This blurb from today's Jim Wooten column (as stomped by GriftDrift) is fully indicative of the city gerrymander that calls itself my home [links and emphasis added]:
Sandy Springs City Councilwoman Ashley Jenkins offers just the right touch on the drought hysteria sweeping metro Atlanta. "Many of you have called or e-mailed about the new water restrictions," she wrote constituents. So they don't try to rat out neighbors for something that's not a violation, she presented the rules. And added: "If you still feel the need to tattletale on your neighbor, you may call the City of Atlanta Water Department [which provides Sandy Springs water] and wait on hold for 10 minutes to report a violation. You can expect the City of Atlanta Water to promptly do nothing about your complaint. If you do actually get someone on the line, could you please have them fix the water gusher that has been coming out of the ground at Wycombe and Drummen for 2 weeks." Later she told me: "We would have water in Lake Lanier if they just fixed the gushers in Sandy Springs."
So, what's the problem? Sandy Springs was (nominally, let's admit) founded on the basis of "services". As in, "we aren't getting our 'fair share' of 'services' with our tax dollars." As in, "we've bid up our property values high enough that we don't feel the need to pay accordingly, KTHXBYE!" As in, "We didn't bail out of Atlanta in the 60's to be funding black people in the 90's and beyond." Atlanta had generated enough race-based corruption (and then the World Wide Web showed up...) to give the secession enough momentum to succeed. So here we are, getting on two years after 'independence', and an inagural Sandy Springs city council member is being snarky about Atlanta's timeliness in servicing (there's that word again) Sandy Springs. There really isn't a better context in which to place this attitude from the people who run this place. For example:
"Find and train work crews to fix breaks" wasn't in the city's plans. Finding and training enough police to write $3 million/month in traffic fines, on the other hand, was quite the priority. Life on the plantation is quite sweet, you just need a pool of people to leech on.
See, that barely makes sense. Except for the leeching part, that's generally spot-on. These people have an inflated and misplaced sense of self-worth, and a now-centuries-old grudge to carry around and live in.
The best part is that most of the leaks (IMO) stem from the massive main break in February. Once the system depressurized from the inside, the now-superior external pressure created cracks in weaker portions of all the downstream mains and smaller lines. Repressurize, and those cracks turn to leaks, which turn to larger leaks, etc. If I recall correctly, a similar effect happens in people with cardiac and other low-blood pressure problems. There have been system-wide failures since that main break, and I'm not surprised to see the water folks take a year-plus to find and repair all of those failures. In short, if your water was cut off as part of the February outage, and your faucet pressure hasn't returned, you might still have secondary leak(s) to contend with.
I wonder how long it would take to bypass Sandy Springs completely? After all, the namesake spring is still operational. Some enterprising "Republican" can buy the plot from the local government, and sell jugs of water at "market rates" Or even better, since we have "Republicans" all over the place here, they can put all that extra duct tape to good use and wrap some of those broken lines. They'll just have to find some Mexicans to do the digging, because "Americans wouldn't want that job."
And while I've just written some nonsense regarding traffic enforcement, here's a context where it works: Whatever you do, don't call Sandy Springs enforcement departments about uppity neighbors. The police are too busy assessing millions of dollars in backdoor tax receivables on I-285 and GA-400 enforcing law, like good, upstanding law enforcement is supposed to do, to deal with some obstinate property owners who are exercising their Divine Right of Property to begin with. And heaven forbid you run a clothesline or set out a rain barrel, you might disrupt those property values and might face a ticket yourself. Because that's the way we do things in Sandy Springs.
Not only is this 'my city', it's my district, so this is even more embarrassing, although I can say with 90% certainty this opinion is shared by the rest of the Council, and a good portion of residents. And, I might add, this is what passes for "Republican" in the state of Georgia these days. I really, really, want to channel Dad on this topic, but after the recent TBS rants, I need to not flame for a while. I'm just glad I'm packing my bags and taking my sales tax somewhere else. I only regret not moving last year when I had the chance.
And as for Wooten..."just the right touch"? What a clown. |
