Dunwoody GA Tea Party Update II

The Dunwoody GA Tea Party started in June 2011. We formed to restore common sense and fiscal restraint to city government plans and priorities. We recruited and supported genuinely conservative candidates and campaigned against the Park Bonds. Two of our candidates were elected and we hope their presence will result in giving balance to the city council. We are still concerned about the city’s $400 million Master Plans and will continue to encourage the council to revise its priorities and its Master Plans. We do not expect our economy to improve any time soon.

Most of us have been involved in supporting our candidates, holding “meet the candidate” meetings in homes and subdivision pools and clubhouses and attending the Park Bonds meetings. We actively opposed the Parks Bonds and Redevelopment Referendum. We wrote letters to the editor and put out yard signs. We confirmed that well over half of you agreed with us. We campaigned as a team and found that to be very effective.

We formed to give voice to the average Dunwoody voter. I continued to post articles on NTL Conservative Blog, the Dunwoody GA Tea Party Blog and encourage you to keep track of our activities by reading this blog. You can call or email me to be added to our list or if you have questions.

I attended a meeting of over 100 Georgia Tea Party Leaders in September 2011. The focus was about reversing the hapless city and county implementation of UN Agenda 21. Much of the extra $1 trillion Obama is spending is for grants to cities and counties to adopt UN Agenda 21 compliant Master Plans. These are designed to bankrupt us at the local level and build transit villages needed for the UN global governance take-over they are planning. Obama’s future in U.S. politics is toast, so he is courting the UN for a politburo job in the USSA. All Tea Parties are involved in replacing elected officials based on their past votes, beginning with the 78% in the Georgia Legislature who voted yes to authorize Regional Commissions to take over transportation and put the TSPLOST on the ballot. We want that law repealed and the Commissions abolished.

We will oppose the ARC Transportation T-SPLOST, the 1 cent sales tax increase for the Atlanta Regional Transportation Plan (MARTA Bail-out) and overpriced road refurbishment in July 2012. ARC’s very existence is a violation of city and county sovereignty. Counties cannot opt out or escape the results of the total votes of the 10 county region. We want the HOT lanes removed and returned to general use. We will then move on to focusing on the Primary in August 2012 and the General Election in November 2012.

We are Constitutional Conservatives. We formed to restore government to be compliant with the Constitution and 10th Amendment as written. We will not support Democrats, because they tend to vote with their party and that party is dedicated to destroying our free market economy.. We do not support all Republicans and are in fact recruiting candidates where needed to replace incumbent Republicans who are not Constitutional Conservatives. We evaluate national, state, county and city candidates based on their votes when they are incumbents. We vet new candidates carefully and endorse those we are convinced will support our government reform positions.

Our members, supporters and friends share our fiscal conservative convictions and understand how they translate to all levels of government. They chose to do different things. Some are city government watchers. Others concentrate on state government activities. Others limit their work to the reforms needed in the federal government. Some work on reform at all levels. Some join groups taking buses to rallies; most do not. Some are current or retired government employees working to reform government policies and benefits. Many couples are members Our supporters and friends include Dunwoody residents who support many of our positions and points of view, but are not active members. They vote for our candidates, agree to plant our yard signs in their yards and write occasional letters to the editor. Some make donations to pay for yard signs and ads in the Crier. Some will become more active members later as they are motivated by issues. Some may also join other similar causes. We are grateful for them all.

City Priorities

We want the City of Dunwoody to operate like a business with a clear sense of what’s city government responsibility and what isn’t. We want the city to avoid the pitfalls that can cause city governments to go bankrupt. We don’t like Bonds; we prefer that annual surpluses be used eliminate debt and then become reserve funds.
We want the city to live within its means and concentrate on its core responsibilities based on utilization. We define core responsibilities with 100% utilization as roads, intersection and storm sewer maintenance and refurbishment and clearing roads after severe storms. Water and sewers are core and are provided by our DeKalb water utility and DeKalb trash collection Zoning and building codes are core and they require balance and common sense. We don’t like government infringement of private property rights.

Secondary responsibilities include municipal court and police. Ambulance service and fire protection are provided by the county, These are needed to the extent that crime, fires, accidents and life threatening illness occur. We believe the city needs venues for city-wide activities, but think all that is really needed is a large park or two.

Low use park venues and Economic Development are the lowest priority items as are other activities such as mottos, branding, tourism and the advertizing portion of the hotel tax. We understand that PCID likes these things, but they have little support from homeowners. We don’t think the city should spend tax dollars on philanthropic activities. The relationship between the city and the 501c3 trusts like Dunwoody Preservation Trust, Senior Baseball League, the Nature center and Stage Door Players should be resolved to make these groups autonomous.

We will oppose most commercial redevelopment TADs. We favor single family residential development. We will oppose implementation of current city Master Plans. We can’t afford and don’t really need multi-modal, transit connected development. Commercial property sellers should be able to find their own buyers and patrons of the non-profits should support their organizations. They should comply with our building codes and zoning requirement, but a Master Plan that dictates everything is overreach and not how private property works in the real world. Our original “vision” of Williamsburg style shopping centers is the plan we should follow.

We support the private subdivision swim and tennis clubs model. These are supported by private membership fees. We support the churches that provide athletic fields, playgrounds, community meeting rooms and swimming pools.

All transit should be private. We oppose government subsidies of any kind. We enjoy the convenience of having PCID close by. We do think that large collections of apartments and condos need their own schools located inside PCID to allow children to walk and bike to school in a location close to their home.

All property should be private. Our success as a nation was due to our drive to make the land productive. We established farms and ranches to grow and raise our own food. We drilled wells, mined coal, harvested trees and manufactured goods. We oppose government owned wildlife preserves, wetlands and timberland. We oppose national parks and want the states to take them over and sell them to U.S. citizens. We object to the direction government is taking to obstruct our ability to make all our land productive.

Economic Assumptions

We don’t believe our economy will improve until the federal government lowers its current annual spending by more than $1 trillion and holds spending to match revenue for the next several years. We believe most federal agencies are impediments to the recovery of our free market economy and need to be closed.

We believe that our economic recovery requires the release of our productive capacity, now being held hostage by government. We need forests returned to timber harvesting, farms and food producers released from the EPA and FDA closures. We need to be able to water crops and build reservoirs. We need to keep hydroelectric dams, nuclear and coal electrical power generation. We need to drill for oil and natural gas everywhere. We need to roll back EPA regulations on air and water. We need to remove most species from the Endangered Species list. We want to close most federal departments and give those activities to the states. We need to defund all carbon capture related government activities.

10th Amendment

We are “Free Enterprisers”. We don’t want government to erode our freedoms or property rights. We want the federal government to shrink to comply with the Constitution and 10th Amendment as written. We want government out of everything the free market can and should handle. We don’t want government to act like a philanthropic organization; we want it to act like a utility company. We want the federal and state governments to be half their current size. They need to sell their land and not buy any more. They need to reduce spending on education, health care and regulatory overreach. They have no business owning wildlife preserves or state or national parks.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader, ntl@mindspring.com, 770-394-1284