Process & Patterns

My last piece focused on the Comprehensive Development Plan process in regard to Cop City. I’ve written extensively about the Atlanta Planning Advisory Board (APAB) and its President’s tie to that place/ issue. I have also discussed APAB’s systematic ties to other issues within the city. Overall, APAB has been a great learning experience on how the city works doesn’t work and why it has such incredible dysfunction. This board has opened my eyes to how the NPU system optimizes for status quo and dysfunction. The fascinating part is how much APAB has taught me about the intersections with other Boards, Authorities, Commissions, Etc. (BACE) across the city and how it works together. I’m going to cite examples across the city regarding multiple people, while I also use my own experiences as a primary example. This is a long piece that spans a few years in timeline. It’s also dense as a fruitcake, complete with a few nuts, so curl up with your beverage of choice! My hope in sharing this is to make folks aware so changes can be made to benefit the city, not just the individuals I mention here. Where we would like to see process, I’ve tended to see personalities and power take center stage. While people have played individual parts in this, it should be said not all motivations are the same. Years ago someone told me ‘people aren’t always against you, they’re just FOR themselves’, and I believe that applies here in many cases. My conviction is that when a pattern of problems is recognized, folks can, should, and will often do the work to right it. Some problems also arise because there are not enough resources dedicated to the system itself. I think that is an implicit tie that binds here too. I believe APAB has become more invigorated and engaged the community over the last couple of years while the city has become more siloed in contrast. What will be the fate of each is determined less by me and my writing, and much more by the people who show up in each to address what we find. 

Last time on As The World Turns, I discussed how after the city decided to deviate from its own City Design Plan regarding the South River Forest area to line the pockets of the Police Foundation, a new BACE, CSAC, was created to give some semblance of oversight to this matter. You may remember it making headlines in the Saporta Report regarding its removal of Lily Ponitz for her vocal criticism of the lack of adequate environmental attention given to the site. This was before one of the committee members quit for the assassination of a protestor, and before another committee member challenged the permit regarding the site itself. (Again, process has not been the strong suit of this project.) All before Georgia earned the accolade of becoming the first state to have murdered a tree hugger, the second to that motion for Ms. Ponitz’s removal was the then and current APAB President, Anne Phillips. Ms. Phillips is the chair of the adjacent NPU to the South River Forest Area and she mentioned in that meeting removing another “Millenial” on another board. 

That would be me. I wrote about that here. Here’s the video of the CSAC meeting.

The above ran concurrently with the APAB President blocking Chris Brown, the then APAB Public Safety Committee Chair from his appointment to the Public Safety Commission-the overarching Commission that CSAC was a part of. Mr. Brown was appointed by Council to the Commission and then there was some shuffling of the Commission that made his position again unclear. TBH, I don’t know who’s behind that- the Mayor, the APAB President, the Commission, or even City Council. Remy the Rumor Mill tells me someone doesn’t like Mr. Brown- an APD officer or AFRD officer. I don’t have a name, but this is what I hear. Whatever is going on with the Public Safety Commission, like Cop City, it’s an absolute cluster and our city is suffering because of its dysfunction. Subsequently, at the beginning of 2023, the APAB President shopped around the APAB Public Safety Chair position until she found an unsuspecting new NPU Chair who (IMHO) foolishly took her up on the offer. As a result, he has an automatic appointment to the Public Safety Commission, is a new NPU Chair, and serves our problematic board. I wrote about that here

I say unsuspecting because institutional knowledge is not valued at APAB or DCP. Individual leaders are the holders of knowledge, and it creates this sort of culture of back channels that works against the transparency of the board and the city. It may not even be intentional, but what I find is that individual NPU leaders have unique relationships with city employees. Those relationships (much like lobbying at the state Capitol) determine what information is shared, held, or done anything with. The new APAB Public Safety Chair has been given a lot of responsibility with little knowledge of anything internally that has transpired before his appointment. That isn’t his fault. The city doesn’t maintain records for APAB any more than it maintains records for NPUs.  

Speaking of records, this might be a good time to remind folks of APAB’s Recording Secretary, Keona Jones. I’ve written about her experience with DCP’s interference in NPU J’s election here and here. As you can see from the letter from DCP there was no actual problem with the election, and when any supporting documents were requested, there was no further documentation. Ms. Jones was the person who made me first aware of DCP’s interference in things around the city, as the Director of NPUs resides in the same NPU. While I didn’t believe her at first, I recognized my error as soon as the Director to NPUs tone changed when I started asking questions as well. Many of the city employees are WELL AWARE of the lack of standardized process and use loopholes to their FULL ADVANTAGE. That isn’t exclusive to DCP. We may not be Boss Hogg and the Dukes over here, but we ain’t far off.

Last year, the APAB President and her 2nd VP, initiated (with DCP’s assistance), two instances of an Ethics investigation regarding me and what I write here and then an odd interpretation of spam in a shared APAB email inbox that I have access to but the rest of the Executive Committee does not. (Don’t ask me why only certain people have access, I can’t explain it.) That email inbox has not been used by the President and DCP for any communication regarding this board since last year. The APAB President uses her personal email address to conduct city business. I’m not sure whether this was directed by the Commissioner or simply a choice of individuals, but the Director of NPUs for DCP no longer communicates any board communication through APAB’s general email inbox even though it is listed as the official communication entity for the board on DCP’s own website. Methinks they know that I watch it and therefore don’t like the transparency I bring to their emails. IMHO, DCP stalls my ORRs enough so that anything shared between the APAB President and DCP has a least a month lag. Maybe that’s why all the Executive Committee members don’t have access? Who knows!

Namely, my writing has focused on my cynicism around the APAB President’s duplicity in slow-walking an Atlanta Citizen’s Review Board (ACRB) appointment last year wherein the potential appointee was frankly over-qualified, and then the APAB President’s remarkable quickness of subsequent appointments to the ACRB of a Morehouse employee and a Buckhead resident, who happens to be a Black man. Remember those kids who were yanked out of their cars by police officers during the protests in 2020? The ACRB is the entity in the city that reviews those complaints brought against the police. It is a chance for citizens to have a say in these matters. Interestingly enough, the APAB 2nd VP also serves as an appointee on the ACRB. It isn’t clear to me (other than her feeling an obligation to serve as a proxy for the President) her motivation for most of her comments as they range from confusion to heavy-handed influence on board issues. 

Some of that is cultural. I haven’t found that APAB members like to read the documents closely or before a vote. So a LOT of narratives are often offered at meetings rather than ideas standing on their own merit. It’s unfortunate, but I also don’t see DCP lending any further resources to APAB to better equip these leaders. The chairs, delegates, and alternates are left to navigate their neighborhood issues as well as they can with a planner that serves multiple NPUs versus a planner for each individual NPU. The NPUs are also not equivalent in size.

For those under the Gold Dome, imagine the House and Senate Secretaries being divided up to serve multiple members (as they do) but ALL of the members they serve chair committees, some ranging from Appropriations and Ag to Redistricting. Now remove the intern and aide structure and replace those with volunteers. That’s how our NPUs work with the NPU Chairs as the Assembly members and the planners as the individual secretaries. 

We couldn’t run a state like that, so why are we asking our Capital city to function this way? 

I’m not generally a fan of expanding things that don’t work, but I AM in favor of fully resourcing systems that empower citizens. 

Now unfortunately these opinions of mine have garnered more attention. I have pissed people off royally. And unfortunately for the APAB President, the Ethics Division found that the First Amendment still stands and I get to express my own opinions here on this blog. So, at the beginning of LAST year, when our Parliamentarian started asking questions about membership and voting rights and municipal code, I sought clarity from the APAB President, then DCP. Those questions were ignored and it is my opinion they are the motivating factor for a new interpretation of the municipal code and our bylaws NOW. Don’t believe me, read their own email exchange. And then the APAB President and DCP discussed removing me from the Board by an act of Council. I guess none of the above worked, so at the end of the year, DCP changed its decade-long practice of collecting the names of NPU Chairs, delegates, and alternates, and instead, collected the names of “voting members”. 

They didn’t do this in writing- no- after Mitzi Bickers and Jenna Garland, no one in the City of Atlanta likes to write things down. And to date, there has been no membership list of this board that includes delegates and alternates as defined within our bylaws, shared with the entire body (much less me) aside from this voting list DCP has created. 

I mentioned here that NPUs appoint their delegates and alternates, yes? 

Instead of fighting neighborhood battles, I’ve paid attention to what was happening on a city level, with the NPU system and wrote about DCP’s proposal to “realign” the NPU system here. This revelation of the City’s plans won other members of the board an alignment with me that swung an election, even though I wouldn’t say that the folks included in this email were all that united. Here’s that email that was sent by a “concerned citizen”. The other part about this email that’s unique is that it provides an (albeit crass and questionably accurate representation of the process), detailed history of my path to becoming a foster parent. There was only one person on the APAB board who knew this because we discussed it extensively one evening while we were waiting for DCP to open up a room for our first in-person Executive Committee meeting. That person was Anne Phillips, the APAB President. Remy the Rumor Mill tells me that her delegate, Sharita Grant, was the author of this email. Ms. Grant has probably been the most notable of my interactions within APAB, as she’s the only person who threatened me in an Executive Committee meeting last year-quite a feat for a Financial Secretary, wouldn’t you say? I wrote about that (with included audio) here. She told me that if I didn’t stop, she’d come for me.  I guess she did. I and The Honorable Former state Representative Turned Lobbyist Promoted to Editor-in-Chief Before Becoming Owner of Peach Pundit have definitely appreciated the increase in readership from Atlantans lately though!

While there are others’ names that have been redacted from that email, I hope Peach Pundit readers take the time to notice that Mr. Brown is one left for you to see how egregious the accusations were. To be clear- he wasn’t even up for an election. I don’t know what personal beef these folks have with him, but it’s painfully clear and egregiously harmful.

Because NPUs appoint their delegates and alternates and residency requirements lack standardization among NPUs, another NPU Chair appointed me in order to fill out my term this year. I made a note of correcting the APAB President’s notation of my NPU in the Jan 8th Executive Committee meeting. Here’s that recording, and the meeting minutes of that meeting. The NPU Chair that appointed me was also the chair of the Short-Term Rental Commission- another BACE that was supposed to have input in the city’s decisions around our short-term rental concerns since the City hasn’t really addressed them. But that Short Term Rental Commission was abruptly dissolved earlier this year. Here’s the February 6, 2023 BACE report where it was active. Here’s the February 20, 2023 BACE report where it’s no longer listed. And while Council is “working” the deadline for enforcement has been extended…yet again. Noting how the city is trying to sell itself for the DNC, my bet is we won’t see any regulation around this matter until after another major event has taken place in the city the World Cup. The rental business is a big money maker- especially for lawmakers. Clearly, the DCP employees also see an opportunity here while the getting’s good.

So I can’t reliably say this was a retaliatory effort made because of this chair’s appointment, even though it fits a certain pattern, shall we say? May I also politely ask that the City please pay our employees enough that they don’t use their roles as regulators to make side money in the very businesses they’re trying to regulate? Pretty please??

I’ve found some times the city’s dysfunction is completely separate from its petty actors. Sometimes a rose is just a rose.

Alternatively, sometimes petty actors follow a pattern you would have to be blind to not see.

So back in January, the newly elected officers of APAB discussed the upcoming year. Our newly elected Financial Secretary requested to be connected to the fiscal agent, who holds a small grant doled out over a couple of years to APAB. We’re talking about less than $10K over four years. This Community Impact Grant is supposed to be used “for purposes of neighborhood beautification, engagement and awareness, and community building”. Here’s the Financial Secretary’s request to be connected to the fiscal agent. You’ll also see in the exchange that I created a letter for the APAB President to sign, so all she had to do was email it to the fiscal agent. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen. What you may also notice is that I shared that the APAB President and VPs moved independently of the board and Financial Secretary to cater a brunch for our members.  That’s right- the funds that were supposed to be used for community building were instead used to feed ourselves. It seems the caterer didn’t get the message to send the invoice to the President’s personal email rather than the board email, which is why I had access to the invoice. Whoops! I can’t make this up. You may also notice in our email exchange that the President asserts these finances were proposed and discussed. Unfortunately for her, the audio recordings of our meetings don’t align with that, as you can see in my response. To date, the APAB Executive Board nor General Body has approved these funds to be paid although the President directed payment to be made. 

I believe this is what brought the 2023 APAB Financial Secretary to file an Ethics Investigation of the APAB President. Also, a little side note here (because the South is really just a geographically large small town) Jereme Sharpe, the 2023 APAB Financial Secretary, is the “First Gentleman” of the City of South Fulton. His partner, the Mayor of South Fulton, sat through the LENGTHY election meeting for Mr. Sharpe’s successful election last year in November 2022. 

Subsequently, APAB had its first meeting of the year and Mr. Sharpe and I were supposed to take our oaths of office along with other officers of the board. This organizational meeting was also supposed to name APAB Committee Chairs as well. But our oath was not taken because, as the Deputy Municipal Clerk clearly said in the audio recording of the meeting, she only acts upon the information given. My and the new Financial Secretary’s name were not given to the Municipal Clerk’s office, based upon DCP’s new interpretation of the municipal code and the APAB President’s failure to deliver the names.  If you’d like to read further details about the January General Body meeting, here’s the letter the attorney representing Jereme Sharpe and me sent to DCP

Mr. Derrick Green, previous NPU J Chair and Keona Jones’ husband, was also present at that meeting and made public comments on APAB’s bylaws and the new interpretation of membership per DCP. Remember, DCP interfered with NPU J’s elections years before and as a result, Ms. Jones was appointed by NPU D’s Chair (the same Chair who appointed me this year) as his delegate. Mr. Green and Ms. Jones have a longer history of dealing with DCP’s intervention than I do currently, and (IMHO) their willingness to still serve throughout should be lauded rather than stymied. Arma virumque cano..” we know of another classic (and classical) hero who endured yet learned resilience from struggles to create greater things. May it be so for Mr. Green.

Btw- Many thanks to Cooper, Barton, & Cooper. You may recognize the Barton name from this federal case regarding gender-affirming care. You may recognize the Cooper name from this one regarding Fox News. Mr. Sharpe and I appreciated their ability to handle clients across aisles in their approach to the law. That IS the way the law is supposed to work, afterall. We are to be EQUAL under it and it is to be EQUALLY enforced. 

Only on Feb. 15th was my and Mr. Sharpe’s name sent from the APAB President to DCP.  February 16th, NPU K’s Chair sent this email to the APAB President, Recording Secretary, and DCP to reiterate that I do not represent NPU K. In the attachment, the names of NPU K’s delegate and alternate are listed. In the February 18th APAB General Body Meeting, along with my incorrect NPU designation in the header to the left, you can see Mayor Dickens’ Nightlife Czar, Michael Paul, was on the agenda for the second time to appear before the board for a potential appointment to the Public Safety Commission. His second no-show elicited a fair amount of discussion on the floor and a motion to strike his name from consideration for future appointment to the Commission. Here’s the audio for that meeting. It’s my understanding from Remy the Rumor Mill that Mr. Paul has been advised to not accept the appointment. I wrote about that previously here. There was also a motion (initiated in the hour before the General Body Meeting, in the Committee on APAB) for a discussion to be had with the APAB Executive Committee regarding the misconduct of the APAB President. While I was late to the meeting, I believe the discussion was initiated by Chris Brown, (probably after getting fed up with an ENTIRE year of the APAB President’s shenanigans). The motion was made by Mr. Sharpe, and I seconded the motion. Mr. Brown, Mr. Sharpe, nor I had speaking privileges during the General Body Meeting based on DCP’s new interpretation of membership and the APAB President’s ruling. 

To be clear, this ruling of the President isn’t based on APAB bylaws, Robert’s Rules, or anything other than the President’s own determination. 

On February 28th, Mr. Green, brought comments regarding previous actions taken by the Director of NPUs to the City Council CDHS Committee. Here’s that video. His comments begin at 24:41. Remember, he’s been dealing with this since 2019. I am guessing he’s finally had enough of all of this. 

On March 1, DCP confirmed our names had been sent to the Municipal Clerk’s office, and on March 8th was I able to schedule my oath of office. Week by week, our taking a 10 minute oath got closer, despite DCP’s and the APAB President’s continued pattern of slow-walking the process. Amazingly, it seems that in the 35th largest city in our nation, our Municipal Clerk’s office does not swear in BACE members on weeks that full City Council meets. Walking and chewing gum at the same time in Atlanta offices seems to be a challenge. This also ran concurrently with the Mayor announcing a new Cop City Taskforce. Purely speculation, yet methinks the Municipal Clerk’s office was busy setting up for swearing in a WHOLE LOT of new BACE members and was waiting for the Mayor’s word. For anyone who may need to know-the Clerk’s office also only swears in via phone on Wednesdays. 

Concurrently, on March 3, 2023, the APAB Bylaws Committee met (video, with passcode B+w=sP4U) to discuss how APAB defines membership in terms of voting and non-voting members.  Remember those emails the APAB President and DCP were not willing to respond to regarding membership questions last year? This was the Bylaws Committee’s attempt at resolving those. The timeline agreed upon by DCP, the APAB President (and perhaps others I’m unaware of) was to vote on this via March. This meeting occurred half an hour after the Commissioner of the Dept. of Planning spoke to CCI. I wrote about that interview here. In the Q & A portion following the interview, you can hear Mr. Green of NPU J pose a question to Commissioner Prince regarding rebuilding “trust” in the NPU system after DCP’s past actions. May we all appreciate this man for his tenacity! 

On March 9, 2023, the APAB Bylaws Committee met (video, with passcode:B+w=sP4U) to discuss how APAB defines membership in terms of voting and non-voting members. Please note in the audio, the impetus for this bylaw revision was initiated by DCP. And that same Director of NPUs was present for and engaged directly in the discussion of the Board’s bylaws. 

This City intervention in the board is pretty common and I would say also cultural. The Director of NPUs is given often more time to discuss points during APAB’s General Body meeting than any of our actual members or even combined committees. While we don’t stick hard enough IMHO to the time limits as defined in the meeting agenda, the committee reports are often cut short to give more time to the City and its other boards. 

I find this sort of fascinating. We’re a city board that appoints to other boards, but our work (literally on the agenda) is often supplanted by the City’s agenda. IMHO, this is what contributes in part to the cultural belief that APAB serves the City versus the City serving APAB. The DCP representation to APAB often recommends from the dais who speaks and who does not. In our most recent Executive Committee, the Director to the NPUs reminded those assembled that the Executive Committee could not take certain actions, instead of the APAB President. Culturally, while perhaps meant to be helpful to the presiding officer, it really comes off as heavy-handed and that the City is more or less running the meetings. To be fair, this is because our current presiding officer is not a strong one. 

The determination of the Bylaws meetings was this amendment. This reduces the board size from a potential 75 to a potential 50. This amendment allows nonvoting members to serve and chair committees yet does not change the current APAB bylaws that state: “These Officers shall be elected from the voting members of the Board as defined herein and shall perform the duties prescribed by these Bylaws.” This amendment is to go before the General Body on March 18, and then will be voted upon at the April meeting. The amendment would shrink the current body from a possibility of 75 members to 50 and would not allow alternates like myself nor Mr. Sharpe or Mr. Brown (others as well) to have even non-voting status on the board. Oh, the bylaws also say the APAB President can appoint the Officer replacements. 

So if the bylaws are amended in this way, the current APAB President not only has the power to remove us, she can also replace these appointed officer positions with people loyal to her on the Executive Committee. She, and in her fidelity to DCP that has made this possible for her can largely sway the board to whatever direction they wish. I don’t think this is what the municipal code meant in terms of ‘citizen participation’ as defined for APAB’s purpose. 

During Monday evening’s March Executive Committee meeting, Mr. Sharpe REPEATEDLY asked whether his Officer position was to be affected by the bylaws amendment. DCP made very clear they wouldn’t send him a letter that he couldn’t serve, yet when the question was posed directly to the APAB President, she would not answer directly. Instead, both went down a tangent of how the city would no longer be giving money to APAB (please see above referenced mismanagement of grant money, compliments of the current APAB President). After the meeting had adjourned, the Director of NPUs made a statement to the few of us remaining in the room (Ms. Jones left upon adjournment) that she had become aware of a violation of the Open Meetings Act and “can’t unsee it”. Comments begin at 2:17:46. It seems that, even as Bylaws Chair Kyle Kesler accurately implies that APAB is being singularly targeted by the city for strict adherence of the Georgia Open Meetings Act, this is the time the Director of NPUs is choosing to take up this issue of lag in meeting minutes delivery. NPU W Chair and APAB Public Safety Chair, Kevin Friend, asks innocently about meeting recordings submitted as meeting minutes. You can hear my reference to Council member Andrea Boone’s legislation that was passed last year that allows for this. The APAB President and DCP erroneously shared with the body last year that meeting minutes had to accompany these recordings. 

Accurately delivering changes at Council are not reliably offered by these two, but they certainly cover for one another, don’t they? And if anyone thinks the circumstances of Ms. Jones’ husband making comments to the CDHS Committee on Council and his question at CCI to the Commissioner don’t play into this, dear reader, then you are far too innocent to be reading Peach Pundit. 🙂

I hope you’ll listen all the way through to the part where, in speaking directly to me, the Director of NPUs alllllllllmost directly states her dislike of me recording and me personally for my recordings. 

It’s really *chef’s kiss*. 

So unsurprisingly, I got an email (at the end of the day on Tuesday, March 14th) that my appointment for taking the oath on 3/15 was canceled. Here’s the recording from when I called back to reschedule. May we all take a moment to recognize the awkward position the poor woman on the line has been placed into? I hate when folks make others do their dirty work. You can tell in her voice she is uncomfortable, while she’s trying to do her best to cover for folks. 

This isn’t her fault. It just shows a pattern that occurred in CSAC and is now repeating at APAB. I’m pretty sure when NPU W’s Chair realized what was going on in our last Executive Committee meeting, it was clear he wasn’t in favor of removing people. Discerning folks know that first, they come for others, then they come for you. I also don’t think the Commissioner of Planning is a nefarious person. In fact, it isn’t clear to me she is even fully aware of all of this. I don’t for one minute think Mayor Andre Dickens or any members of the City Council care enough about anything I write, what Mr. Brown, Mr. Sharpe, or Ms. Jones or her husband do to initiate all of this against this group of people. 

What is clear to me now is that this pattern of the Director of NPUs’ tendency to put a thumb on the scale has left the City open to legal exposure. I was aware of and have written about NPU J’s election intervention previously. While writing this piece, I became aware of NPU X’s retaining an attorney to remind the City of Atlanta that the NPUs remain independent entities. Here’s the initial letter. Here’s the context. Here’s the money shot quotation. Please note this occurred in 2019.

It is my opinion, this pattern of continued heavy-handedness of DCP in NPUs and APAB creates an air of intimidation with fear of retribution. It’s very clear to me DCP will push the envelope until they find themselves in a courtroom. You should also know that one of the individuals referenced in the NPU X letters is one of those ACRB appointments pushed through last year, on the board the 2nd VP sits…which is a board that reviews actions of the APD. IMHO, this new move to reduce APAB’s membership from a potential 75 to 50 is a further exercise in the City’s power struggle over the NPU system, an effort to protect the APD, which is consistent with the City’s ignoring 17+ hours of public comment on the Cop City issue. As Jason Pye would say, “Statists gonna state.”

I don’t know about Mr. Sharpe, but I take a great deal of pride in knowing that an ENTIRE CITY BOARD is changing its bylaws to keep us from serving. We must be a real MENACE to society. I’m not sure how awkward the proverbial table gets regarding when the City of Atlanta and City of South Fulton meet, with one of the Mayor’s partner in the midst, but here we are! I’ll let Mayor Dickens sort that out. He currently seems to be working on the sticky issue of a particular protestor’s hands being raised when he was killed during an APD and State Trooper raid. I’m personally curious how NPU J meetings will be managed with the City’s knowledge of this individual actor placing her thumb on so many scales. So too, I wonder if Council will finally have discussions around NPU reform. IMHO, these are the issues of importance that the city SHOULD BE devoting resources to, instead of removing folks. But only time will tell.

You could read this tome and walk away thinking, ‘why bother with all this?’ ‘If employees of the City of Atlanta and a single Board President can wreak this much havoc on systems in our city, why bother?’ 

Because it’s wrong and interferes with the healthy and dare I say necessary questions our citizen leaders have regarding the City.  Removing me as an officer of APAB doesn’t make these patterns go away, it only slows me down in writing about them. I’m merely a means to a platform for other voices, and there are far too many good people out there trying to do good work in our City to let this continue without drawing attention to it! And, if folks like myself don’t use the resources we have to at least call attention to these injustices, it’s only going to get worse rather than better. If it’s not me, it’ll soon be someone else. I can’t change whether or not the board will remove me as an officer, but I can amplify what’s going on around me. Many of the folks who are victims of this foolishness are actively trying to make a difference and give a voice to others who already don’t feel like they have a seat at the table. My unique position in all of this is that I can amplify them and use my own life as an example of what the City of Atlanta can do to its citizens when left unchecked. Buckhead has resources that not all Atlantans have. I’m no Mr. Smith, but I am aware that to Scot’s point in our “dueling posts”…

No one should be ignored. If disagreement cannot be resolved the people deserve to have a chance to redress their grievances whether it is in opposition to the training center project or to create a new city. Scarlet is absolutely right to call out the lack of communication with the people who the elected officials are supposed to be listening to because even this non-Atlantan can tell the way they are going about their business ain’t it. Explain yourselves, it is the bare minimum required of you.

Scot and I agree on this, while we don’t agree on many other points. 🙂 

My question for the City of Atlanta is: when are our systems going to not ignore its citizens?

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