other’s signs. It worked the way effective campaigns should work.

When the Park Bonds went on the ballot, we opposed them as low priority and too expensive. We didn’t want the city to be saddled with a $128 million debt in the middle of the 2nd Great Depression. We bought Vote No Parks Bonds yard signs, ran ads in the Dunwoody Crier and opened a checking account to handle donations. We were joined by Bob Lundsten (Farmer Bob) and many others who stood up on their own to defeat this debacle.

The “Parks Yes” group campaigned hard to get the Park Bonds passed and countless Park Bonds meetings were held. The Nature Center, Senior Baseball League and Dunwoody Preservation Trust wanted the Park Bonds to pass, so they could have the city refurbish the city buildings and grounds they occupy. PCID wanted the city to pay for its “green space’ for its transit village and they will be lobbying for future TAD slush funds.

Results

Issues build constituencies, so the Tea Party went from a half dozen couples to over 100 individuals on our Dunwoody GA Tea Party members and friends list. We were successful in defeating the Parks Bonds and two of our candidates, Mike Davis and Terry Nall were elected to the City Council. We are encouraged by these results.
We regret that we failed to stop the Redevelopment Referendum that silently slid on the ballot… and so will you.

The Next 6 Months

We will oppose the $6.14 billion TSPLOST scheduled for a vote in July 2012 by the Atlanta Regional Commission, an appointed, unaccountable, unconstitutional layer of “government” whose very existence is a violation of city and county sovereignty. Half of the $6.14 billion goes to public transit.

MARTA is insolvent but wants new trains and buses and wants to expand. The other half goes to double expensive, multi-modal road re-dos. They want the 8 surrounding, non-MARTA counties to pay for it. We oppose the current annual $630 million tax subsidy MARTA receives. MARTA earns $120 million a year in fairs and lease payments, but spends $750 million a year. Doubling that would just double the subsidy.
We think all transit should be private and we believe a loud NO vote on the TSPLOST is needed to get MARTA to address its insolvency. We want the law that authorized the Georgia Regional Commissions to be repealed.

We will be joined by all Tea Party groups in the 10 county “Region”. This group includes DeKalb and Fulton (already MARTA counties) plus Cobb, Cherokee, Douglas, Fayette, Clayton, Henry, Rockdale and Gwinnett.

The “establishment” including Nathan Deal, the AJC, and the ARC, MARTA and GDOT bureaucracies have been involved in promoting this boondoggle over the past few months. The federal government will kick in a $1 billion bribe to try to get us to charge ourselves $5 billion to squander on this scam. The projects are all overpriced and half are unnecessary; they will certainly not improve our gridlock problems.

The failure of the HOT lanes will fuel opposition to the TSPLOST. The defeat of the TSPLOST should prompt the state legislature to dissolve the regional scam. Cities and counties should return to being responsible for their own roads.

November 2012 Elections
Immediately after July 2012, we will go to work on the November 2012 elections with a goal to send Obama back home (wherever that is). All Tea Parties in Georgia will drill down on state and local elections like we did in the Dunwoody City Council election. Those who voted for the creation of Regional Commissions in Georgia are toast.

Government Reform Needed

We are committed to seeing to it that the necessary reforms are made to return to a free market economy. We believe, to do this requires that we return to the Constitution as it was written and get government out of all activities that should be handled by the private sector. We see the federal government going in the other direction at a gallop and we want to stop it.

Tea Partiers have been tracking UN Agenda 21 implementation since before 2006. We see this implementation in Obama’s push for public transit and transit villages and in the plans written for city councils by ICLEI trained consultants. We saw the plans on the Dunwoody and other city websites and we saw creation of “Regions” and their emphasis on public transit. We know that sustainability, smart growth, redevelopment, community development, and master plans are part of the UN Agenda 21 vocabulary. We’ve witnessed eminent domain and federal agency abuses for several years. We’ve seen the proof that global warming is a hoax that is still being aggressively implemented by our federal government. We are committed to stop and reverse the destruction of our currency, our free market economy and our city, county and state sovereignty.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody Ga Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com NTL Conservative Blog