Category Archives: Alpharetta

John Monson for Alpharetta City Council? No Thanks.

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I got a robocall for Alpharetta City Council candidate John Monson today and it made me laugh out loud. The guy used to be on city council and was the driving force behind putting an ultra dense mixed use development in my children’s school district.

The Windward Mill project will add 12,000 car trips to one of the most congested intersections in Alpharetta and my neighbors in Windward packed the city council chambers with people opposed to the project. We even submitted a petition with more than 500 signatures of people opposed to the project.

Despite all of this, during the city council meeting John Monson personally handed out flyers supporting the developer. In more than a decade of zoning involvement I have never seen an elected official shill for a developer so shamelessly.

John Monson for Alpharetta City Council? No Thanks.

It’s OK to lie to the public for the common good?

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Years ago the state of Georgia built GA Hwy 400 with bonds and installed a toll booth to pay off the debt obligations. The state also promised taxpayers that when the bonds were paid off the toll booth would be removed. SUCKERS!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is now reporting that we can have our toll money back when we pry it out of SRTA’s cold, dead hands. Not only that, but now that the road debt is paid off the State Road and Tollway Authority wants to double the toll to a dollar! So if you believed the state back when they said they would remove the toll, you might want to put a little ice on that.

But don’t worry, it will all be fine. Roswell Mayor Jere Wood says that it’s all right for the state to lie to his constituents because,”the tollway authority has told local officials that the additional tolls would only be used to pay for more improvements along Ga. 400.” You should go to ajc.com and read the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/dzSewO

So the state lied to the public… but we can believe them now when they tell us how the money will be used? Are you kidding me? I may not be too bright but once someone has lied to me I don’t generally believe them the next time. And that goes double for a government bureaucrat.

Which brings us to the reason this issue is so important. The toll on GA 400 isn’t going to kill anyone. But the lie that was told to the people of Georgia is just another nail in the coffin of the public’s trust. I am tired of being lied to and I’m not alone.

The state is now proposing another 1% sales tax on the residents of Georgia. The state says that it will go for local projects. The state says that it won’t go for MARTA. The state says that we will get another chance to decide if we want to extend the extra sales tax. 

Should we believe them? No. We can’t believe them because experience tells us that once the state gets our money they will do with it what they damn well please.

Public transportation: solution or problem?

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The Atlanta Regional Commission and cities in North Fulton County are currently collaborating on a “comprehensive transportation plan” to solve the persistent traffic issues in this part of the world. This is a great idea and I hope that the result of this collaboration will actually be productive but the closer I follow this process the less optimistic I become.

The main reason for my budding pessimism is that it is now clear many business and political leaders are convinced that public transportation will solve this area’s traffic problem. If the people participating in this process don’t understand that public transportation produces inefficient delivery systems then they will never be able to produce a transportation plan which will serve my families and my neighbors well.

I would like to point out an article that was published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2009. The article states that Georgia State University’s  Economic Forecasting Center now predicts that Atlanta’s MARTA public transportation system will suffer losses of more than 1.4 billion dollars over the next decade (emphasis mine). Here is the link so you can read the whole thing:

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/08/10/daily57.html

Ladies and gentlemen 1.4 billion dollars is alot of money, even in today’s world of trillion dollar deficits.  And there is no reason to believe that MARTA’s losses will stop at that point. MARTA is already drain on Georgia’s taxpayers and if we expand a failing system it will be even more expensive.

Right now our state is already facing enormous budget deficits. School systems are facing brutal choices because of the current economy. Do taxpayers really want to expand our financial commitment to a transportation system that has already demonstrated an inability to responsibly serve our needs?

North Fulton residents, business leaders and politicians must now answer this question: Are we going to be responsible for our own transportation solutions or are we going to risk our future on an insolvent bureaucracy that will burden us forever. I hope we choose wisely because the future is at stake.