Voting is important..
I've been very busy and this year seems to be flying by. We've launched a new side venture and it's taken up most of my remaining free time on the weekends.
There was an election for the Mayor of Atlanta this past Tuesday. Out of an estimated 470,000 people who live in Atlanta, only 100,000 people voted for the new mayor. What you may not understand is local elections affect you much more significantly than the national elections.
All of the ordinances that we have to abide by are created by the local governments. Clients get a little miffed when they realize the amount of work that we have to do to get just the approval to start the project. By not paying attention to what your local government officials are doing, you are giving them carte blanche.
A good example of this is in Atlanta there is currently a moratorium on demolitions in the tuxedo park neighborhood. It's a very wealthy neighborhood in north Atlanta. Moratoriums usually are created to stop development for a period of time while the local government reviews the building codes to update them. However, in this case, the moratorium isn't accomplishing anything as they have not drafted any updates to the code. It seems that it is actually a political stunt designed to show that a particular candidate for mayor isn't going to let developers run amok.
So this current council member has sponsored an ordinance to make themselves look good while precluding a whole neighborhood from development activity.
Imagine you have to wait longer to develop your property because someone is trying to win an election.
This is the kind of stuff that happens in local elections. I've heard some very interesting stories behind some of the ordinances that are in effect.
The whole point of this post is to encourage you to become more involved in local elections. Most of us forget about the city councilors, don't pay attention to what they are doing, and they know it.
There was an election for the Mayor of Atlanta this past Tuesday. Out of an estimated 470,000 people who live in Atlanta, only 100,000 people voted for the new mayor. What you may not understand is local elections affect you much more significantly than the national elections.
All of the ordinances that we have to abide by are created by the local governments. Clients get a little miffed when they realize the amount of work that we have to do to get just the approval to start the project. By not paying attention to what your local government officials are doing, you are giving them carte blanche.
A good example of this is in Atlanta there is currently a moratorium on demolitions in the tuxedo park neighborhood. It's a very wealthy neighborhood in north Atlanta. Moratoriums usually are created to stop development for a period of time while the local government reviews the building codes to update them. However, in this case, the moratorium isn't accomplishing anything as they have not drafted any updates to the code. It seems that it is actually a political stunt designed to show that a particular candidate for mayor isn't going to let developers run amok.
So this current council member has sponsored an ordinance to make themselves look good while precluding a whole neighborhood from development activity.
Imagine you have to wait longer to develop your property because someone is trying to win an election.
This is the kind of stuff that happens in local elections. I've heard some very interesting stories behind some of the ordinances that are in effect.
The whole point of this post is to encourage you to become more involved in local elections. Most of us forget about the city councilors, don't pay attention to what they are doing, and they know it.
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