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Mary Margaret Oliver
Email Newsletter
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November 21, 2014
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| FRIENDS,
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I wish you and your family and friends a lovely holiday, and a restful opportunity to be grateful for all our many blessings. Among my many blessings is the opportunity to represent the 82nd District in the Georgia General Assembly, and help you participate in all the debates and issues facing Georgia. The elections are now over, the political consultants and pollsters, gratefully, have left town, and we now have the duty to create solutions in an open and transparent political arena with maximum participation. COME JOIN US AT YOUR CAPITOL IN JANUARY! WE NEED YOUR HELP!
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There has been a great deal of recent activity on multiple fronts with cityhood and annexation issues in DeKalb County. We appear to be on schedule for possible actions in the 2015 General Assembly Session on governance choices, and for each proposed new city or annexation, legislation will include the opportunity for citizens in the included area to vote yes or no by referendum. The ultimate decisions on new cities will be made by voters.
This week, the Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Amy Carter from Valdosta, named the Arbitration Panel that will resolve possible border disputes for conflicting DeKalb County city and annexation proposals. All members of the panel serve on the Governmental Affairs Committee. The Panel will be chaired by Buzz Brockway from Gwinnett County, and the members are Howard Mosby and I, from DeKalb County, Mark Hamilton, Forsyth County and Barry Fleming from Columbia County. I requested to be on the Panel, and I am pleased to be appointed because every precinct in the 82nd District is subject to one or more of the following proposals: - CITY OF LAVISTA HILLS -- The advocates for the previously named proposed cities, Lakeside and Briarcliff, have joined together into one effort for a new City of LaVista Hills, that will have about 70,000 citizens. LaVista Hills and the proposed City of Tucker have not reached an agreement on their borders and therefore the Panel will be asked to resolve the conflict. The map for LaVista Hills is here:
 - TOGETHER ATLANTA -- Annexation of Druid Hills, and the Fernbank and BriarVista Elementary School attendance zones into the City of Atlanta is being proposed by a campaign named Together Atlanta. These school attendance zone maps conflict with the City of LaVista Hills' proposal in the Biltmore Heights and LaVista Park neighborhoods, and related commercial areas. All of the Emory University campus would be annexed into Atlanta.
- CITY OF DECATUR ANNEXATION OF COMMERCIAL AREAS -- Decatur is working towards a plan to annex the primarily commercial areas of Suburban Plaza and Emory Commons, plus other adjoining commercial and residential areas.
Much more to come...stay tuned for updates.
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PRE-2015 SESSION UPDATES
I am always thinking about the budget, both Fiscal 2015, which began July 1, 2014, and the budget for Fiscal Year 2016, which will begin July 1, 2016. Five months into the current fiscal year, net tax revenues are 5% ahead of last year's revenue, so there will be a surplus of funds for budgeting. I am meeting soon with the Commissioner of Vocational Rehabilitation on repeated complaints about a lack of services. As an example, the state recession cut-backs overall were over 18% and impacts to vocational rehabilitation services were even greater. I want to know what progress Voc Rehab is making under slightly better budget conditions and what his plans are, specifically for services for the visually impaired. I anticipate other budget meetings on child welfare reform and attention to the Children's Trust Fund for child abuse prevention.
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LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITIES
In addition to many meetings on cityhood, I recently gave the keynote address to the Georgia Association for School Social Workers, a terrific group of professionals and we had a good discussion on issues of truancy. I attended Supreme Court Presiding Judge Harris Hines' Commission on Children annual meeting to set a budget for next year, and review the Cold Case Project results. Many upcoming events are scheduled for pre-legislative planning, and you can follow more of my daily activities on Facebook and Twitter
What do you want me to focus on before the 2015 Session? How best may I serve you? Thank you for your interest!
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