Category Archives: zoning

“High-density Housing Reflects Dense Government Thinking”

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I see that Aussies are struggling with the same phenomenom we face here in Alpharetta:

Citizens in Australia’s major cities  are becoming increasingly unhappy about what they perceive as the escalating  deterioration in their quality of life – traffic congestion, overloaded public  transport, unaffordable housing for young people, increases in the costs of  basic services and overcrowding. There is little doubt that recent election  results and unfavourable opinion polls are partly an expression of this  dissatisfaction.

‘Save Our Suburbs’ believe that  these adverse trends are the result of high-density policies that have been  imposed onto communities by state governments. Due to the misleading  misinformation that has accompanied these policies, the public may not fully  realise the connection between these policies on the one hand and deteriorating  standard of living on the other. It is only when one sweeps the propaganda veil  aside that one realises how shallow, trivial and sometimes downright deceptive  the spin has been.

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We reiterate that we have no issue  with those of us that prefer living in a high-density area or with the free  market construction of buildings to fulfill that limited demand. What we object  to, is having draconian high density policies based on demonstrably faulty  premises forced upon the 83 per cent of people that Australian research shows  prefer to live in a free-standing home.

This is especially so when the  result is maddening traffic congestion, more greenhouse gases, a creaking and  overloaded infrastructure, the young and disadvantaged unable to afford their  own home and poorer health outcomes.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

And isn’t it fascinating that the same urban planning dictates we see in Georgia are being forced on suburban communities half a world away? I wonder how that could happen.

You can read the whole thing on newgeography.com here.

 

Georgia Tea Party condemns racist flyer in Alpharetta

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The inflammatory flyer I found in my mailbox yesterday made the 11 o’clock news last night and there is still no confirmation that the material was distributed by anyone affiliated with the Tea Party movement or even those people opposed to the local zoning issue. As mentioned in my previous post, I smell a rat…, I find it far more likely that this material is part of a smear campaign directed at both of those groups.

The WXIA news report is here. Below is the most relevant section:

The flyer ostensibly tries to mobilize opposition to Amana Academy — a Fulton County charter school that opened in 2005. Amana offers students in kindergarten through eighth grade language classes in Arabic.

The State Coordinator of the Georgia Tea Party Patriots says the group is not officially associated or recognized by the state organization.

“We are very suspect of this flyer. No one has heard of this group and no contact information is listed,” Tea Party Spokesperson Julianne Thompson wrote in a prepared statement. “We believe it is either a group of local extremists afraid to use their own names… or it is an attempt at character assassination.”

“Either way, we strongly condemn this type of flyer, its disgusting language and intention. This group is in no way permitted to use the name of the Tea Party Patriots.”

The state Tea Party says they are focused on, “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.”

As I said in my previous post, no one with half a brain would believe the distribution of such vile material in our neighborhood could possibly help their cause. This is evidenced by the fact our residents were so disgusted  that they actually called the local TV station to report such an incident.

I hope that Alpharetta’s local authorities are able to use security camera footage from homes in this area to identify the actual perpetrators of this ridiculous stunt. If the flyer was created by someone crazy enough to believe it would help their cause the person is dangerously detached from reality and if it was done by someone so filled with rage that they would go to this extreme to smear other people as racists then they are dangerous and pathetic. Either way they need to be off the street.

I smell a rat…

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This afternoon I checked the mail and found a flyer under my mailbox that was offensive… and I smelled a rat. The flyer used repulsive and inflammatory language to describe people who are currently trying to rezone land in our neighborhood for the Amana Academy charter school.

But there is something fishy about that flyer. It doesn’t pass the sniff test. It smells like a rat.

The note is purportedly from a group identified as the “Milton County Tea Party Patriots Citizens Council”. Why would a group name themselves after a county that doesn’t exist? They wouldn’t. There is no such group.

According to Google there is not one single mention of such a group anywhere on the web and there is no such group identified on the Teapartypatriots.org website. I pay pretty close attention the political groups and figures around Alpharetta and not once has anybody ever mentioned the existence of such a group.

So what would be the purpose of distributing an inflammatory flyer and attributing it to a group that doesn’t exist? Could it be an attempt to get the attention of all the Federal Department of Justice investigators who have swarmed into Alpharetta looking for signs of prejudice after last year’s mosque case?

Perhaps. It would certainly make sense. Obama’s minions have been swarming around Alpharetta like killer bees looking for any evidence they can find to prove how racist these North Fulton conservatives are. What better way to get their attention than to distribute an offensive flyer and attribute it to the Tea Party?

I do know some people that oppose having the Amana Academy dropped on their doorstep. Some of those people also opposed the Windward Mill project, The Metlife project and the subsidized senior housing project. But none of the people I have spoken to would ever be associated with the stuff circulated in our neighborhood today. In fact the people that object to the school zoning on reasonable, legal grounds had previously expressed fear that something like this would be used to discredit them because it only serves to offend people in our community.

So that leads me to two possible conclusions.

The first possibility is that there really is a lone nutjob out there stupid enough to think name calling and making up groups would help stop the school zoning. That rules out anyone around here that has voiced opposition to the school because they know this will hurt their cause. It also rules out anyone around here smart enough to tie their own shoes because you would have to be an absolute moron to think such a flyer would help your cause in Windward. But it is possible that such a person does exist so I can’t rule it out.

On the other hand the flyer could have been distributed by a person or group of people that thought distributing such material and falsely attributing it to a Tea Party organization would achieve some other goal. Perhaps smearing legitimate zoning opponents, drawing media attention, influencing lawsuits or attracting the Justice Department.

I don’t know and probably never will know who distributed the flyer in my mailbox today. It could have been one dumb person or a conniving opportunist with a hidden agenda. But based on personal experience I’d say the conniving opportunists in Alpharetta outnumber the people dumb enough to pull a stunt like that by about 1404 to 1.

I smell a rat.

P. S. I hope that if anyone knows the real source of the flyer send me a note.

Were Atlanta schools cheating to compete with the Northern Suburbs?

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Last week while I was on my electronic rehabilitation program there was an interesting article in the AJC about the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal. The headline of the article was “Scandal could hamper city’s business growth” and you can read the whole thing here.

The entire school cheating scandal is a disappointing chapter in Atlanta’s history but one of the most intriguing components of the story is the entanglement of the Atlanta business community in the sordid affair. What I found unique about this particular article is that it hints the City of Atlanta is losing businesses to the cities in North Fulton County because of our superior schools:

The Atlanta Public Schools scandal will deeply hamper the city’s efforts to attract new businesses and jobs, perhaps for years, business and company site selection experts say.

Quality of the local school system is a top factor in company location decisions, especially among large corporations with employee bases that are substantially made up of families.

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Atlanta in particular has struggled over the past few years as companies have located outside the city limits, especially in the northern suburbs. Instead of going downtown, the job growth of late has been with companies such as NCR Corp., which moved to Gwinnett County from Ohio, and in the numerous technology firms that now call Alpharetta home.

“The city of Atlanta faces much stiffer competition than it did a decade ago,” said Ron Starner, general manager of Site Selection magazine, an industry periodical.

That’s important because school systems in the northern suburbs — some of which are nationally recognized — are generally considered stronger, which allows the metro area to stay competitive in drawing companies, Starner said. That, however, bypasses the city of Atlanta. (emphasis added)

What? Do you mean to tell me that Atlanta with all those MARTA trains and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transit infrastructure is losing the competition for jobs because other cities including the ones in their Northern suburbs have better schools and are more conducive to raising families? Whoda thunkit?

Well there was this… and this… and this… and this…

I think you get the idea by now but if you aren’t convinced you can use the site search to the right of this screen and find dozens of examples on GA Jim which document what makes Alpharetta and our neighbors in the North Atlanta suburbs special and enables us to attract jobs even in this atrocious economic climate. We provide a superior environment for executives and their employees to raise families at a substantially lower cost than an urban environment.

It really is that simple. If you build a great city for families they will come… and they will bring their businesses with them.

North Fulton In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) 6/15/2011

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Councilman Jim Paine officially declared his candidacy for Mayor of Alpharetta, Georgia this week: http://bit.ly/kukRBH

Fulton County made North Fulton county’s high school redistricting plan official: http://bit.ly/jcR8B3

The North Fulton CID enlists the city of Roswell to help them expand: http://bit.ly/jOTTkt http://bit.ly/ix5QeD

Fulton County tax dollars at work

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Last night the Alpharetta Planning Commission took up the issue of taxpayer subsidized apartments for seniors. The commission voted to deny the petition but the Alpharetta City Council will eventually have the final say.

The subsidized senior housing will be an important decision for Alpharetta because it would once again ignore our land use plan in favor of adding more high density residential housing. It would also lower the city’s ratio of owner occupied properties to rental properties even further below the 85% as required by law.

But even more than the fact that the proposal is bad for Alpharetta, what bothers me most is that my tax dollars are being used to lobby my elected representatives against my own interests. As I mentioned in this previous blog post, employees of the City of Alpharetta used public resources to circulate emails in favor of the proposal and offered to give bus rides on to seniors that were willing to attend zoning meetings in support of the proposal. I found that use of public funds inexcusable and to their credit it seems that the City of Alpharetta put a stop to the activity.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Fulton County. Someone emailed me the picture below that shows a Fulton County bus from the Dorothy C. Benson Multipurpose Complex which brought seniors from Sandy Springs to the Alpharetta zoning meeting last night. In case you didn’t make the connection the Sandy Springs senior center is named after the leading proponent of the subsidized housing project, Ms. Dorothy (Dot) Benson.

So who paid to bring people from Sandy Springs to lobby a planning commission meeting in Alpharetta? Was it the developer? Was it Ms. Benson? Or was it the taxpayers of Fulton County footing the bill to support this advocacy?

I respect Ms. Benson and all of the private citizens that support the developer’s zoning proposal. They have every right to come from anywhere they wish and lobby my representatives. But I should not be forced to pay the bill for them to do so. If Fulton County has money to spend on this kind of activism I am sure there are seniors in Alpharetta that would love an air conditioned ride to the next Tea Party rally.

Facts are stubborn things

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Years ago I noticed that the people who champion high density development as being a solution to traffic, job creation or pollution invariably have no empirical evidence to support their claims. New urbanism is not a science it is a religion because it relies on blind faith from those that believe in it. I mention this because a new post over on newgeography.com discusses this extraordinary phenomenom.

The piece is titled Planning Decisions Must be Based on Facts and you should read the whole thing here.  Below is the part I found most fascinating:

We are told that high-density imposed on areas originally designed  for low density is good for the environment; that it provides greater housing  choice, that it reduces housing cost, that it encourages people on to public  transport; that it leads to a reduction in motor vehicle use and that it saves  on infrastructure costs for government. Not only do none of these claims stand  up to scrutiny in any significant way, the contrary mostly prevails.

Movements advocating  high-density show characteristics of an ideology, their members’ enthusiasm  resulting in a less than objective approach. The desire by these individuals to  be socially and environmentally responsible and to identify with a group  marketing these imagined benefits is understandable. Some may even benefit  professionally. However the result is policies for which no objective favorable  justification can be provided and which are not wanted by the greater community  who have to live with the consequences.

A while back a transit supporter became beligerent when I suggested MARTA trains were a horribly expensive and inefficient way of  trying to solve Atlanta’s transportation issues. In trying to prove me wrong the transit believer cited a 100 or so page paper to support his claim that MARTA would help create jobs.

Much to his dismay I  actually read the report and found this line clearly written among the pages otherwise filled with transit supporting propaganda: “Certainly the study results do not indicate a causal relationship between increased access to public transit and increased labor participation.”

So the report that was being used to justify MARTA expansion clearly stated that there was no evidence it would actually help create jobs. Did the transit supporter realize his mistake and change his opinion? Of course not. He got even angrier at me for pointing out the truth.

Facts are stubborn things while faith is the belief in something despite a lack of evidence. I find that when people start using terms like “smart growth” and “sustainability” it is because they generally have no facts to support their faith.

Senior housing shenanigans

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In case you hadn’t noticed there is a developer trying to get land zoned for low income, federally subsidized senior apartments at the corner of Morris Road and Webb Bridge Road in Alpharetta. The proposal is being championed by local senior activist, Dot Benson, and you can read more background in this article from the Alpharetta Revue.

Despite Ms. Benson’s campaign to support this rezoning there is a great deal of opposition to the project from Alpharetta residents and I have received a number of emails from people explaining why it is a bad idea. Curiously the majority of the emails have come from people I would consider to be seniors themselves. At some point I will address this zoning issue in more detail but right now I would like to point out something about the senior housing proposal that I find unconscionable. City employees are actively lobbying on behalf of the senior center and using my money to do it.

Below is an email apparently sent from a Parks and Rec employee which outlines the use of public resources to champion the developer’s proposal:

For those of you who missed the wonderful AGAC luncheon, we want to thank the AGAC BOD for supplying the food and the speakers for today, we had a wild day!!

We wanted to inform you of a topic we discussed today and invite you to a town hall meeting regarding plans for a Preston Ridge Senior Community. Fulton County Strategies for Healthier Community, chaired by Ms. Dorothy Benson, has enlisted the assistance of Atlas Development Group and Carlisle Development Group to undertake the development of the much needed AFFORDABLE HOUSING, age-restricted “senior” RENTAL housing in Alpharetta. The development will be located at the intersection of Webb Bridge and Morris Rd.  They have applied to the City of Alpharetta for a rezoning of the property which will enable us to move forward with the contemplated development.

This development will provide 90 senior apartments at affordable rents as well as a wide array of amenities and social/recreational activities. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT in petitioning for rezoning of this property. To show support, please meet in the lobby of the AAC either on Thurs. June 2nd for the Alpharetta Planning Commission Meeting, leaving here at 6:45pm or Monday, June 20th at the City Council meeting, leaving here at 6:45pm as we will be providing transportation.

If you are in favor of this and cannot make any of these town hall meetings, please come to our office and sign a petition. Thanks!

***** ***** ******

Administrative Assistant 1

Alpharetta Adult Activity Center at North Park

13450 Cogburn Rd.

Alpharetta, GA  30004

678-297-****

www.alpharetta.ga.us/recreation

I have removed the sender’s name and phone number from the above email because I have not yet been able to verify the validity of the letter from an independent source. But the people who forwarded the note to me have been impeccable sources in the past and I have no doubt about the accuracy of the email.

People can disagree about zoning issues. It happens all the time. But the thought of tax dollars being used to finance a political agenda infuriates me. My money being used to provide free transportation to seniors so they can lobby on behalf of housing subsidized by more of my money? Are you kidding me?

The Alpharetta Parks and Recreation Department is generally a fine group of people and they have done a great job building an organization that we can be proud of here. But there is absolutely no excuse for city employees being allowed to use public resources to fund lobbying activities on behalf of a developer, especially when the project in question will require even more tax dollars.

I hope the Parks and Rec department will get to the bottom of these shenanigans soon.

Is the arbitrary application of justice just?

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Last week I wrote this post about the federal Department of Justice investigating the City of Alpharetta over a zoning case which involved a local mosque. I understand that some people believe the mosque decision was a case of religious discrimination but I followed the case closely and there has never been one shred of evidence produced to support that claim. The Justice Department may find some evidence of discrimination and if so I expect the city would immediately reverse their decision. But why did the feds choose to investigate that particular case without any evidence of discrimination?

I bring this up again because the Roswell Neighbor contains this article by Joan Durbin about a zoning case that the City of Roswell decided against a Christian school. As far as I am concerned that case and the case involving the mosque are both zoning issues that just happen to involve religious organizations and when the Roswell case was originally decided against the school it also sued the city. In the case of the Christian school the article says:

The court stated it was “within the purview and discretion of mayor and council to determine the factors of the preservation of the residential neighborhoods.”

Funny though… the article doesn’t mention a federal investigation over that case. Surely the Justice Department wouldn’t single out zoning cases involving mosques for special scrutiny would they?

It just so happens that my son plays baseball on a field with no lights because the neighborhood stopped a Christian school from installing them… but the justice department never investigated that case. So how is the Justice Department deciding which zoning cases to investigate when there is no evidence of discrimination?

If they are going to investigate cases involving mosques or temples shouldn’t they be investigating ones which involve churches too? I am not seriously suggesting that every zoning case involving a religious institution should be investigated by the federal government but it does seem blatantly discriminatory to bully local governments about cases which involve an Islamic mosque while ignoring similar cases which involve Christian churches. If all religions are protected equally then every religious organization should get the same level of protection afforded to mosques, right?

Otherwise people might get the idea that some religions are more equal than others and that wouldn’t be right because the arbitrary application of justice is no justice at all.

Atlanta Regional Commission disproportionately represents seniors

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Today’s Atlanta Journal has an article that reminds me of something most people don’t realize: the Atlanta Regional Commission disproportionately represents seniors in the metro Atlanta community.

The article is Metro Atlanta getting older quickly and it is about the aging of the suburban population in Atlanta. It is a good article and I recommend you read the whole thing. As you do, also keep in mind that control of local issues like zoning and transportation are being systematically regionalized to an organization primarily responsible for providing services to the elderly, the Atlanta Regional Commission. Below is a graph of the ARC’s revenue sources and you can see that about one third of their money, more than 20 million dollars, comes from federal grants to serve Atlanta’s aging population.

ARC Revenue

The reason I point this out is that the AJC article makes it seem as though Atlanta is overwhelmed by an elderly population that it estimates to be 472,000 when in fact that is less than 10% of the metro area’s total population. Our aging population is certainly an important part of Atlanta’s community and future but it is still a relatively small percentage of our overall population.

And yet ARC, the organization which is increasingly responsible for the economic future of our entire state, is primarily an organization responsible for services catering to less than 1/10th of our population. Regardless of how you feel about government involvement in these kind of social programs it seems obvious that such a distortion is not in the best interest of our region.