Don’t forget to go back to City Hall this Tuesday, December 1st to cast your ballot for the city council run-off between Bob Spangler & Karen Pachuta. This is an election which could change the balance of power on city council – it’s also likely to have a very low turnout: so your vote could be the deciding factor! The polls will be open from 7am to 7pm, don’t expect a big crowd.
See you on the other side of the election! I’m looking forward to a city relatively free of campaign signs!!
When I had more time on my hands, I thought about featuring local restaurants on this site. One of the things Doraville & Buford Highway are known for around metro Atlanta are all the great Asian and Latin restaurants. Featuring them is a great advertisement for our area.
Ultimately, though, multiple factors worked against this idea. Work, school & my personal life all keep me from focusing too much time on this site. Even more importantly, I’m a vegetarian, which limits how many of the restaurants in our area I actually can eat in.
I think there are some neighbors are working on a site that will feature local restaurants. When they complete that, I’ll write a post about it. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the crowd-sourced restaurant review site Yelp’s listings for the 30340 zip code. When trying to find out information about a restaurant – or find a restaurant to go to in the first place – the reviews of other people who have gone there and had good (or bad) experiences are really helpful!
The AJC is reporting on a murder that happened this Sunday at 1am on Oakcliff Road. Please be on the lookout for an individual who matches the police sketch below – and report any suspicious activity or information about the shooting to the police at 770-220-1591.
I attended the Revive285 public information open house last night at the Perimeter Center.
The transportation planners and engineers were surprised when I pointed out all the tanker trucks on Longmire and Buford Highway on the aerial photographs – they didn’t realize Doraville had tank farms! We also discussed tanker traffic through Oakcliff.
They strongly recommended we go to the website (which appears to be down at the moment) and make our concerns about tanker truck traffic in and out of Doraville known. According to their literature, “Your input on this survey will help Georgia DOT and GRTA determine if an alternative should move forward, be modified, or be discarded from further consideration.” While tanker truck traffic may not be part of a specific revive285 alternative now, our comments will get it on their radar and hopefully added to the project scope.
Please spread the word. As we learned during the GM property-Stadium situation, citizens can make a difference. So please complete surveys and send your comments to ensure that Doraville’s tanker truck problem doesn’t get left out of future plans. The deadline is Monday, November 16, 2009.
Make your comments at www.revive285.com, email to info@revive285.com, or snailmail to
Revive285 Top End Project Team
2849 Paces Ferry Road
Suite 400
Atlanta, Ga. 30339
Thank you – Citizens can make a difference!
Bob Roche
Results for the election haven’t been posted on the AJC website yet, but the results for all three have been posted on Facebook. In District 1, Donna Pittman was re-elected by 61%. Brian Bates also won by a large margin for District 2.
District 3, unsurprisingly, is going into a run-off between Karen Pachuta & Bob Spangler. According to a status update from Pachuta, she had 40% of the vote compared to Spangler’s 30%. A run-off election will be held on December 1.
Congratulations to the winners – I wish them much success over the course of their next term.
Update (Nov 4, 2009): While the AJC is still reporting that the District 3 race has Pachuta with 40% and Spangler with 31%, Bob Roche in the comments below & Karen Pachuta in an e-mail to me have informed me that she actually got 39% of the vote. It will be a very tight election on December 1 – I’m not sure where the Calvert or Howard voters will fall.
Doraville’s city election is this Tuesday, November 3rd at City Hall. The polls are open from 7am to 7pm. I believe that there are only city council candidates on the ballot this time around. Remember – you can vote for one candidate from each district.
District 1 (Winter’s Chapel)
District 2 (Northwoods):
District 3 (Oakcliff):
If you’re still undecided, I encourage you to check out my notes from the candidates’ forum & also the responses received from candidates to the doraville.org questionnaire.
If you know of any election-night celebrations for various candidates, feel free to post them in the comments below.
I was unable to attend Tuesday night’s meeting, but I read with interest the postings about how Bob Roche provoked Mr. Maxwell, so I watched the DVD from that night. I was fully prepared to corroborate what I’d read, but I’ve got to say, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mr. Maxwell was highly unprofessional, appeared to not have the answers to basic questions about the city’s finances (like how much money do we have?) constantly interrupted city council members, and was, in my opinion, combative and a little out of control. I feel like the kid pointing out the emperor’s nudity, but what are we thinking? As residents we need to know our finances are in capable hands and that our accountant is approachable and competent. This is important stuff. I am NOT a Priscilla advocate. I didn’t even know her, but neither can I support this character who, at least at that meeting, conveyed pretty clearly his inability or unwillingness – I don’t know which – to provide monetary information necessary to keep department heads apprised of their budgetary constraints and the city finances in order.
Eager to attribute his belligerence to Mr. Roche’s provocation, I watched for that too, but I didn’t see it. I thought he (Roche) was dogged in his pursuit of answers that are germane to the city’s finances, but I did not find his questions to be anything more than that. I urge everyone to watch the DVD from that evening. I realize this is an unpopular position, but, personalities aside, facts are facts.
Update from Joseph Geierman on Nov 2, 2009:When I got home from work this evening, someone had dropped off a copy of the video Susan mentions in the post above. I’d forgotten what a pain it is to transfer these videos to the web! Anyway, because there has been a lot of discussion about it, I am putting the video online below, so you can judge for yourself what happened.