Thursday night's meeting of the Buckhead Neighborhood Association was very interesting.  Our neighborhood was officially given member status, thanks to the efforts of our president, Angelle Hamilton.

There were representatives of two candidates for judge in attendance.  We need judges on the bench who will move the calendar forward.  The two candidates were Shelitha Robertson - www.electsrobertson.com  and Kelly Lee - www.votekellylee.com.  You can see their qualifications on their websites.  The two ladies have very impressive but very different qualifications.

The Buckhead Neighborhood Association now has 28 member neighborhoods.  That means BCA is part of a powerful lobby to get things done in our area.  The association is closely monitoring changes to the exits to Buckhead from 400.  The area which the association encompasses has fewer parks than any other part of town even though a large part of the tax base is generated from it.  The new parks commissioner George Dusenbury, formerly of Park Pride, attended and promises to investigate the possibility of adding smaller parks, although he pointed out that smaller parks take just as much time to get to and from for maintenance as larger ones, thereby increasing the city's budget.

Interim Police Chief George Turner spoke on the status of the police department, pointing out that the city spends about $100,000 to train each new recruit, then they are often solicited away for higher pay by surrounding municipalities.  They also have no pay steps at this time, which is also a deterrent to keeping them.  Atlanta's current attrition rate for police is 10%, compared to 4.5% in similar other major cities. This explains the funding the Mayor is directing toward the police department.  Our police department does not even have technology to locate fugitives on the map, so they are hampered when responding. Chief Turner expects the Mayor to announce his new chief within the next week and he hopes it will be a local person, familiar with the Atlanta scene.  He addressed the recent problems with Screening on the Green, pointing out that the typical attendance is 2000, and instead between 10,000 and 20,000 attended.  The security guards were a mix of off  duty officers from other jurisdictions, so coordination was not as smooth as it might have been.  In the future, such events must be staffed by off-duty Atlanta police for better security.

Atlanta's FEMA maps (flood plain maps) are twenty years old and need updating.  This is another initiative of the group.  The massive amounts of impervious area in Buckhead has seriously increased runoff which aggravates flooding.

As you can see, this group is aggressively monitoring your best interests.