by Jeff
My impression of the meeting is that it was far less militantly in favor of incorporation than the recent series of meetings.
There was more emphasis placed on Townships than in past meetings. Currently, townships are nothing more than an idea that is working its way through the State Legislature. There is no definitive answer to "What is a township?' or "How does a township differ from a city?" The best answer was that townships would have control over zoning and land use, but would not have a local governmental structure like a city would have.
Kevin Levitas, one of our state reps, was there, as was Honey Van De Kreke from the Main Street Tucker Alliance.
There were some opening remarks from two of the TCA members, and we were given a handout with short bios of each of the TCA members that work in the incorporation study group*.
I'm guessing there were 60 people there, give or take 10. The age breakdown was probably 50% senior citizens, 30% in their 40s or 50s and 20% under 40. 100% of the attendees were caucasian. Male/female was pretty evenly split.
After the opening remarks we broke off into groups in which each group was designated to discuss/study various issues, with the intention of getting the attendees to make a continuing committment to meet with their group every two weeks until October (or longer...I'm not 100% clear on this detail) for further study (this is a committment I could not promise to fulfill, but I will attend all the meetings that I can). The groups were broken down as follows:
- Economic Development
- Public Works
- Public Safety
- Education
- Transportation
- Planning & Zoning
Public Works and Education were the least popular choices. Most groups had 5-7 members. The Planning & Zoning and Economic Development seemed to have larger than average groups.
I chose to participate in the Planning and Zoning group. My group discussion started with a bit of irrelevant griping and misinformation about how "our" tax dollars are being spent in South Dekalb and that Tucker has the highest home values in the county, resulting in us paying more than our share. First of all, Tucker has some of the lowest home values in the northern half of the county, and second, if "our" tax dollars are paying for projects in South Dekalb, than "their" tax dollars are paying for our new high school, new middle school, new library, etc, etc.. When I pointed this out to them, the whining stopped immediately and we were able to get to more relevant information.
Some of the ideas that were thrown around in my group included:
- Defining the boundaries of Tucker. My suggestion is for Tucker to be any area that feeds into Tucker High School.
- Making sure townhome projects are built under the highest possible building standards. According to our group facilitator who is an engineer, residential structures are currently built to last 75-100 years. He would like for townhome projects in Tucker to be built to last for 150 years (in his words: "so they don't turn into the town slum").
- Figuring out how to work around the restrictive alcohol licensing regulations that have made downtown Tucker a ghost town. One of our group members informed us that incorporated cities CAN change these restrictions, but only to make them MORE restrictive than state and county law and not less.
- Not allowing Tucker to be overrun with McMansions.
- Defining what types of uses will be allowed for various types of buildings.
After almost an hour of small group discussion, one member of each group made a brief presentation of what was discussed and announced the time and place for the next meetings. TCA was asked to post the meeting times/dates on their website. Hopefully they will honor that request. Anyone in the community is welcome and encouraged to attend any of these meetings. Public Works, in particular, is looking for more group members.
*On an unrelated and somewhat personal note, I found the bios interesting (and in one case infuriating). The bio for the TCA guy Michele and I spoke to on Tucker Day revealed that he (Roy Frasier, or something) works for Leo A. Daly, the architecture firm designing the new Tucker library. Roy is on the team that is assigned to that project. What I find infuriating is that Roy told me and Michele that nobody ever uses the Tucker library and that there's no need for a new one.
Read more in the Tucker Forum.
by BrianGTBC
There were probably about 50-60 people in attendance. After a brief introduction by one of TCA's members about what they had done thus far in exploring incorporation, we split up into a number of focus groups (I'm not sure I have all of them listed here):
- Economic Development
- Education
- Planning & Zoning
- Public Works
- Public Safety
- Transportation
Each group worked together for about an hour discussing some of the issues pertinent to the particular focus group. After the work session, each group provided a 3-minute recap of what was discussed, how many people have committed to working with the group over the next year, and when their next meeting was scheduled.
I didn't feel this meeting format gave people a chance to voice their opinions on whether or not they thought incorporation was good for the community. Perhaps that's what the previous meetings were for? While I definitely got a sense of more people there for incorporation, it was definitely stated that there is still a lot of work to do to see if it's even feasible. That being the purpose of these focus groups that will meet bi-monthly for the next year.
I chose to sit in on the Economic Development focus group. We also tried to start our discussion by trying to determine what the boundaries of Tucker would/should be. It was suggested that we use the 30084 zip code, excluding the portions that extend into Gwinnett, but that did not address the Northlake business area. One participant noted that we definitely needed to include Northlake, but I posed the question that Robert brought up earlier, "Why would Northlake want to be a part of incorporated Tucker?" A representative from the Main Street Tucker Alliance participated in our discussion and noted his discussions with members of the Northlake Community Alliance. He felt that Northlake has no desire to be included in the city of Tucker.
We discussed what type of businesses and development we would like to see in Tucker. Better restaurants was brought up, which then prompted the discussion of the State's current liquor laws with regards to churches and schools. We also talked about the need to find developers willing to redevelop a piece of property rather than just focusing on developing a new piece of virgin land, i.e. the Walgreen's strip mall at LaVista and L'ville hwy. The MTA rep mentioned that in 2003 they counted 53 car repair shops located on L'ville hwy between Cooledge and Idlewood!
There were some other conversation not on topic that didn't really add anything to the discussion. There was also one of the participants in my group who got rather heated at times due to his strong desire for not incorporating.
Read more in the Tucker Forum.
by Michele
Although this meeting was promoted as an Incorporation Study, it appears that township and other options (working within the DeKalb system) are still on the table. I guess it depends on which TCA member you speak with, because I was under the impression the group was solely focused on incorporation and nothing else. In fact, the group is acknowledging the existence of too many unknown and changing variables. The simple goal is to actively plan for the future of Tucker and make it the best possible community, whether that means forming a township, reforming DeKalb County government, or incorporating Tucker into a new city.
While the prior meetings focused on the viability and process of incorporation, this meeting addressed the substance or practical issues of making our community a better place to live. The 60 or so attendees broke up into seven different working groups, according on their interests or concerns, elected a leader, chose times and locations of the next meetings, and hammered out major issues. The seven groups were: Planning/Zoning, Transportation, Parks & Recreation, Public Safety, Economic Development, Education, and Public Works.
I was note-taker and presenter for the Transportation group, so I did not have time or attention to compile all the information from other groups.
- Transportation meeting: Wednesday, Sept 19th, 7:30pm at Mark’s House
- Public Works meeting: Thursday, Sept 6th, 7:00pm at St. Mark’s Library on Brockett (This group was sparsely populated and I will probably attend this meeting.)
Transportation Issues: Over-reaching concern is mobility within Tucker and to/from destinations outside of Tucker. We discussed problem intersections (mostly along LaVista), pedestrian safety, Main Street, traffic light timings, alternative transportation, commuter rail, condition of roadways, and overall traffic flow.
No one in my group knew that State Transportation Board last week elected to “go forward” with commuter rail from Tucker to Atlanta, even though I posted the press release to TuckerToday Forum. We need to get people online and communicating. I feel that the usefulness of email is limited and the best asynchronous communication is done via discussion forums such as TuckerToday. How do we attract people here?
Last night’s meeting attendees appeared somewhat younger than the other meetings we have attended. One late-30s(?) gentleman in my group verbalized a desire to have more representation in TCA by younger citizens. An older member also said after working aggressively with the association for the last four years that he is ready to have others take the reins of leadership.
I was also pleasantly surprised that several members of my group expressed misgivings about beautifying Main Street without the power to invigorate the businesses and/or change zoning to allow for the serving of alcohol. Our group leader even suggested that if we cannot make Main Street into a night-time destination due to the limits on liquor, then we should consider reconfiguring parts of Lawrenceville Highway into a “Main Street” of sorts. I agree!
TCA’s goal is to have ten committed (1-yr commitment) members of each group. If they reach that number they plan to begin fund raising for an in-depth incorporation study costing $30,000 - $50,000. As everyone knows, I’m generally opposed to incorporation and feel it should not be our goal, but that’s just me. I feel we need to study all the options, and not dump so much money into one.
Read more in the Tucker Forum.
