Look at the smile on that ladies face above, it brings me great joy whenever I see this photo. Good thing too as I'm still very happily married to that young lady.
Monday I had the honor of being sworn in for my fifth term on the Dunwoody City Council, having served since original incorporation. Looking back to 2008, I am very proud of all this city has accomplished, but as a newly sworn City Councilman I need to rededicate myself to continue looking forward, always trying to do the next right thing for my community.
That being said, there are new residents who are unaware of our history so here is a link from 2018 highlighting my Ten Year recap of cityhood where the post has links and stories going much further back in time. Maybe I'll do another recap at my 19th year mark, at the conclusion of this term? God willing.
Serving in this capacity is a responsibility I do not take lightly as the challenges the City is facing now, may be different than in our start up years but it is no less daunting. I have full faith in the City Manager, Staff, the Mayor and the Council to continue moving this City forward by providing quality service to its citizens, pushing though capital projects that foster the greatest good while still encouraging the business community to keep investing into our community.
Changes are happening within City Hall as we recently lost our Parks Director Mr. Brent Walker to the City of Sandy Springs but after an extensive interview of possible outside candidates, our Deputy Parks Director Rachel Waldron has already been named as his permanent replacement. Rachel has been with us for many years and will continue to do a great job for us.
In other news, Chief Billy Grogan also announced his pending retirement on June 1st after 40 years of policing. Kudos to Chief Grogan for all that he has done for our community and I wish him well in is pending retirement. We have known this retirement announcement was coming as some point and City Council pushed for an external review of the police department to have an action plan that has already been started and I would expect the next chief, to quickly implement the many suggestions in the Berry Dunn report. It is my intention for Council to hopefully find the funds to make the requested staffing improvements that we need to make as well. As we now have a few months to start a search for replacement for Chief Grogan, I am unsure what our City Manager and Mayor will do as I also have great respect for Deputy Chief Mike Carlson and believe he is ready to step up into the main role.
Monday is the Martin Luther King Holiday and a day of service is planned within the community with tree planting, daffodill planting as well as general clean up of the Book Run Playground, details are here. There is also a food collection happening and if you would like donate there are details in the link above - please do if your are able.
In a couple of weeks, it appears that the Dunwoody City Council meeting of January 22 will be taking place at Dunwoody High School at our usual 6 pm start time to join the Dunwoody Youth City Council to foster some interesting discussion and public comment. The last time we did something similar at the high school, I gave out 100's of hugs. I will probably do the same this year just not sure of the format as it is also a formal meeting? Guessing more details will be coming soon.
As usual this time of year, I review and rededicate myself to the City of Dunwoody Mission, Vision and Values and usually publish them. The Mission and Vision statements were updated a few years ago and as much as I respect the changes, the original statements still mean something to me too, so I published them both.
Finally, I came across this photo of the core group of the Citizens for Dunwoody who worked on incorporation planning for years before finally becoming a city. Damn we all looked so good.
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