Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Parks bill passes the Senate, Crime happens everywhere, Kudos to the Dunwoody Crier and a Dunwoody billboard lawsuit.

As a new media internet aficionado (i.e. dork), I get much of my news from various internet news sources, yet I am traditional enough to read the AJC every morning on the Marta train to work and read the Dunwoody Crier, cover to cover on Tuesday afternoons when it hits my driveway.

The Crier has recently started to update their website as stories happen and I wanted to publicly thank them for doing so. A couple of weeks ago a story was published well before the print edition and it received numerous comments to their site regarding the story. Today's online edition already has two stories that aren't in this week's print edition and I wanted to make sure that people knew of their availability.

Transfer of Property passes the Senate

The first one is that Senate Bill 58 offered by Dan Weber which would transfer all current county parks to the City of Dunwoody at a reasonable cost and would also force the county to provide the city the $7,000,000 balance of the parks bond referendum, passed the Senate on Tuesday. The full story is available at the Dunwoody Crier.

City Employees victims of crime at Council Meeting.

The second story found on the web but not yet in print is regarding an event that happened late Monday evening. The City Council met in executive session late into the evening and when we departed the cars of the City Manager and the City Clerk had their car windows smashed out and vehicles rummaged through. The entire council was assisting with the clean up, taping up the windows and filling out police reports with a DeKalb Officer (fast response, in case you were wondering) when the Sandy Springs police called to inform us that the suspects were already apprehended. The Crier already has a nice story and the Sandy Springs Neighborhood Watch bulletin is also available here.

Dunwoody's First Lawsuit - Billboards

Since I don't want to dare spread privileged information regarding lawsuits involving the city, Cathy Cobbs of the Crier covered a story that I will usually shy away from and figured that I should at least mention it here as well.

The city of Dunwoody has its first lawsuit. Covenant Media of Georgia has filed a civil action in DeKalb County Superior Court against the city, its development director and a DeKalb County official, claiming that the sign moratorium put into place by the city on December 15 is unconstitutional, and in essence, that Covenant got the run-around when trying to file applications for nine billboards within the city limits.

4 comments:

  1. I read the post and what caught my eye was "car windows". I look at the Crier and they mention a city computer. Please tell me that computer had encryption software and a GPS. Should there be sanctions for this carelessness? What kind of data was potentially exposed? Does CofD have sanctions commensurable?

    The dig at DeKalb Police was unnecessary. A response time would not have been necessary if the computer (or computer bag) hadn't been left in view.

    Senate Bill 58 is a bad bill if it deals solely with the two issues mentioned (I apologize but I haven't read it yet; does it matter since it passed?) What's reasonable for CofD is surely not reasonable for the rest of the county's tax payers; they've got money invested in the parks too. Reference the Bonds; a bond is purchased based on the couty's rating then it's learned the legislature forces the county to hand over the raised capital. Where exactly does the purchaser stand as a bond holder? Does the city now own the bond and the obligation to pay. Does the county walk away from the obligation and cite the legislature? Where's all this leave the purchaser. I would think that some investors are eyeing legal action to protect their investment from government interference.

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  2. Welcome back Two Dogs. No city computers were taken and the ones recovered by the police were probably other victims stuff. I know the GPS unit that was stolen was stored in the glove box and both cars were rummaged through to find items of interest.

    The police comment was a reassurance to the community since I questioned their response times about a month ago.

    The residents of Dunwoody are not walking away from our obligations as we will be paying off these bonds for many, many years to come.

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  3. A question which does not have to do with anything in these articles, but does the Dunwoody Library stay with Dekalb or does it become part of the City? As that building was once the original Dunwoody Elementary does anyone know if the land/building is leased from the school system or was it purchased from the school system?

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  4. I would suspect that the Library, being a branch of the DeKalb/Rockdale County Public Library system for lo these many years, will indeed remain as such -- just as the main Dekalb library branch sits in downtown City of Decatur.

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