Just as important a decision as Mayor.
The next Mayor of Dunwoody will be chosen in early November and it appears that this race will be overshadowing the others in both press coverage and money spent. In today's Crier on page 19, I already see two Mayoral Forums have been announced and there is just one forum available to assist the voters in making their selections in the other two at large positions.
Please know that every registered voter will be able to vote in the two City Wide council seat elections as well as the Mayor's race; therefore each of the three races deserve equal press coverage and equal face time with the electorate. This item is reinforced by the fact that Dunwoody has a weak Mayor system in place where the Mayor's vote, counts the same as the six other council members with no veto authority. In reality, the city council is ruled by a simple majority of the seven members therefore it only takes four members to make a final decision on any topic which comes before council.
That being said the Dunwoody Patch published a Meet the Candidates profile on the District Two candidates that I will copy verbatim below.
Lynn Deutsch
Age: 46
Neighborhood: North Springs
Current job/company: Mom/Volunteer/Homemaker (former public policy researcher)
Education:
•Masters of City Planning, Georgia Tech
•Graduate Certificate in Gerontology, Georgia State
•Bachelor of Arts in Government, University of Texas at Austin
•Bachelor of Science in Journalism, University of Texas at Austin
How long have you lived in Dunwoody: 23 years
Community organizations: I currently serve on the Dunwoody Planning Commission and the Dunwoody Elementary PTO Board. I served for many years on our neighborhood’s Women’s Club Board. I also served on the board of the Dunwoody Homeowners Association. I was the governor’s representative on the Master Teacher and Academic Coach Implementation committee. I have been a member of numerous other state and local committees as well as serving a variety of roles at my children’s schools.
Your platform: To thrive in the future, Dunwoody must be an outstanding place to live for people in all ages and stages of their lives and simultaneously be a great place for businesses to locate. To reach this goal, we must: •Be fiscally conservative, spending resources carefully; •Solicit and listen to feedback from residents; •Have a small and efficient government that works for the good of the community; •Maintain neighborhood integrity; •Repair roads and improve parks, and; •Promote Dunwoody to businesses looking to relocate.
Other than the people, what is the best part of Dunwoody? We have terrific neighborhoods and communities in a great location. We have easy access to a range of shopping, dining, medical care, and transit options. But most importantly, it is the people that make Dunwoody special.
What are the two biggest issues facing Dunwoody? Traffic - both the number of cars and the behavior of drivers, creates problems in Dunwoody. We must use our public safety and public works resources to address these challenges through road maintenance, education and enforcement. As the economy improves, Dunwoody will face pressure from developers to permit projects that do not fit our values. As your council person, I will work to preserve the character of Dunwoody.
What is something people may not know about you? I love high school and college football.
*****
Kerry de Vallette
Age: 57
Neighborhood: Dunwoody Club Forest
Family: Married 28 years to Jill Abbott de Vallette, who has been with Delta Air Lines since 1978. Jill is an active volunteer with the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity. We have three children, John Abbott, and twins Katherine and Sara. All are graduates of Dunwoody High School. All three attend Georgia Southern University.
Current Job/Company: I run the JKS Abbott Group, an independent sales and marketing firm focused in the healthcare information technology market.
Education: Graduate of the University of Tennessee
How long have you lived in Dunwoody: Since 1983
Community organizations: Joined the Dunwoody Homeowners Association in 1984; served three terms as vice president, 1988, 1989 and 1990. From 1993 to 2006 I served in head coach and assistant coaching positions at Murphey Candler and Morgan Falls youth baseball, softball and football programs. Dunwoody Senior Baseball. Dunwoody High School Baseball. Habitat for Humanity. Boy Scout Troop 623.
Platform: I believe that small government is the best government. And that council members must focus on the principles that propelled Dunwoody into cityhood: keep taxes low, public safety (accomplished with appropriate levels of police staff), roads (pave the worst first) and parks and recreation facilities.
Other than the people, what is the best part of Dunwoody? The energy and power our new city creates. As a city we control our own destiny. That enables Dunwoody to continue to grow, to develop a mix of well-established residential neighborhoods in close proximity to the greatest economic engine in the southeast, the PCID.
What are the two biggest issues facing Dunwoody? Without a doubt, the proposed park bond referendums are at the top of the list with most everyone I talk with. The second is traffic. And like our residential development and parks development, mitigating traffic issues requires solid planning that addresses our current needs such as key intersection improvements, sidewalks, and bike paths, but also anticipates our future growth!
What is something people may not know about you? I make the best gumbo in Georgia, bar none!
de Vallette might want to update his campaign portrait. The one you posted looks more like a college age Young Republicans photo than that of a 57 year old man.
ReplyDeleteHey, another question for you Chief. I see on your blog here the following advisement -
ReplyDelete"Email the Dunwoody City Council
Mail the City Council - Win PC"
Has anyone ever won that PC?
I know Kerry,
ReplyDeleteHe looks just like that picture.
It ticks me off to no end.
Well at least we don't have to worry about this candidate being a drunk, because with a youthful face like that on a driver's license, there is no way in hell a liquor store owner or a bartender is going to serve him.
ReplyDeleteProbably then, the only thing we got to worry about with this guy, de Vallette, is we'll have to have someone monitor the budget to determine if someone is replacing the generic hand-soap in the City Hall lavatories with "Oil of Olay".
ReplyDeleteAnd John, you might want to ban anyone with an alias of "Site Admin" from commenting on your blog. I was chatting with a couple of folks of whom I turned them on recently to your site to and they attributed "Site Admin's" comments to you.
And oh, Ms. Deutsch, not to neglect your photo - you look brilliant as well as ravishing, simply ravishing!
ReplyDeleteJohn, do you think you could get an answer from Rep. Mike Jacobs, Rep. Tom Taylor, or Sen Fran Millar, regarding this surreptitious use of taxpayer monies? Thank-you! Robert
ReplyDeleteGeorgia Senate pays law firm $80,000, refuses to say why
The state Senate paid an Atlanta law firm $80,500 on July 28, and Senate leaders will only say the money was for a "personnel issue."
he check was made to the law firm Buckley & Klein after the Senate Committee on Administrative Affairs met in July and approved the payment. The committee, made up of five Republican senators, the Republican lieutenant governor, one Democrat and the secretary of the Senate, meets in private and is chaired by President Pro Tem Tommie Williams. Williams, in a statement, said the Senate is not subject to state sunshine laws and that "the matter related is a personnel matter and we do not release personnel information."
Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots and co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, stated.
"If it is taxpayer money, then the purpose should be public and accounted for," she said, adding that if a state employee was the one who discriminated against the secretary, "the employee should be fired."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHere are 10 reasons why the board – which decided on Tuesday to allow the Troy Davis execution to go ahead – has failed to deliver on its promise and why a man who is very possibly innocent will be killed in the name of American justice.
ReplyDelete1. Of the nine witnesses who appeared at Davis's 1991 trial who said they had seen Davis beating up a homeless man in a dispute over a bottle of beer and then shooting to death a police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was acting as a good samaritan, seven have since recanted their evidence.
2. One of those who recanted, Antoine Williams, subsequently revealed they had no idea who shot the officer and that they were illiterate – meaning they could not read the police statements that they had signed at the time of the murder in 1989. Others said they had falsely testified that they had overheard Davis confess to the murder.
3. Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not co-operate.
4. Of the two of the nine key witnesses who have not changed their story publicly, one has kept silent for the past 20 years and refuses to talk, and the other is Sylvester Coles. Coles was the man who first came forward to police and implicated Davis as the killer. But over the past 20 years evidence has grown that Coles himself may be the gunman and that he was fingering Davis to save his own skin.
5. In total, nine people have come forward with evidence that implicates Coles. Most recently, on Monday the George Board of Pardons and Paroles heard from Quiana Glover who told the panel that in June 2009 she had heard Coles, who had been drinking heavily, confess to the murder of MacPhail.
6. Apart from the witness evidence, most of which has since been cast into doubt, there was no forensic evidence gathered that links Davis to the killing.
7. In particular, there is no DNA evidence of any sort. The human rights group the Constitution Project points out that three-quarters of those prisoners who have been exonerated and declared innocent in the US were convicted at least in part on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony.
8. No gun was ever found connected to the murder. Coles later admitted that he owned the same type of .38-calibre gun that had delivered the fatal bullets, but that he had given it away to another man earlier on the night of the shooting.
9. Higher courts in the US have repeatedly refused to grant Davis a retrial on the grounds that he had failed to "prove his innocence". His supporters counter that where the ultimate penalty is at stake, it should be for the courts to be beyond any reasonable doubt of his guilt.
10. Even if you set aside the issue of Davis's innocence or guilt, the manner of his execution tonight is cruel and unnatural. If the execution goes ahead as expected, it would be the fourth scheduled execution date for this prisoner. In 2008 he was given a stay just 90 minutes before he was set to die. Experts in death row say such multiple experiences with imminent death is tantamount to torture.
@ Bob Turner - thanks, I think! By the way, the secret isn't Oil of Olay. It's oysters and attitude!
ReplyDeleteIf it were attitude then Mother Teresa would have died looking like Sofia Vergara. The good Mother must have had a shellfish allergy.
ReplyDeleteI have the advantages of a misspent life and know I deserve the decrepit, grizzled, and hoary mug that I display.
Good luck with the election - you do seem like a decent man.
For the record.
ReplyDeleteSite Admin is not John Heneghan. Site Admin plays no role on Heneghan's Dunwoody Blog outside of posting comments. Site Admin has no familial relationship with John Heneghan. Site Admin has no professional relationship with John Heneghan. Site Admin has never met John Heneghan.
And finally...one would suspect that John Heneghan has no need to use a nom de plume on his namesake blog.
Perhaps it's your IT naivete, but "Site Admin" is an identity typically utilized by the author/owner of a blog/site or a specified agent and appears with a display of "Site Admin" to comment or monitor Chat/Comments; therefore, my friends' assumption that "Site Admin" was John Heneghan, was not so ingenuous as you speculated, especially as they were new to the site.
ReplyDeleteHowever, no issue - have fun with your guise. Though on my own Blog where I provide Mac support and advice, I am the only one allowed the identity of "Site Admin".
And de Vallette, though I wished you luck in the election, please know that my vote is going to Ms. Lynn Deutsch, I've known of this lady for years, and she is not only earnest, but very honest.
ReplyDeleteI know that from Ms. Deutsch's previous actions, she has the integrity to do what is right for Dunwoody in the long run without selling herself out to the current mindless political trends.
"For truth has better deeds than words to grace it" from William Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona"
And I just like the cut of Lynn's jib - a good woman, that she is!
Last night I watched a Republican crowd boo a gay soldier fighting in Iraq at the GOP Presidential debate. Chicken-hawk Republicans who avoid serving in the military boo one of our brave soldiers! And none of the Republican candidates defended this soldier; in fact Rick Santorum (who conveniently avoided military service himself) piled on the poor guy. I am truly disgusted!
ReplyDeleteI'm leaving this party of ignoramuses! And I will tell you that if any of the citywide candidates are declared Republicans and don't disavow these hypocritical cowardly actions of their fellow Republicans, then they better have been veterans themselves, that is if they want my vote!