I stand by the council meetings be moved to the evenings as my biggest accomplishment because sometimes it is a little thing that has the greatest impact.  However, the fact that out budget has decreased by 5% over four years,  property taxes have never been raised, preventing unjustifiable and exuberant raises to given out, intersection repairs, some of the lowest water and sewer rates in the area, new businesses have been established in downtown as big accomplishments too.

As they say, any publicity is good publicity.

All special elections can only be held on certain dates set by the Georgia Secretary of State so the City Council cannot make them up.  However, the City Council can set the qualifying period for any date they want, but this particular qualifying period was set to prevent certain people the ability to run which would be the four people running for now, myself, Amanda Swafford, Damon Gibbs, and Mary Jones, as well as Kris
Yardley who is running for the State House. I feel this is a violation of United States Constitution, Amendment XIV,
Section 1, which states,

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws.”

Not only did this prevent five people from qualifying, but it also prevented the citizens from having people qualify that they might want on the City Council.  This whole process was terrible for the people of Flowery Branch.

What makes this worse is Mayor Mike Miller admitted he put the dates on the ordinance and that is a direct conflict of his duties as Mayor per the Flowery Branch Municipal Code in Article II, Section 2.4 – The mayor; powers and duties.

Sec. 2.4. – The mayor; powers and duties.

The mayor shall be the chief elected officer of the city and as
such shall have the following powers and duties:

(a)  To preside at all meetings of the city council and be recognized
as the official head and spokesperson of the city for service of process and
ceremonial purposes;

(b)  To vote on matters before the city council only in case of a tie,
or if his or her vote is necessary to constitute a sufficient number to
transact business;

(c)  To sign, for and on behalf of the city, all contracts, ordinances,
instruments, and other documents authorized by the city council and which are
required to be in writing, unless otherwise directed or authorized by the city
council; and

(d)

To fulfill such other duties as authorized by the city council

Nowhere does it state he can write ordinances prior to council’s approval let alone insert dates for the qualifying period.

Also, there is an email that is on my Flowery Branch email, which is can be obtained through an Open Records Request, from Council Member Tara Richards which states,

“From: Tara Richards
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 11:56 AM
Subject: Fwd: Your Rights are Being Limited

How do you guys feel about a city council person quitting their elected position to run for a different office
Should the qualifying dates be moved so that they can turn around and run again for the position they vacated if they lose?

Additional info:

*Had Yardley resigned earlier, we would not have to have a special election to fill his seat. This is costly to the City.

*The special election date is set by the state and got pushed forward due to Presidential super Tuesday

*if only one person qualifies they could be sworn in ~30days instead of having that seat vacant for months

*this also effects the losers of the Nov election for post 1 and 2. Both new
candidates (Mary Jones and Damon Gibbs) have said they have no desire to run for a second chance election as a retread.
So this only affects Lutz's good buddies (Fetterman , Swafford and Yardley). While I would love to have both Mary and Damon on
the council, they have both indicated that will not run again if they lose the upcoming election - that they feel the people
 have already voted (or not voted) for them once and do not care to see them on the ballot again. 

*incumbents have every right to resign from their current position (as Yardley did) by qualifying for the open seat and
running. We are not limiting anyone's ability to run for this seat - just the ability to do so twice in back to back elections.

I really do value your input on the issue! Thanks for your time!

Tara Richards

Sent from my iPhone”

With these two pieces of information, this is why I feel this was an effort by some to prevent people from allowing others to run for an office as well as silence the voice of the voters which is a violation of the Constitution of the United States.

I would also like to note that both Mike Miller and Tara Richards were on the council when Craig Lutz resigned to run for County Commissioner, when Mayor Diane Hirling resigned to retire, and when Mike Miller resigned to run for Mayor and we had to be very careful to set the qualifying periods and choose the proper election date to ensure the city had enough people on the council to have a quorum to conduct business.

What is their reason now?

POLITICS!

Onto the issues about the election.

Just before I took office, on December 18, 18, 2007, Mary
Jones and the council voted and gave 10% pay raises to the City Manager and
City Planner at a cost of about $15,000 annually.  If I had been on the council, my vote would
have been no.  Why you may ask?  What did they do to get a raise just before
two new council members were coming in and why did the rest of the staff get
excluded?

Since I have been on the council, I have only given annual
raises to staff and nothing exuberant.
I opposed giving our former City Clerk a $10,000 pay raise because she
thought she deserved it.  I opposed
giving other staff member’s raises because the City Manager thought they
deserved it.  I opposed continuing the
100% city paid medical benefits and we changed their medical benefits to 80%
paid by the city and 20% by the employee – just like many private sector
businesses do.  The sad part is there
were elected members who wanted to give the raises and continue paying the
medical benefits and Mary Jones already has a record of giving money away.  How would she fit in with some members of
your elected officials?  Seems to me she
would fit right in.

I will continue to fight to keep your tax dollars from being
spent on exuberant raises and find ways to save money!!

I talked about how my opponent spent $405,000 on the purchase of 5512 and 5514 Main Street; however, I did not tell you that those funds came from SPLOST VI.  The portion of SPLOST VI for Flowery Branch was $2.5 million, but those numbers were based off of a different economic time and the anticipated annual income for Flowery Branch was expected to be about $35,000 a month.  Also, if you look at the list the City Administration and Real Estate/Buildings was number four on the list and the Cinnamon Cove Lift Station and Force Main Line was number one as well as the allotted money is the maximum we can spend on each line item.

The original expected SPLOST VI revenue was expected to be $240 million over 72 months or an average of about $3.33 million a month, however, the actual numbers for the first two years are coming in closer to $2 million a month which is only 62% of the original projected numbers.

On March 17, 2009, only nine percent of the Hall County registered voters went to the pole and voted for SPLOST VI and Chairman Tom Oliver was quoted in Access North Georgia saying, “We think toward the middle of SPLOST Six that revenues could exceed what we projected them to be” and my opponent must have agreed and on May 6, 2009, she voted with the majority to purchase $405,000 worth of buildings at 5512 and 5514 Main Street.

With only 62% of Flowery Branch’s expected SPLOST VI revenue, we are now looking to only collect about $1.6 million and already spent $405,000 on buildings we did not need, as well as some we spent a small portion of SPLOST VI to get some badly needed police cars leaving Flowery Branch significantly short of the $1.3 million needed to go towards the now $1.6 million Cinnamon Cove lift station and force main.  Now Flowery Branch will need to take a loan out to cover the shortfall and added expenses of a badly needed sewer line to prevent Buford from creeping further into Hall County as well as give us the future ability to expand the sewer plant to two million gallons.

As you can see from the SPLOST VI project list, there was $500,000 for roads and at a cost of about $100,000 a mile, that is five less miles of newly paved roads in “Old Town” and our older neighborhoods.

My opponent’s inability to look at the future economic conditions as well as her inept ability to plan for the future properly is bad for Flowery branch.  We must have people on the council who are forward thinkers.

The interesting part of this waste of your money is neither purchase was part of the 2025 Flowery Branch Comprehensive Plan.  These buildings are part of the central business district not the public institutional area.  It is also interesting that my opponent voted on and approved the 2025 Flowery Branch Comprehensive Plan in 2006 as well as was on the steering committee who created the 2025 Flowery Branch Comprehensive Plan.  Who should have known better than my opponent that these buildings and waste of your money were not part of the future of Flowery Branch?  I guess someone should ask her.  I did and she did not have an answer.

I voted against these purchases because they were a waste of your money and should have never been purchased.  As I stated on September 16, 2011, it costs about $100,000 to pave a mile of road and that could have been seven miles of road.

I will ask her if she meets me for a debate, but only time will tell.

Flowery Branch has about a $36,000 a year street light bill that pays the lights for three subdivisions as well as all the lights in the “Old Town” area and this is the way we have been doing it for years and this year we only budgeted $14,000 with the thought we would have a funded light district to cover the costs.

This issue is something the city must address as well as get your thoughts and blessing to do.

The numbers are simple and the facts are clear.  We spend $36,000 a year on lights while the roads continue to deteriorate, especially in some of the older subdivisions and all throughout “Old Town”.  The cost to pave one mile is about $100,000 and we only have $24,000 in the budget to repair roads.  So every three years we spend on lights what could pave one mile of road.

The city has several maps and plans with the financial impact on the property owners in Flowery Branch and I will post them when they are up online.  Until then, call City Hall or me and I will be more than glad to meet you or a group to discuss this issue with you as I already have with some.  Please come to the meetings on October 6^th and 20^th and tell us what you want.  I begged at the meeting last night for you to get involved. 

The council pushed all the meetings back as far as we could to ensure you have the time to tell us what you want.  Last night’s vote was the first reading to continue the process and the second reading is not scheduled until October 20^th. 

Flowery Branch can keep kicking the can down the road or we can work with the citizens and fix the problem now.  All options are on the table from leaving it the same, create a street light district, or put it on a referendum, however, if we do not create a street light district, such as Hall County has, we will need to amend the budget and add $22,000 to the street lights and find somewhere to cut in the budget to get the money or worse, take it from the reserve fund, and if a business continues to spend it’s savings – it will go broke.

I have heard from some, but want to hear from many more.

Flowery Branch needs to be a low tax city to allow it’s citizens the ability to spend their own money on their wants and needs.  The businesses want to move to places with low taxes and I want to provide that for them. 

Even with a property tax decrease next year, Flowery Branch will be in a great position to repair roads that are deteriorating quickly in the “Old Town” area and I will propose to create a funded roads and infrastructure plan.

I wonder if Mary Jones can answer why she voted against a property tax decrease?  Is she a big government and high tax person?  That is what I saw when we served on the council together for two years.  If she debates me, I will ask her.  Only time will tell.

Take a moment to thank those who serve in the military, those police and emergency responders, and firefighters who are willing to give their life so you may live.

God bless them and God bless America.

It was a long two years, but today it is worth it.  People are able to come and be a part of their government.  The council chamber has a number of people who come to speak, listen, and learn what is going on in Flowery Branch, but since Mary Jones came off the council, I have never seen her there in the evenings.

I hope Mary Jones can answer the questions why she did not vote for evening meetings and why she has never shown up to a single meeting since being off the council?

If she meets me for a debate – I will ask her.  Time will tell!