Dear Lakeside City Alliance, Whoever You Are

Dear city alliance leaders, 

Please bear with me for a moment as I am still trying to understand the line of reasoning for the creation of a new city called "Lakeside City."

First of all, if you can rally so many people together, why have you not done so sooner in an effort to help our schools? You must realize that the school system is the main reason for all these upset residents, don't you? Did you plan to start a city all along and you were waiting for things to get this bad before you put forth your idea? Or perhaps you had a hand in the crisis creation since it was your board member, Paul Womack, who had been criticized for having hidden agendas and unknown constituents with private agendas. 

Here are some of the things that I am hoping your "area" will help you consider:

• You do realize that you are responding to a crisis centered around schools with a solution that has nothing to do with schools, right?
• You do not have a business district which is typically the heart of a city.  
• You apparently like the business district that belongs to Tucker. That’s great. Thank you for your patronage, but you are not entitled to annex our businesses into your non-existent city. Tucker will not let that happen.
• Cities are not typically named after schools. You have things backwards. You do not have a city. You have a school. It is already named Lakeside. You live outside of a very big city. It is named Atlanta. It’s very well-known.  
• Your state legislator is wasting your tax dollars by spending his time trying to convince you that you need a new layer of government in order to have something better. You already think you are better. Why do you need him? 
• Instead of holding meetings about fictious cities based on fear, retreat and ficticious boundaries, maybe you can tell your legislator to work on fixing the school system since the state is the one that has been under-funding our schools and forcing our taxes to go up as a result. The state also skims about a million dollars a year off the top of the money intended for our schools so it can go to other counties in Georgia, like Gwinnett. We are one of the only states that uses this form of state education funding where we collect taxes from one area and dish them out elsewhere. That's an area of local control that the state is denying you right now. We shouldn't need a new city to change that. Where is your local control guru when you need him?
• Your state legislator told you that he needs your money for a study, but he just told your neighbors the same thing. They were going to call their school, uh, I mean, city, Oak Grove City. It was going to be named after their elementary school. Again, the process is not intended to work in reverse. First, city. Then, school.  
• You are very interested in exploring options, but not when it comes to the name of your school, uh, I mean city. I wonder why? Maybe because you are really a group of real estate investors who need to move inventory in a particular area and this is a great way to get some publicity for free. If we were to start calling your efforts an expansion of Tucker, then your plan might backfire and send more buyers over to Tucker.  
• So, we know the name is the one thing you will not change. That means you are already making plans that you will refuse to change, no matter what the residents might want for themselves? That sounds an awful lot like the government we already have.  
• Exactly how many residents will enjoy a lake view or be able to fish or swim in your lake? Where is your lake? What is the name of it? Are you telling me that “Echo Lake” is the lake that Lakeside is named after? Is that technically even a lake at all? It’s so small and the water looks really murky and green. Is that because it is really a swamp?  

Hold on a second….OMG, Lakeside City Alliance - whoever you are. 

Did you seriously invest in a bunch of property that is located on top of a marshy swampland alongside a major interstate exchange and convince a bunch of people that they were buying million dollar homes with “lakefront property” and high quality schools nearby?  

Wow. Wait a minute...

Did you tell them they could expect low crime statistics when they are locked between two major Interstates near one of the largest cities in the U.S.?  

That’s really shady.  

You are probably friends with a lot of those mortgage people who sold Americans a bill of goods then snatched their homes away from them when they couldn't pay up, aren't you?

You probably know about the new national reporting standards for high school graduation rates, too, don't you? So you know that the school isn't enough to bring new buyers to you any longer since your graudation rates trail Tucker, Redan and others. You probably did not talk about those results at your meeting, did you?

You Mom didn't love you very much, did she?  

You must be very sad and lonely. You should try to talk to somebody about what you are experiencing. Just back off from Tucker. We're happy here and we're trying our best to help the kids and fix the schools. We don't really need your distraction from what we like to call "the real world." 

Other blogs by Cheryl Miller