October 20, 2024 • 51 mins
In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman returns to discuss her re-election campaign for House District 97, covering Peachtree Corners, Norcross, Berkeley Lake, and Duluth. Join host Rico Figliolini as they dive into pressing issues, including Gwinnett County’s rapidly growing population, the urgent need for infrastructure improvements, and the impact of the upcoming transit referendum. Ruwa also shares her insights on housing affordability, the role of public transportation, and how small changes in tax law could affect both local businesses and homeowners. She emphasizes the importance of civic engagement, recounting how a local election was decided by just four votes. Don't miss this insightful conversation about the future of Gwinnett and the power of your vote.
Timestamp:
00:00:00 - Candidate Ruwa Romman Discusses Georgia State House District 97 Re-election
00:01:31 - Concerns over Statewide Homestead Tax Exemption
00:07:16 - Keeping Tax Cases Local and Efficient
00:09:49 - Vague Tax Exemption Amendment
00:12:18 - Tax Loopholes and Small Business Impact
00:14:50 - Gwinnett County Transit Referendum
00:23:46 - Convenient Airport Transportation Options
00:25:54 - The Need for Public Transportation and Infrastructure Improvements
00:28:00 - Addressing the Housing Crisis
00:31:40 - Challenges of Profit-Driven Development
00:34:03 - Home Buying and Energy Costs
00:36:41 - Negotiating Monopoly Power on the Grid
00:39:47 - Importance of Civic Engagement and Voting
00:41:25 - Voting Tips: Early, In-Person, and Ballot Drop-Off Options
00:43:38 - Importance of Voting In-Person and Ballot Drop-Off
00:46:09 - Navigating Voter Registration and Provisional Ballots
00:49:05 - Advocating for Public Service and Effective Governance
Timestamp:
00:00:00 - Candidate Ruwa Romman Discusses Georgia State House District 97 Re-election
00:01:31 - Concerns over Statewide Homestead Tax Exemption
00:07:16 - Keeping Tax Cases Local and Efficient
00:09:49 - Vague Tax Exemption Amendment
00:12:18 - Tax Loopholes and Small Business Impact
00:14:50 - Gwinnett County Transit Referendum
00:23:46 - Convenient Airport Transportation Options
00:25:54 - The Need for Public Transportation and Infrastructure Improvements
00:28:00 - Addressing the Housing Crisis
00:31:40 - Challenges of Profit-Driven Development
00:34:03 - Home Buying and Energy Costs
00:36:41 - Negotiating Monopoly Power on the Grid
00:39:47 - Importance of Civic Engagement and Voting
00:41:25 - Voting Tips: Early, In-Person, and Ballot Drop-Off Options
00:43:38 - Importance of Voting In-Person and Ballot Drop-Off
00:46:09 - Navigating Voter Registration and Provisional Ballots
00:49:05 - Advocating for Public Service and Effective Governance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, when it comes to just making government work
better for all of us, that continues to be my
number one priority, and so if I'm re elected, I
want to keep doing the work.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Peachtree Corner's Life, a podcast sharing ideas, opinions,
and news about the city of Peachtree Corners, the community
we live in and the people that are your neighbors. Now,
your host Rego Figliolini.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Him, This is Rico figli Orlini hops the Peachtree Corner's
Life here in Quinetta County. Beautiful day, although it started
out freezing this morning, but we're up to about sixty
two right now. We're here with candidate that's running for reelection,
Rua Brolman. Hey, Rua, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And good things? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Good? Good? Thank you. Rua is running for Georgia State
rep House District ninety seven. Actually she's running for re elections.
She's been in the term for one term, yes, and
so it's time for a re election. Right. She represents.
The area that she represents is Peachtree Corners, Berkeley, d
(01:10):
Luth that's about those three cities mainly, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Four, So it's Berkeley, Lake, Duluth, Norcross and Street.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And as far as Peatree Corners go, it's about it
a little bit more than half the city.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I believe her. If her looks right, yeah, we're going
at it. We're gonna pop right into this. We've interviewed
her person running against her, Michael Corbin, a week or
two ago, so he's out there, so you can listen
to that interview if you like, find it out on
our website. So this one we're gonna be discussing a
few issues we may not have touched upon with Michael Corbin.
(01:48):
One of them is the constitutional amendments coming in this
this actually that's going to be on the ballot this November,
so and you all should be aware of it. So
one of the the biggest one will start off with
to me is the biggest one because home one, so
that could be a little soft one, is a state
wide exemption to local homestead tax.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So why don't you tell us a little bit about,
you know, brief what that means to homeowner there on
past recorders.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Absolutely, so, what it does is it puts a cap
on how much home assessments can go up by about
three percent per year. So what it's doing is it's
essentially limiting the increases to property taxes. The cons however,
is that it's kind of multifold. Right when we were
working during session, we knew that housing costs were a
big problem and we really wanted to reduce those costs.
(02:40):
But ended up happening is that we passed a bunch
of referendums, including the Gwinnette one that we recently got passed.
This is one of the other ones that got passed.
So I'd originally voted yes for it, I'll be voting
no for it at the ballot box. Specifically, because when
you are adding on so many exemptions one on top
of the other very quickly, it can become very disruptive,
(03:02):
particularly for local municipalities. So what do I mean by
that If a city or counties funding is disrupted too quickly,
suddenly you'll start to see even like slower responses to
things like potholes, street lights, being off, school funding, you
name it. So what we're trying to do, at least
for me personally with my vote, is that I'm trying
(03:23):
to strike a balance between not shocking our municipalities too
much and then shifting the burden onto our cities and
our counties. I just don't think that's fair with the
way that the bill is going to end up working out,
because we already passed agin at homestead exception, so.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What is the okay? So so if I look at
my property texts, right, the way it works is that
an assessment is made. Most people will know this right,
so it's beautifully it's forty percent of your market value
of them home, which means that the county or the
municipality doesn't have to free should militerate. But in effect,
(04:02):
because of the appraisal, your property test can't go up.
So nothing's louded on. Just the appraisals done, and your
property test can be twenty percent fire will mean my
property tax essentially was I won't say twenty percent hire,
but it was vastly. It was probably twelve thirteen percent
higher due to COVID, right because it was assessed and
(04:26):
it went up, and they don't assess every year. When
they do, but it doesn't always change every year. So
we've got I think we've gone through that struggle where
we're going to you know, I don't foresee a twelve
percent increase again.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, no, no, and we've already increased your home set exception.
So all of this. The reason I'm worried about this
bill in particular is it sets a statewide standard. But
the problem is municipalities and counties are very different. And
my worry is that you know, as an example of
Peachtree Corners, say they've decreased your tax bill, which people
(05:01):
should have seen at least either their taxes not go
up this year or go up by only a much
smaller margin. Some people actually saw a decrease in their
tax assessments this year. But the hope is that with
the Gwinnette one specifically, it is tailored to Gwinnet residents.
The problem with this bill is it creates sort of
a weird opt out mechanism that can create some problems
(05:23):
for municipalities and counties that I'm worried about. So it's
more of a logistics thing. And what I tell people
is that when it comes to constitial amendments, if you
have a concern, it's actually okay to vote no because
it's easier to get it back on the ballot next
time around than it is to take it off or
revoke it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Okay, So but the next time around would be two
years from now if it goes through the process.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Which you decide, we can actually do any time. So
the Gwinnett home set exemption was immediately put on the
ballot during like immediately during the primaries.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Okay, all right, so okay, so in your opinion, this
shouldn't this cap of three percent wreck cavit with outer
county or you're sort of a statewide with a variety
of counties, a systems.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Memerically, and we've seen this in California as well, where
it has increased things like homelessness had been very, very
disruptive a lot of times when people talk about, you know,
I don't like to dunk on California. But this when
I was doing research on this, and that's why we
actually did our guide a little later, is I was
doing research on how this has worked in other states,
(06:30):
and what we found is when you do this kind
of a statewide mechanism or whatever the case may be,
you end up seeing all of these unintended consequences down
the road that you didn't really expect. Right, you had
good intentions. You want to lower costs, which is great,
but my recommendation to people is do it by county
or municipality instead, because then you're able to tailor it
(06:52):
for your specific district or location. The other thing I
will say is that this referendum in particular did not
have fiscal note, so we don't actually know how this
would impact even statewide revenue related matters. So say, for example,
there is a small business program that has been vital
(07:12):
in bringing small businesses to Gwennette County or Peatreet Corners,
whatever the case may be. We could inadvertently defund that
program and then lose out on that tax revenue for
the city, and then you start to see services go
down in quality over time. So for me, the fact
that I don't know how much this is going to
cost us, I don't know how much this will be
(07:32):
disruptive on top of the Gwinnette one that we've already
passed even pause and that's why I switched from yes to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
A not okay. And people can appeal their assessment, so
I mean, it's not like they can't go out and
appeal it. And what you're saying is really to keep
it local. It's almost like it's almost like a Republican thing, right, Yeah,
ower local versus.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Big local yeah, I'm a big local person fan, so.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Right, so keep it local. You know, if we don't
like what's happening at the county level, patreet Corners, there
is no military put at the cancer level, obviously there is.
So if you have a problem that you can either
feel your assessment or listen, just vote the counter commissioner out.
That's like voting these things in like this cool. So
let's move on to tax court in the judicial system,
(08:20):
and with that it's in brief.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, so I am going to be voting yes on
this one because I think that we need to remove
tax cases from your general que. I would much rather
that a case where somebody is waiting for their case
be adjudicated to not have their life hanging limbo because
of a tax case that's taking up a lot of time.
The other thing is that tax cases require a lot
(08:43):
of expertise that not every judge might have, and the
hope is it would relieve the burden on the criminal
justice system as well. Now, some of the cons on
that one is obviously that means that you know, the
governor gets to appoint those judges, not us as people.
We don't the vote for them, so less oversight. The
other one that people had mentioned to me recently is
(09:05):
that if you have a tax case, it might be
a little more burdensome or costly if your low income.
But for me, I really think that we should just
kind of take those because there's such such a niche
type of law that, you know, take it out of
the generic queue and put it in its own cueue
because then you know, businesses can kind of deal with
their own stuff and not take up the court's time.
(09:29):
But again, per usual, if you have concerns with it,
vote no and let's fix it.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So just is there I mean, I'm sure the statistics
about who is in the text courts that tax s courts,
but you know how many people, what the demographics are like?
Is it majority business people that are going to these okay.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Seniority businesses. But you know, with everything that happens with systems,
you're always going to have a small group of people
that could be negatively impacted. We don't, unfortunately, we don't
actually have that much research on it. I wish we did,
but we do know that when it comes to businesses,
they do want to be able to finish their cases
sooner rather than later, and this would be an opportunity
(10:12):
to do that. But again, as I always say, when
it comes to constitual amendments, if you have concerns, err
on the side of no. I just think in this case,
the positives outweigh the negatives. But I totally understand if
people think the opposite.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Okay, refront them a that one too. But a is
tax exemption for a tangible personal property?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, So I voted no on this one, and we'll
during session and we'll be voting no on this one
at the ballot box. There's a few reasons for this one.
We don't actually fully describe what we mean by tangible
property is the term that is being used for this
specific amendment. It's basically tax exempted for certain types of
(10:53):
tangible personal property. We kind of define it, we kind
of don't. There's a lot of room for people to
take advantage. So somebody could be, you know, take this
tax exempt and what it does. It actually raises the
exemption from seven to twenty thousand, and just a lot
of room for misuse. And the intention was to help businesses,
(11:15):
but the reality situation is that it would mostly help
larger companies and corporations and could actually inadvertently hurt small
businesses because the way that businesses do their small businesses
do their taxes. I'm not really sure that they're going
to be able to benefit from this as much, and
could actually be hurt because again, we have a lot
of programs that support small businesses and this might be
(11:37):
taking away from that support.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So I read something online about this particular piece just recently,
and I agree with you. It was vague. I mean,
it didn't say exactly what it was, but it did
say along the lines it gave an example for example.
So maybe it's a bad example, but what they gave is,
let's say you buy computer system. It's five thousand dollars system.
(12:00):
You're paying sales tax on it, yep, the tangible principal
or the tangible property tax on us Yepay, you have
to pay an additional tax on that equipment. I didn't
say correctly, Yeah, how you're.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Using it too. So it depends on the usage, It
depends on what it's generating, It depends on the equipment
and how it's used in your business. So, and that's
why I'm saying, it's so vague that what you're bringing
up makes total sense. You're like, Okay, you've already paid
taxes on it once, why are you paying taxes on
it again? If you're using it for your business. The
(12:35):
problem is that the way that taxes get itemized, the
concern is that there is going to be a lot
of ability to misuse this and it would cause a
decrease in revenue and we would take away programs that
actually help small businesses to succeed. And the next thing,
you know, these larger corporations are benefiting in a way
that was supposed to help you as a small business
(12:57):
owner but actually ends up hurting.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You in the way. So put the launcher business. I mean,
this is a maximum of twenty thousand lawncher insince twenty thousand.
It's like to drop in a bucket or is it
further Again.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It totally depends on how it's set up. And that's
what I'm saying. It's these are like this specific reference
and was written in such a way that I voted
for it no on the House floor, and we'll be
voting for it no again because it was kind of
ran through. There was no and I don't and I
need to like quadruple check this, but I looked for
a fiscal note, I couldn't really find one that would
tell me how much this would cost or the impact
(13:32):
it would have on our state. For me, I can't
even tell you to make a decision on this appropriately
because I can't even give you adequate numbers to say, yeah,
it's only twenty thousand, not a big deal drop in
the bucket for a large business, but a big deal
for a smaller business. But I don't even know if
that smaller business could even qualify, or what hoops they
have to run through, or what items count kind of thing.
(13:53):
And on top of that, I don't even know how
much it would cost us in the long run to
be able to give you, like a yes recommendation.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So if anyone wants to find out about this particular referendum,
I mean, any of these three that can go, I'll
have links on in the show notes, but it should
be easy enough to find where they are.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, So we have put up a voter guide on
all of our social media channels. I got to just
finish it on Facebook, but right now it's on Instagram. Actually, no,
it's everywhere. It's on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, wherever
you get your information. We posted the entire guide for
everybody to be able to access, and it goes through
the pros and cons of each one. I also go
(14:33):
through how I voted for it during session and how
I'll be voting for it the ballot box and why,
because I do believe in that transparency, right, Like you
can disagree with me on hey, we need to lower
these taxes at all cost possible. Like cool, totally no problem.
I just never want people to question what their elected
official is doing and why.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
And I appreciate that transparency. So even if you change
your vote and you decided to vote yes and no,
it's good to know why change that? Yeah, all right,
so let's move away from that a little bit. There's
another reference than coming up just for Gwennet Canton. That's
the transit reference yep, affecting infrastructure concernancy in Pea Street Corners.
(15:13):
I mean, we're mainly a far city, if you will,
and the autonomous vehicle pl street park thing just drives that.
It almost feels like Michigan sometimes. So how do you
think this referend the motive address our issues will impact
us locally here in Pea Street Corners.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed, for example,
is that in my district alone, we have four different cities,
and three of them are downtown centers. So they have festivals,
they have events, they have a lot of incredible activities,
and it comes with a lot of traffic. And so
what I tell people is, imagine if you could take
(15:55):
a convenient bus to the Fall festival in Duluth, or
for example, to any of the Norcross festivities that happen
in addition to the Peatree Corners festivities, because suddenly you
don't have to worry about parking, you don't have to
worry about getting stuck in traffic, you don't have to
worry about any of that kind of stuff. So this
transit referendum specifically would pay for one hundred and fifteen
(16:18):
miles of quick ride BRT light is what it's called.
So and what's really great about BRT light is that
it's almost as fast as a train without needing to
build the infrastructure for trains. It would do almost twenty
six miles of bus routes. It would have nearly three
hundred and forty six miles of county ride services, twenty
transit transfer centers, two airport connectors, and what I and
(16:43):
for Peatree Corners specifically, there is going to be one
of those airport connector routes in Peachtree Corners.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
This would connect to the Doraville station or no, these
are correct.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
These are like express buses. So to get give you
an example. Right now, I can drive about ten minutes
to Sugar Loaf Mills and I can take a bus
and it will take me directly to downtown and only
has four stops downtown before I get to the Capitol.
So on days when I don't have late evening events
at the Capitol during session, I will literally take the
(17:18):
bus and spend that hour that I would have spent
in traffic responding to emails or getting work done or
doing calls or whatever the case may be, and I'll
be in the AHOV lane. And it's incredibly I mean,
I'm kind of skeptical about buses, to be honest with you,
but I decided to try it, and I was very
pleasantly surprised. It's a clean bus, has Wi Fi is
(17:39):
full every single time I've taken it, to the point
that they've now had to run buses every five minutes
during rush hour because the buses will overfill and people
will have to go onto the next one. So it
would be similar to that kind of an experience. Think
of like a charter bus with the nice seats and
the cushions and things like that. And the hope is
(18:00):
to build that out for the entire county. Now, it's
going to be a thirty year project, as infrastructure takes
time to build, but it starts with the most dense
areas such as Lawrenceville and works its way out. So
over time, what you'll see is you'll see a decrease
in traffic because there's less cars on the road. Instead
of having forty cars, it's going to be just one bus.
(18:21):
And as I don't know if any you know, for
the listeners you have to commute, it just gets so
so awful.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
And it's interesting because with remote work now and hybrid
work still being in place, I mean, I don't think
that's going to go anywhere. If anything, just brought me
more hybrid rather than just dedicated remote remotely working. But
you know, coming from New York, I mean, and I
haven't lived here since ninety five, I can see some
(18:50):
there's good reasons in my mind, like there's a long
island railroad. There's other rail systems or even express bus
systems that are our coach seats and stuff that work
really well. You paid a premium for that above the
normal bus bus payment, and they were clean and they
were safe and stuff different than the bus than the
train system, at least in New York at the time,
(19:13):
and even here sometimes you hear things happening on Morita.
Why is not always the safest or the best that
it can be, just because of the nature of the beast,
I guess, but I can see why there would be
some resistance to this a little bit with regard to spending.
The amount of money that's going to be. What's the
(19:35):
total cost like over the period of time for this referendum.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's a one percent levied I gotta I gotta double
check the number.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
But it's a one penny tax. Actually what it is.
It's one penny tax on your sales tax. It would
be adding one more penny to any quinette sales tax, right,
And so all the time we're talking billions of dollars
being raised to be used. And it's like you said,
it's not really a train system. It's not bringing it's
(20:06):
not spending, you know, billion dollars to do two miles
track or something.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
No, no, no, this is this is like the way
I've explained it to people is that it's like the
biggest bang for your buck, right, we don't have the
density to justify train and this is Gwinett. This is
like by Gwinnette for Gwinnette, kind of a program that
focuses on only Gwinnett. It try I mean, obviously it's
trying to also, you know, connect people to other transit
(20:31):
systems in the area. But if there's a in our guide,
there's actually a map that will show you where it's
going to be a county ride what's called a quick ride,
and actually Peachtree Corners Norcross are both on the quick
ride route. The county ride will include all of you know,
Peatree Corners, Duluth, Norcross, and Berkeley Lake. You have the
(20:53):
Airport ride also connects into Peachtree Corners. There's going to
be one of.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
The transit and you say airport, right, that goes straight
to the airport from So there's.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Going to be what's called transit like little twenty new
transit stations. One of them is going to be in
Peatree Corners. The other one's going to be in Norcross
and the third one is going to be in Duluth.
So all of these downtown centers where we have a
lot of people, you'll actually be able to access at
least one and up to four so County Ride, Quick Ride,
(21:25):
Rapid Ride, and Airport Ride along these transfer stations and facilities.
So one of them is going to be here in
Peatree Corners.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So if I wanted to go to the airport, what
I'm getting at is I could go to that hub,
I could be dropped off the Patree Corners, picked the
bus and it takes you with some bolt with some
stops along the way. Maybe it'll take you all the
way to the airport. There's no additional there's no jumping
off getting onto a different system to get to the airport.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's the same system you there based on this map.
There might be a transfer to the airport line. But
you can also just park and ride, so you can
just park your car, which is what I do with
the Gwinnette one and the based on I'm trying to
see like there's it's called Hartsfield Jackson Ride, and I'm
actually trying to open it up.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
The one from Buenette County or from Peastreet Corners. Of
these micro hubs take you directly to the airport, you
would still have to make a transfer.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Somewhere, yes, or drive your car directly to there, right
or based on I'm trying to like reading the map
as we're talking right now, because I don't have memories.
But there, because like the it's a quick ride or
a county ride. Well, you can either take that to
connect you to the airport express bus because they don't
want to do any stops. They want somebody be able
to get on the bus and go directly to the airport,
(22:44):
or you can't. I'm trying to find where the hub is, okay, so.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
You can go there. So that's my point because originally
some of these things where you take you get on it,
you get to let's say the door of Hills board
the station up on there, and then you get to
the airport. Right. But what I'm hearing is that if
you're hopping on a Peachtree Corners hub or the loot,
(23:08):
did you go directly from here to the airport without
making any.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Jumps anywhere exactly exactly?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
So I mean that I find that more convenient than
having to stop somewhere, get off, walk, get another transfer,
wait for that. Okay, so it's straight just yes, So
if you.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Have a car, I'm trying to see. I'm trying to
see where the nearest hub is. There's obviously the Indian
Trail like Greyhound one, but I can't like the bus route.
I'm like looking at the bus route. It starts at
Mall of Georgia, goes down to Sugar Loaf Mills, goes
down to the Gwinnett Transit Center at Gwinnett Place. Indian Trail.
(23:48):
I can't fully read what that said. It's like ofs
or something like that. It's like right behind Norcross, but
that one. Any of these are on the route to
Hartsfield Jackson and you don't have to transfer. You just
part get on the bus and I'll take you directly
to the airport.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Gotcha, Okay? All right? Cool? So this is why everyone knows.
Some of that will have a link also to that map. Yeah,
and so that's why people can check that out. Also
the other there's pros and cons obviously, and we'll try
to find those links for people. Yeah, I want to
look at that because it is a penny that's being
added to our sales tax, and it's a commitment that
(24:24):
will stay there for quite a few years.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I think, yes, yeah, yeah, when you're building it, it'll
be about no more than thirty years. And the reason
for it is that when you're building this kind of infrastructure,
whether it's ordering buses or one of the things they're
going to do is these buses are going to have
the traffic like They're going to coordinate with the traffic system,
So if you're on a bus, it will always be
(24:48):
a green light. You don't have to stop at traffic lights,
you don't have to get caught in that traffic. Some
of them will actually have their own lane, so they
have to like designate some of the lanes for rapid
transit buses. Well, so a lot of that again going
back to the biggest bang for your buck. You're not
laying down tracks, you're not trying to rebuild stuff. It's
actually more technology based. And the other cool thing is
(25:09):
that for some of these quick transit ones, they're going
to be electric, so you don't have to deal with
the fumes of buses, you know, increased exhaust that kind
of thing. But it does take time, so That's why
that was one of my cons is that it will
take time for all this to be rolled out to
the county for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I mean there's all sorts of things legality and public
hearings and stuff for these types of things to even
set up the hubs, the micro hubs, like in p
Street corners, Like where would that be? I know it's
on a map somewhere suggested, but the ultimate place that
it would be would take time and public hearings and
stuff like that, I guess. But this is different than
(25:44):
the last time the transit referendum was on the ballot
because that last time included I think a Marta or
several Marta stops. I think it was at least one,
and I think that was to more of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yep, Hello, I love Platt. I've got too, so.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Look I'm a huge I will say this, There is
very little that I miss about my time in school
in DC. But the one thing I do miss is
having access to public transportation because it was just so
nice not to have to sit in traffic. I could
get so much work done. You know, you could be
on your phone, you can relax, you can read. It's
just I don't like traffic, and anything that will make
(26:27):
that better would go a long way. And I will
say too, Quinette is growing very rapidly, and if we
don't start this now, we're going to run into a
lot of problems in the future where we're going to
see a situation where our infrastructure can't actually handle how
many people are coming in. It's not gonna be able
to handle the businesses that want to come here. It's
not going to be able to handle like the kind
of growth that would bring better jobs and that would
(26:51):
improve our communities and that kind of thing. We end
up facing a ceiling. But the problem is people are
still coming and we're gonna have, you know, hopefully more
families and more kids and that kind of thing. And
the sooner we can start prepping our infrastructure for that
kind of a demand, the less disruptive it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
And I agree with you on that. The I mean,
we're seeing more apartments being built on multi family people
aren't buying as many houses because of the nature of
you know, mortgage rates, and there's less land to build on,
and it is by.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
These corporations, you know, I mean, it's both furiating.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yes, I mean the trend is build to rent. I
mean it's just like racy, the amount of private industry
purchasing these homes that you're going to even in subdivisions
where you're going to just rent them out to other people.
And there's a trend among younger people anyway to rent
at this point because they can't do the buying. And
we were talking about it during one episode with the
(27:52):
city manager about being affordable housing. How do you how
do you create that? How can you incentivize that? Force that.
Sometimes incentives don't work. We literally have to force certain things.
So when there's not enough affordable housing and you have
a need for labor, maybe you know the transit system
(28:15):
is certainly one way to do that. Yep. Yeah, let's
move on to so let's see we've done the transit.
Then there is feedback, all right, little guy A little
directs that you on wire sometimes get electrocuted. So there's
(28:36):
a feedback from the community. I think that would be
that you're hearing properly, especially if you're a campaign and
go and do it, do it to do and stuff.
So what type of feedback are you getting, whether it's
national thoughts or just local you know, what are the pressing,
pressing issues that you're seeing from this district.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, so my favorite part about campaigning, and you know
for those who don't know a state represented, is we
don't actually get staff. Right. So the nice thing about
campaign season is it gives us an opportunity to fundraise
and get staff and be able to door knock. And
I'll go and door knock myself. Well, everyone on the
team campus. It doesn't matter if you're the candidate or
if you're a brand new everyone's doing the work. And
(29:17):
what's been really amazing to me is the fact that
there are some things that haven't changed. Right. People have
concerns about fully funding education, the size of the classrooms
for their kids. You know, how do we retain teachers
because teachers are leaving, they're burning out, you know, making
sure kids have access to the best educators, taking care
of those educators, that kind of thing. But the thing
(29:38):
that has gotten like more, like we've seen more at
the doors over time is actually we're just talking about
which is housing, whether that includes hoa oversight. Some people
are starting to realize that there are these companies taking
over HA duties and it's causing a lot of problems.
One of the things I learned, and again this is
why housing is always harder for stay people, because this
(30:02):
is there's so much that happens on a city and
county level that is a little more complicated. But one
thing I learned recently talking to one of our city
council members is that companies are coming in and buying
single family homes. They're pricing out young families, and it
is terrible.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Cities are actually not allowed to have a database to
track how many of these homes are up for rent
versus being sold to actual families, And there are these
laws that we have on the books in Georgia that
preempt local ability to actually handle some of this like
part of the housing crisis.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, that's true. So I heard the same thing, actually.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, And so you know, people of the doors will
say things like, you know, I wanted to, for example,
move or get a larger home, but I can't because
we're being priced out everywhere. I'll tell you that there's
a house on the corner here that is two hundred
thousand dollars more than when we first bought our house
in twenty twenty, and it's only been four years and
(31:00):
I don't think it's it's not I mean, it's a
great home, it's a beautiful home, but I don't think
it's worth half a million dollars. And so you're seeing this,
I mean insane like housing market, and people keep talking about, well,
we just need to build, like they want us to
lower standards in order to be able to build more.
But that's just not true. All you're doing is making
homes less safe, and you're just letting them pocket the
(31:23):
extra part of their profit. So how do we to,
like you said, is there a way to force it?
Is there a way to incentivize it? Is there a
way to you know, I think we use a lot
of carrots here in Georgia because we really do care
about being the number one place to do business. But
the reality is that companies are profit driven and if
there are no consequences to not following the law, the
(31:43):
law is just a suggestion at that point.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I mean, I totally agree. I mean, I was just
speaking to someone else here in the city about a
particular development that went. Now, the schematics for it, or
the renderings for it, doesn't look the building itself does
not look like the renderings given because they end up
using slightly different materials and stuff. And so when rezonings
(32:08):
are done for let's say multifamily and stuff, they you know, cities, counties,
they want to allow, like you said, some room for
innovative creative work, right. But the problem is it is
profit driven. And when you have profit driven, it profit
drives over everything else on that list. And if they
(32:30):
can get away with using slightly cheaper materials or if
you say landscape, these got to be you know, you
got to replace all the trees. They'll put in one
inch radius trees versus three inch radius trees. Unless you
specifically condition these things, they will not do it. Yeah,
So that's that is a problem. The database for knowing
(32:53):
whether buildings bought at least privately, like through an LLCIT
or corporation is out there. They can't be.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Found that like officially, you as a city, you cannot
set it yourself. And I think that's just insane.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yes it is, And I in fact I'm looking at
actually collected that data at some point I'm publishing because
I believe there's at least twelve to sixteen percent that
may be owned privately in the set.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Even worse, in Atlanta, it's forty percent of single family
homes are now owned by private corporations. They are no
longer on the market, they are up for rent. These
aren't like people who have two homes and renting one
out for college kids. These aren't actual hedge funds who
are buying up these portfolio of homes. And sometimes they'll
just sit on them and then sell them for a profit,
(33:45):
and the next one will sell it for a profit,
and suddenly the cost of a home doubles, even though
no updates were made to it, or very little, like
you know, shallow updates were made to it. And yeah,
and if I'm a know, if I'm a new family,
or a young family, or a young couple like me
and my husband are, I'm telling you the reason I'm
(34:05):
in the house I'm in right now is that the
agent for the people who are trying to buy it
to rent was so aggressive that she scared away the family.
They had already outed us. I'm serious, they had outbid us,
thought we weren't going to get this house. And the
agent for the family came back and said, look, they
were very turned off by how aggressive that agent was,
(34:26):
and even though your offer is lower, they're willing to
accept it, and we got really lucky. But it can
it can. I mean it's tough, it's really really hard.
And you know, you add that on, you add the
increase of everything else utilities, so we don't have an option,
you know, of who you pick as your energy provider.
(34:47):
And Georgia Power has increased our utilities four times. Four times.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Isn't that amazing because this is supposed to be camped
at them. They allowed to take right right, and yet
you don't keep getting And I'm sure Georgia Power raised
at tax because of the nuclear plant that went online
that took them years and billions and billions of dollars over. Yep.
It's just like protection.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
That's what I say when I say about consequences. So
I sit on the Energy, Utility and Telecoms Committee and
to tell you how this worked. And I'm a Georgia
Power customer and it's driving me crazy. And we are
trying to figure out a way to allow for more
community solar and solar options for home so that way
we can drive down energy costs. We've seen this work
in other states. It's really really important for us to
(35:31):
be able to create some form of competition because Georgia
Power is a legal monopoly and it's supposed to be
held responsible by the Public Service Commission, but they're not
really fully doing that right now. And to your point
about like plant fogel, everyone's like, oh, we're gonna make
it twenty five percent clean energy, and I'm sitting here
and I'm looking at these graphs and two percent of
(35:52):
it is solar. Two percent. We have farmers who would
love to lease out their lands to solar companies and
become solar forcilities because what it does it creates revenue
for the farmer to then maintain the rest of their
land and not have to sell this land that's been
the family for a long time. But because Georgia Power
is not like keeps, I mean, the only bills they
came after are solar bills. It is wild.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, well, they're protecting an entity. That's fine. And even
in some states where they're allowed to put solar and
you're allowed to feed it back to the grid and
get aid for it, you still have to pay an
infrastructure fee because obviously there's an infrastructure that has maintained.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And I told Georgia Power, I said, I completely understand
you guys do, and they do, to be I like
to be fair, they do a very great job of
maintaining the infrastructure grid. But if you have a monopoly
mostly on that grid and you're part of the grid,
can we come to a negotiation? And I've asked. I
actually got yelled up at the CEO for asking this
because she was like, you know, we came up with
the rebate rates already. You don't need to reopen that
(36:55):
can of worms. I was like, but what does that
range look like? Can you explain it to me? Can
you tell me how many cents on the dollar is
required for you to be able to handle more solar
and maintain the integrity of the grid. And they just
they don't want to answer that question.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, they may not have the answer to it. They
don't care to get it because if they, like you said,
if the information data is important, right, if you have
that information, then you have to make it. If you
don't research that information but you sort of know the answer,
then you don't have to worry about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
So if your bill went up, please email us, especially
to my house. Email it's through at roman at houseiga
dot gov, because I do want to see how much
people's bills have gone up, and I can actually bring
that up during committee hearings and talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Good. That's excellent. And just to jet one more thing
on the private businesses buying property, I mean, the reason
that that works out for them too, I think is
because there's a tax advantage, right yp they get to
write off the mortgage, the interest rates and stuff, but
they get to anetize the property because it's an investment
on their side.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Okay, so nobody knows this. I'm so glad you know this.
I actually co authored a bill on this with Representative
Spencer Fry, and nobody would move it and it was
really weird to me. So I'm gonna try it again
if I'm re elected. But the way that it works
is that if, like you said, commercial property degrades over time,
so businesses actually get a tax break on that commercial property,
(38:21):
well they now count homes that actually appreciate in value
over time to get your tax break, right, So they're
like hipping. It's awful. So we wrote a bill, and
part of the concern was some people who owned small
businesses will also own their home under that small business.
So we didn't want to like go after single family homes.
So I actually helped write this part where it said
that if you are the business owner and your address
(38:44):
is in Georgia, you can be exempt from this, but
everybody else you can no longer get that we like, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Not, so that would that would help to degree I
can sing, although I can see the other side of
that setting up and Georgia corporate ration the subsidiary of
a larger company. I mean those things can.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
They can't have multiple homes, you can't like Yeah. It
was also to take away like any multiple home type whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
The maximum member or something that you can't have more
than two homes or something exactly. Ye, that's great.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Very few people knew about this, and I I was like,
why don't we just bill and so why not?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
You know, you could write a bill about it, you know,
and I appreciate you even think about that, because most
people don't know that. Let's talk a little bit because
were it's just a little bit more time. I'm back
on voting. Right, what that looks like? You know, you're
you're an incumbent, you're running for re election, you have
opposition from the Republican Party. Obviously, did you want to
(39:53):
say about that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, so I have. I've been an organizer way longer
than I've been elected official. And addition to like my
professional life.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And which, by way, what do you do for your
professional I used to be.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
A deloitte Now I'm just like a freelance consultant now
that I work, you know now that I'm an elected official.
But you know, the thing that I really care about
is I really want people to be civically engaged. And
that starts with us filling out our entire ballot. Everyone
always talks about the presidential there's so much you know,
energy and focus on that, but like you, like we
talked about the very beginning on our ballot is obviously
(40:28):
the presidential. We've got our members of Congress, You've got
your state senator, state House, You've got your referendums, You've
got your county commissioners. So our county commissioner is Kirkland Cardon,
who's amazing, and he's up for reelection this year. And
so please, like I cannot stress enough not only voting
but also filling out your entire ballot. We have people
who will go vote and they'll leave the rest of
(40:50):
their ballot, the rest of their ballot blank and it's
you know, a big problem. So if you have any
questions or you don't know how to you know, you're
not sure about something on your ballot, doing a byob
so bring your own ballot to our gotv rally which
is going to be at Shorty Howell Park this Saturday
on the nineteenth. And you can actually vote early in
(41:11):
any voting location in Gwinet because it's early voting, so
as long as you're in the Canny can vote anywhere
between now and November first, and voting locations are open
seven to seven. It's really easy. There's no lines, so
highly recomend people go because and the reason I mentioned
this part is it took me three tries to vote
in the primary this year. The first time we got
(41:32):
there just a little too late. The second time I
opened my wallet and my ID wasn't with me. I
happen to have taken it out like at an appointment
or something. I forgot to put it back in. So
it definitely took three times. Three times. It's just charm.
So I always tell people don't leave it until the
last minute. You never know what's going to come up.
You never know what's going to happen if you request
(41:52):
an absentee ballot, if you don't get it back and
mail it back by the twenty fifth. It's kind of
my arbitrary personal deadline because of just mail. Please go
vote in person. Just let them know to like, hey,
I requested one, either got it or didn't get it,
and I would prefer to vote in person, and they'll
be able to help you vote in person. But please
please go vote early. It's really easy, really quick. If
(42:15):
you have questions or want to go vote with someone,
come vote with me on Saturday the nineteenth at Shorty Howell.
We'll have really great food snacks. It will be from
one to three and we want to make it fun.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
And I think some of the early voting locations are
well at least here.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Are just two in our district.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
So pick the Drill Recreation Center.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yes, it's on the it's the one that's on the
main peatre industrial and not in the back where the
park is correct.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Okay, cool. So you have absentee ballad also that can
like you said, and those who counted based on the
based on when they arrived with the polling place, well
based on the.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Post war so most people say postmark, but again I
don't want to risk it, and I just tell people
please put it in because here's the other thing you
can drop it off. So angry that there's a voting location. Sorry,
not anywhere during early voting.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Some of the.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Locations are have ballot drop boxes. You can check that out,
like Guenette County.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
State Park has one recreation centers a drop shortly now
al does not, yep, so.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Please that's actually if you have a ballot and you're
able to physically go, please put it in a ballot
box by election day. I'm just really worried because there
have been a lot of mail delays. There have been
a lot of like just weirdness happening. Even if something
is posted, it's not getting where it's supposed to be.
So I just want to run into an issue where
somebody relies on USPS to mail their ballot and sid
(43:48):
you know, and it's and it's awful because this is
what happens when you defund stuff, right suddenly services are worse,
And this is people don't know this. USPS is act
a constitutionally mandated thing, so unlike UPS and FedEx, they're
actually required to reach everybody. No matter how far they
(44:09):
are versus these corporations that can just say, well, we're
not going to deliver to you, and so it just
makes it all worse. So that's my long storage feel
of if you do absentee, One, if you run any issues,
reach out to us. Two drop it off. And three
if you're not able to complete that process by the
twenty fifth, please go vote in person.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Do you see have you seen any you know? With
three hundred thousand people voted on the first day of
early voting, which is a record in the state of Georgia,
and so apparently, you know, I think I forget what
the what the breakout was, whether it was like forty
odd percent Republican, because you could tell data. I think
(44:48):
where the breakouts are in twenty odd percent was like
independent system. Are you seeing or hearing? I know this
is early still, but any any issues with voter suppressed?
They like that.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
So you know, what I tell people is that we
have over the past decade have had to build the
kind of organizing infrastructure to be able to get around
a lot of that. So thankfully we're at a point
now where a lot of people in Georgia know what
to expect if they run into any issues. The one
that I keep hearing most recently is that people will
go on MVP dot SOS dot GA dot gov. That
is your my voter page, so MVP dot ss GA
(45:25):
dot gov and they will log on and they will
see that it'll say their voter status is inactive. And
so people have been feeling like, oh, I can't go vote.
So if you log on and you see that it
says inactive, you can still go vote. That is totally okay.
We did have a few people that would try to
log in and their entire voter page is gone, like
(45:46):
it'll give them an error. If that's the case, reach
out to us. We can connect you to a hot
line that can help you figure that out. So some
cases like that, but nothing too crazy.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
So does does that mean? So if they don't see
it all, but I go to a voting place right
and they find the name in the database because they're connected,
they're going to find it. Let's say I'm fine to vote.
Fine if for some reason they don't see it there,
but I know I voted two years ago in a
primary or something, and so I should still be in there.
(46:19):
Can I take Can I request a ballot. Forget what
you call that ballot provisional provisional thank you? Yeah, well
I could ask for a provisional ballot and that So
the rule.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Of thumb is before you get to that stage, very
kindly and politely ask them to either pull up your address.
There are different ways to do this, right. They can
pull it up by your address, they can pull it
up by your driver's license number. And the reason I
say that the provisional ballot should be your last resort
is that once you submit a provisional ballot, you actually
have to physically go to the voter registration location. It's
(46:53):
like the the book borders for Gwinnett and you have
to like go and show up in person to fix
your ballot. So I always tell people like very politely,
because this happened to me when I moved back after
grad school. The person couldn't find me in the system,
and she kept insisting I wasn't in there, and so
she was able to find me through my address rather
than my name, and it worked out. So you know,
(47:16):
first and foremost, try and be very polite about it.
They're doing their jobs. And then obviously, as the last resort, yes,
go ahead, and request a provisional ballot, but be prepared
to go down to the registration office to finish out
what you need to get finished out for your ballot and.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
People run to vote. Still, what is the two at
this point?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
No? The deadline was October seventh, so.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Violence is there anything else you would like to talk
about before we sign off?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
No? Like I said, if you run into any issues voting,
finding out where to vote your absentee ballot, whatever the
case may be, you feel free to reach out to us.
You can, you know, we're on social media, but the
best place to do it is to email us at
info at RUA the number four Georgia dot com. We
are tracking cases and helping constituents vote. If you have
(48:08):
any questions, feel free to ask us too about your ballot.
You're not sure who to vote for, I'm happy to
give you my opinion. I'm very you know, I try
to be very transparent about that, and you know, just
please remember I remind people that my city council member
won his race by four votes in a runoff. So
even if you think your vote doesn't matter, particularly in
a swing state like Georgia, it matters so much. So
(48:31):
you know, take a few minutes, go vote early, make
it an event, take your friends and your family and yeah,
happy voting.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Great. So on that note, I appreciate you being with me.
Rua thank you, and in fact, you know what, why
don't I get off for a second and then you
give us your one minute pitch. Okay, even though you
just did it a little bit like that, definitely use
this momentude to give that picture and answer for the
(49:02):
velop Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
So my name is Rue Roman. I am the Georgia
State representative for House dies Stret ninety seven, and I'm
running for reelection. I ran because I want to put
public service back into politics and I want to keep
doing that work. In my first term, I've been able
to pass a bill out of the House. It ran
out of time, so you're going to keep working on
it to designate EMS as an essential service. So I've
worked on healthcare issues. I've worked on education issues by
(49:26):
fully funding education this year, including the Hope Scholarship. I
want to keep working on that. You know, when it
comes to just making government work better for all of us,
that continues to be my number one priority. And so
if I'm re elected, I want to keep doing the
work that I have been doing and advocating for you
at the Capitol and every way that I can. But
thank you for your support originally and I hope to
(49:46):
have it again come by November fifth.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Thank you for doing that. I'm a little bit with
me for a minute, but everyone else, thank you for
being with us. You're listening to the podcast, If you
listen to this on Apple or Spotify, leave a review.
Love that because that's an easy way for people to
find us. Then if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook,
do leave comments if you like, and we'll see if
(50:11):
there's any questions you have that we can answer thus
for you. Otherwise there'll be links in the show notes
on the website. But thank you again, appreciate everyone joining us.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Thanks m.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Thanks for listening to Peachtree Corner's Life with Rico Figliolini.
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(50:48):
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(51:10):
show at the Capitalist Sage dot com
You know, when it comes to just making government work
better for all of us, that continues to be my
number one priority, and so if I'm re elected, I
want to keep doing the work.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Peachtree Corner's Life, a podcast sharing ideas, opinions,
and news about the city of Peachtree Corners, the community
we live in and the people that are your neighbors. Now,
your host Rego Figliolini.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Him, This is Rico figli Orlini hops the Peachtree Corner's
Life here in Quinetta County. Beautiful day, although it started
out freezing this morning, but we're up to about sixty
two right now. We're here with candidate that's running for reelection,
Rua Brolman. Hey, Rua, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And good things? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Good? Good? Thank you. Rua is running for Georgia State
rep House District ninety seven. Actually she's running for re elections.
She's been in the term for one term, yes, and
so it's time for a re election. Right. She represents.
The area that she represents is Peachtree Corners, Berkeley, d
(01:10):
Luth that's about those three cities mainly, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Four, So it's Berkeley, Lake, Duluth, Norcross and Street.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And as far as Peatree Corners go, it's about it
a little bit more than half the city.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I believe her. If her looks right, yeah, we're going
at it. We're gonna pop right into this. We've interviewed
her person running against her, Michael Corbin, a week or
two ago, so he's out there, so you can listen
to that interview if you like, find it out on
our website. So this one we're gonna be discussing a
few issues we may not have touched upon with Michael Corbin.
(01:48):
One of them is the constitutional amendments coming in this
this actually that's going to be on the ballot this November,
so and you all should be aware of it. So
one of the the biggest one will start off with
to me is the biggest one because home one, so
that could be a little soft one, is a state
wide exemption to local homestead tax.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So why don't you tell us a little bit about,
you know, brief what that means to homeowner there on
past recorders.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Absolutely, so, what it does is it puts a cap
on how much home assessments can go up by about
three percent per year. So what it's doing is it's
essentially limiting the increases to property taxes. The cons however,
is that it's kind of multifold. Right when we were
working during session, we knew that housing costs were a
big problem and we really wanted to reduce those costs.
(02:40):
But ended up happening is that we passed a bunch
of referendums, including the Gwinnette one that we recently got passed.
This is one of the other ones that got passed.
So I'd originally voted yes for it, I'll be voting
no for it at the ballot box. Specifically, because when
you are adding on so many exemptions one on top
of the other very quickly, it can become very disruptive,
(03:02):
particularly for local municipalities. So what do I mean by
that If a city or counties funding is disrupted too quickly,
suddenly you'll start to see even like slower responses to
things like potholes, street lights, being off, school funding, you
name it. So what we're trying to do, at least
for me personally with my vote, is that I'm trying
(03:23):
to strike a balance between not shocking our municipalities too
much and then shifting the burden onto our cities and
our counties. I just don't think that's fair with the
way that the bill is going to end up working out,
because we already passed agin at homestead exception, so.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What is the okay? So so if I look at
my property texts, right, the way it works is that
an assessment is made. Most people will know this right,
so it's beautifully it's forty percent of your market value
of them home, which means that the county or the
municipality doesn't have to free should militerate. But in effect,
(04:02):
because of the appraisal, your property test can't go up.
So nothing's louded on. Just the appraisals done, and your
property test can be twenty percent fire will mean my
property tax essentially was I won't say twenty percent hire,
but it was vastly. It was probably twelve thirteen percent
higher due to COVID, right because it was assessed and
(04:26):
it went up, and they don't assess every year. When
they do, but it doesn't always change every year. So
we've got I think we've gone through that struggle where
we're going to you know, I don't foresee a twelve
percent increase again.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, no, no, and we've already increased your home set exception.
So all of this. The reason I'm worried about this
bill in particular is it sets a statewide standard. But
the problem is municipalities and counties are very different. And
my worry is that you know, as an example of
Peachtree Corners, say they've decreased your tax bill, which people
(05:01):
should have seen at least either their taxes not go
up this year or go up by only a much
smaller margin. Some people actually saw a decrease in their
tax assessments this year. But the hope is that with
the Gwinnette one specifically, it is tailored to Gwinnet residents.
The problem with this bill is it creates sort of
a weird opt out mechanism that can create some problems
(05:23):
for municipalities and counties that I'm worried about. So it's
more of a logistics thing. And what I tell people
is that when it comes to constitial amendments, if you
have a concern, it's actually okay to vote no because
it's easier to get it back on the ballot next
time around than it is to take it off or
revoke it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Okay, So but the next time around would be two
years from now if it goes through the process.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Which you decide, we can actually do any time. So
the Gwinnett home set exemption was immediately put on the
ballot during like immediately during the primaries.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Okay, all right, so okay, so in your opinion, this
shouldn't this cap of three percent wreck cavit with outer
county or you're sort of a statewide with a variety
of counties, a systems.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Memerically, and we've seen this in California as well, where
it has increased things like homelessness had been very, very
disruptive a lot of times when people talk about, you know,
I don't like to dunk on California. But this when
I was doing research on this, and that's why we
actually did our guide a little later, is I was
doing research on how this has worked in other states,
(06:30):
and what we found is when you do this kind
of a statewide mechanism or whatever the case may be,
you end up seeing all of these unintended consequences down
the road that you didn't really expect. Right, you had
good intentions. You want to lower costs, which is great,
but my recommendation to people is do it by county
or municipality instead, because then you're able to tailor it
(06:52):
for your specific district or location. The other thing I
will say is that this referendum in particular did not
have fiscal note, so we don't actually know how this
would impact even statewide revenue related matters. So say, for example,
there is a small business program that has been vital
(07:12):
in bringing small businesses to Gwennette County or Peatreet Corners,
whatever the case may be. We could inadvertently defund that
program and then lose out on that tax revenue for
the city, and then you start to see services go
down in quality over time. So for me, the fact
that I don't know how much this is going to
cost us, I don't know how much this will be
(07:32):
disruptive on top of the Gwinnette one that we've already
passed even pause and that's why I switched from yes to.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
A not okay. And people can appeal their assessment, so
I mean, it's not like they can't go out and
appeal it. And what you're saying is really to keep
it local. It's almost like it's almost like a Republican thing, right, Yeah,
ower local versus.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Big local yeah, I'm a big local person fan, so.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Right, so keep it local. You know, if we don't
like what's happening at the county level, patreet Corners, there
is no military put at the cancer level, obviously there is.
So if you have a problem that you can either
feel your assessment or listen, just vote the counter commissioner out.
That's like voting these things in like this cool. So
let's move on to tax court in the judicial system,
(08:20):
and with that it's in brief.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, so I am going to be voting yes on
this one because I think that we need to remove
tax cases from your general que. I would much rather
that a case where somebody is waiting for their case
be adjudicated to not have their life hanging limbo because
of a tax case that's taking up a lot of time.
The other thing is that tax cases require a lot
(08:43):
of expertise that not every judge might have, and the
hope is it would relieve the burden on the criminal
justice system as well. Now, some of the cons on
that one is obviously that means that you know, the
governor gets to appoint those judges, not us as people.
We don't the vote for them, so less oversight. The
other one that people had mentioned to me recently is
(09:05):
that if you have a tax case, it might be
a little more burdensome or costly if your low income.
But for me, I really think that we should just
kind of take those because there's such such a niche
type of law that, you know, take it out of
the generic queue and put it in its own cueue
because then you know, businesses can kind of deal with
their own stuff and not take up the court's time.
(09:29):
But again, per usual, if you have concerns with it,
vote no and let's fix it.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So just is there I mean, I'm sure the statistics
about who is in the text courts that tax s courts,
but you know how many people, what the demographics are like?
Is it majority business people that are going to these okay.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Seniority businesses. But you know, with everything that happens with systems,
you're always going to have a small group of people
that could be negatively impacted. We don't, unfortunately, we don't
actually have that much research on it. I wish we did,
but we do know that when it comes to businesses,
they do want to be able to finish their cases
sooner rather than later, and this would be an opportunity
(10:12):
to do that. But again, as I always say, when
it comes to constitual amendments, if you have concerns, err
on the side of no. I just think in this case,
the positives outweigh the negatives. But I totally understand if
people think the opposite.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Okay, refront them a that one too. But a is
tax exemption for a tangible personal property?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, So I voted no on this one, and we'll
during session and we'll be voting no on this one
at the ballot box. There's a few reasons for this one.
We don't actually fully describe what we mean by tangible
property is the term that is being used for this
specific amendment. It's basically tax exempted for certain types of
(10:53):
tangible personal property. We kind of define it, we kind
of don't. There's a lot of room for people to
take advantage. So somebody could be, you know, take this
tax exempt and what it does. It actually raises the
exemption from seven to twenty thousand, and just a lot
of room for misuse. And the intention was to help businesses,
(11:15):
but the reality situation is that it would mostly help
larger companies and corporations and could actually inadvertently hurt small
businesses because the way that businesses do their small businesses
do their taxes. I'm not really sure that they're going
to be able to benefit from this as much, and
could actually be hurt because again, we have a lot
of programs that support small businesses and this might be
(11:37):
taking away from that support.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So I read something online about this particular piece just recently,
and I agree with you. It was vague. I mean,
it didn't say exactly what it was, but it did
say along the lines it gave an example for example.
So maybe it's a bad example, but what they gave is,
let's say you buy computer system. It's five thousand dollars system.
(12:00):
You're paying sales tax on it, yep, the tangible principal
or the tangible property tax on us Yepay, you have
to pay an additional tax on that equipment. I didn't
say correctly, Yeah, how you're.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Using it too. So it depends on the usage, It
depends on what it's generating, It depends on the equipment
and how it's used in your business. So, and that's
why I'm saying, it's so vague that what you're bringing
up makes total sense. You're like, Okay, you've already paid
taxes on it once, why are you paying taxes on
it again? If you're using it for your business. The
(12:35):
problem is that the way that taxes get itemized, the
concern is that there is going to be a lot
of ability to misuse this and it would cause a
decrease in revenue and we would take away programs that
actually help small businesses to succeed. And the next thing,
you know, these larger corporations are benefiting in a way
that was supposed to help you as a small business
(12:57):
owner but actually ends up hurting.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You in the way. So put the launcher business. I mean,
this is a maximum of twenty thousand lawncher insince twenty thousand.
It's like to drop in a bucket or is it
further Again.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It totally depends on how it's set up. And that's
what I'm saying. It's these are like this specific reference
and was written in such a way that I voted
for it no on the House floor, and we'll be
voting for it no again because it was kind of
ran through. There was no and I don't and I
need to like quadruple check this, but I looked for
a fiscal note, I couldn't really find one that would
tell me how much this would cost or the impact
(13:32):
it would have on our state. For me, I can't
even tell you to make a decision on this appropriately
because I can't even give you adequate numbers to say, yeah,
it's only twenty thousand, not a big deal drop in
the bucket for a large business, but a big deal
for a smaller business. But I don't even know if
that smaller business could even qualify, or what hoops they
have to run through, or what items count kind of thing.
(13:53):
And on top of that, I don't even know how
much it would cost us in the long run to
be able to give you, like a yes recommendation.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So if anyone wants to find out about this particular referendum,
I mean, any of these three that can go, I'll
have links on in the show notes, but it should
be easy enough to find where they are.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, So we have put up a voter guide on
all of our social media channels. I got to just
finish it on Facebook, but right now it's on Instagram. Actually, no,
it's everywhere. It's on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, wherever
you get your information. We posted the entire guide for
everybody to be able to access, and it goes through
the pros and cons of each one. I also go
(14:33):
through how I voted for it during session and how
I'll be voting for it the ballot box and why,
because I do believe in that transparency, right, Like you
can disagree with me on hey, we need to lower
these taxes at all cost possible. Like cool, totally no problem.
I just never want people to question what their elected
official is doing and why.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
And I appreciate that transparency. So even if you change
your vote and you decided to vote yes and no,
it's good to know why change that? Yeah, all right,
so let's move away from that a little bit. There's
another reference than coming up just for Gwennet Canton. That's
the transit reference yep, affecting infrastructure concernancy in Pea Street Corners.
(15:13):
I mean, we're mainly a far city, if you will,
and the autonomous vehicle pl street park thing just drives that.
It almost feels like Michigan sometimes. So how do you
think this referend the motive address our issues will impact
us locally here in Pea Street Corners.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed, for example,
is that in my district alone, we have four different cities,
and three of them are downtown centers. So they have festivals,
they have events, they have a lot of incredible activities,
and it comes with a lot of traffic. And so
what I tell people is, imagine if you could take
(15:55):
a convenient bus to the Fall festival in Duluth, or
for example, to any of the Norcross festivities that happen
in addition to the Peatree Corners festivities, because suddenly you
don't have to worry about parking, you don't have to
worry about getting stuck in traffic, you don't have to
worry about any of that kind of stuff. So this
transit referendum specifically would pay for one hundred and fifteen
(16:18):
miles of quick ride BRT light is what it's called.
So and what's really great about BRT light is that
it's almost as fast as a train without needing to
build the infrastructure for trains. It would do almost twenty
six miles of bus routes. It would have nearly three
hundred and forty six miles of county ride services, twenty
transit transfer centers, two airport connectors, and what I and
(16:43):
for Peatree Corners specifically, there is going to be one
of those airport connector routes in Peachtree Corners.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
This would connect to the Doraville station or no, these
are correct.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
These are like express buses. So to get give you
an example. Right now, I can drive about ten minutes
to Sugar Loaf Mills and I can take a bus
and it will take me directly to downtown and only
has four stops downtown before I get to the Capitol.
So on days when I don't have late evening events
at the Capitol during session, I will literally take the
(17:18):
bus and spend that hour that I would have spent
in traffic responding to emails or getting work done or
doing calls or whatever the case may be, and I'll
be in the AHOV lane. And it's incredibly I mean,
I'm kind of skeptical about buses, to be honest with you,
but I decided to try it, and I was very
pleasantly surprised. It's a clean bus, has Wi Fi is
(17:39):
full every single time I've taken it, to the point
that they've now had to run buses every five minutes
during rush hour because the buses will overfill and people
will have to go onto the next one. So it
would be similar to that kind of an experience. Think
of like a charter bus with the nice seats and
the cushions and things like that. And the hope is
(18:00):
to build that out for the entire county. Now, it's
going to be a thirty year project, as infrastructure takes
time to build, but it starts with the most dense
areas such as Lawrenceville and works its way out. So
over time, what you'll see is you'll see a decrease
in traffic because there's less cars on the road. Instead
of having forty cars, it's going to be just one bus.
(18:21):
And as I don't know if any you know, for
the listeners you have to commute, it just gets so
so awful.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
And it's interesting because with remote work now and hybrid
work still being in place, I mean, I don't think
that's going to go anywhere. If anything, just brought me
more hybrid rather than just dedicated remote remotely working. But
you know, coming from New York, I mean, and I
haven't lived here since ninety five, I can see some
(18:50):
there's good reasons in my mind, like there's a long
island railroad. There's other rail systems or even express bus
systems that are our coach seats and stuff that work
really well. You paid a premium for that above the
normal bus bus payment, and they were clean and they
were safe and stuff different than the bus than the
train system, at least in New York at the time,
(19:13):
and even here sometimes you hear things happening on Morita.
Why is not always the safest or the best that
it can be, just because of the nature of the beast,
I guess, but I can see why there would be
some resistance to this a little bit with regard to spending.
The amount of money that's going to be. What's the
(19:35):
total cost like over the period of time for this referendum.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's a one percent levied I gotta I gotta double
check the number.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
But it's a one penny tax. Actually what it is.
It's one penny tax on your sales tax. It would
be adding one more penny to any quinette sales tax, right,
And so all the time we're talking billions of dollars
being raised to be used. And it's like you said,
it's not really a train system. It's not bringing it's
(20:06):
not spending, you know, billion dollars to do two miles
track or something.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
No, no, no, this is this is like the way
I've explained it to people is that it's like the
biggest bang for your buck, right, we don't have the
density to justify train and this is Gwinett. This is
like by Gwinnette for Gwinnette, kind of a program that
focuses on only Gwinnett. It try I mean, obviously it's
trying to also, you know, connect people to other transit
(20:31):
systems in the area. But if there's a in our guide,
there's actually a map that will show you where it's
going to be a county ride what's called a quick ride,
and actually Peachtree Corners Norcross are both on the quick
ride route. The county ride will include all of you know,
Peatree Corners, Duluth, Norcross, and Berkeley Lake. You have the
(20:53):
Airport ride also connects into Peachtree Corners. There's going to
be one of.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
The transit and you say airport, right, that goes straight
to the airport from So there's.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Going to be what's called transit like little twenty new
transit stations. One of them is going to be in
Peatree Corners. The other one's going to be in Norcross
and the third one is going to be in Duluth.
So all of these downtown centers where we have a
lot of people, you'll actually be able to access at
least one and up to four so County Ride, Quick Ride,
(21:25):
Rapid Ride, and Airport Ride along these transfer stations and facilities.
So one of them is going to be here in
Peatree Corners.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So if I wanted to go to the airport, what
I'm getting at is I could go to that hub,
I could be dropped off the Patree Corners, picked the
bus and it takes you with some bolt with some
stops along the way. Maybe it'll take you all the
way to the airport. There's no additional there's no jumping
off getting onto a different system to get to the airport.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's the same system you there based on this map.
There might be a transfer to the airport line. But
you can also just park and ride, so you can
just park your car, which is what I do with
the Gwinnette one and the based on I'm trying to
see like there's it's called Hartsfield Jackson Ride, and I'm
actually trying to open it up.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
The one from Buenette County or from Peastreet Corners. Of
these micro hubs take you directly to the airport, you
would still have to make a transfer.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Somewhere, yes, or drive your car directly to there, right
or based on I'm trying to like reading the map
as we're talking right now, because I don't have memories.
But there, because like the it's a quick ride or
a county ride. Well, you can either take that to
connect you to the airport express bus because they don't
want to do any stops. They want somebody be able
to get on the bus and go directly to the airport,
(22:44):
or you can't. I'm trying to find where the hub is, okay, so.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
You can go there. So that's my point because originally
some of these things where you take you get on it,
you get to let's say the door of Hills board
the station up on there, and then you get to
the airport. Right. But what I'm hearing is that if
you're hopping on a Peachtree Corners hub or the loot,
(23:08):
did you go directly from here to the airport without
making any.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Jumps anywhere exactly exactly?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
So I mean that I find that more convenient than
having to stop somewhere, get off, walk, get another transfer,
wait for that. Okay, so it's straight just yes, So
if you.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Have a car, I'm trying to see. I'm trying to
see where the nearest hub is. There's obviously the Indian
Trail like Greyhound one, but I can't like the bus route.
I'm like looking at the bus route. It starts at
Mall of Georgia, goes down to Sugar Loaf Mills, goes
down to the Gwinnett Transit Center at Gwinnett Place. Indian Trail.
(23:48):
I can't fully read what that said. It's like ofs
or something like that. It's like right behind Norcross, but
that one. Any of these are on the route to
Hartsfield Jackson and you don't have to transfer. You just
part get on the bus and I'll take you directly
to the airport.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Gotcha, Okay? All right? Cool? So this is why everyone knows.
Some of that will have a link also to that map. Yeah,
and so that's why people can check that out. Also
the other there's pros and cons obviously, and we'll try
to find those links for people. Yeah, I want to
look at that because it is a penny that's being
added to our sales tax, and it's a commitment that
(24:24):
will stay there for quite a few years.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I think, yes, yeah, yeah, when you're building it, it'll
be about no more than thirty years. And the reason
for it is that when you're building this kind of infrastructure,
whether it's ordering buses or one of the things they're
going to do is these buses are going to have
the traffic like They're going to coordinate with the traffic system,
So if you're on a bus, it will always be
(24:48):
a green light. You don't have to stop at traffic lights,
you don't have to get caught in that traffic. Some
of them will actually have their own lane, so they
have to like designate some of the lanes for rapid
transit buses. Well, so a lot of that again going
back to the biggest bang for your buck. You're not
laying down tracks, you're not trying to rebuild stuff. It's
actually more technology based. And the other cool thing is
(25:09):
that for some of these quick transit ones, they're going
to be electric, so you don't have to deal with
the fumes of buses, you know, increased exhaust that kind
of thing. But it does take time, so That's why
that was one of my cons is that it will
take time for all this to be rolled out to
the county for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I mean there's all sorts of things legality and public
hearings and stuff for these types of things to even
set up the hubs, the micro hubs, like in p
Street corners, Like where would that be? I know it's
on a map somewhere suggested, but the ultimate place that
it would be would take time and public hearings and
stuff like that, I guess. But this is different than
(25:44):
the last time the transit referendum was on the ballot
because that last time included I think a Marta or
several Marta stops. I think it was at least one,
and I think that was to more of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yep, Hello, I love Platt. I've got too, so.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Look I'm a huge I will say this, There is
very little that I miss about my time in school
in DC. But the one thing I do miss is
having access to public transportation because it was just so
nice not to have to sit in traffic. I could
get so much work done. You know, you could be
on your phone, you can relax, you can read. It's
just I don't like traffic, and anything that will make
(26:27):
that better would go a long way. And I will
say too, Quinette is growing very rapidly, and if we
don't start this now, we're going to run into a
lot of problems in the future where we're going to
see a situation where our infrastructure can't actually handle how
many people are coming in. It's not gonna be able
to handle the businesses that want to come here. It's
not going to be able to handle like the kind
of growth that would bring better jobs and that would
(26:51):
improve our communities and that kind of thing. We end
up facing a ceiling. But the problem is people are
still coming and we're gonna have, you know, hopefully more
families and more kids and that kind of thing. And
the sooner we can start prepping our infrastructure for that
kind of a demand, the less disruptive it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
And I agree with you on that. The I mean,
we're seeing more apartments being built on multi family people
aren't buying as many houses because of the nature of
you know, mortgage rates, and there's less land to build on,
and it is by.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
These corporations, you know, I mean, it's both furiating.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yes, I mean the trend is build to rent. I
mean it's just like racy, the amount of private industry
purchasing these homes that you're going to even in subdivisions
where you're going to just rent them out to other people.
And there's a trend among younger people anyway to rent
at this point because they can't do the buying. And
we were talking about it during one episode with the
(27:52):
city manager about being affordable housing. How do you how
do you create that? How can you incentivize that? Force that.
Sometimes incentives don't work. We literally have to force certain things.
So when there's not enough affordable housing and you have
a need for labor, maybe you know the transit system
(28:15):
is certainly one way to do that. Yep. Yeah, let's
move on to so let's see we've done the transit.
Then there is feedback, all right, little guy A little
directs that you on wire sometimes get electrocuted. So there's
(28:36):
a feedback from the community. I think that would be
that you're hearing properly, especially if you're a campaign and
go and do it, do it to do and stuff.
So what type of feedback are you getting, whether it's
national thoughts or just local you know, what are the pressing,
pressing issues that you're seeing from this district.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, so my favorite part about campaigning, and you know
for those who don't know a state represented, is we
don't actually get staff. Right. So the nice thing about
campaign season is it gives us an opportunity to fundraise
and get staff and be able to door knock. And
I'll go and door knock myself. Well, everyone on the
team campus. It doesn't matter if you're the candidate or
if you're a brand new everyone's doing the work. And
(29:17):
what's been really amazing to me is the fact that
there are some things that haven't changed. Right. People have
concerns about fully funding education, the size of the classrooms
for their kids. You know, how do we retain teachers
because teachers are leaving, they're burning out, you know, making
sure kids have access to the best educators, taking care
of those educators, that kind of thing. But the thing
(29:38):
that has gotten like more, like we've seen more at
the doors over time is actually we're just talking about
which is housing, whether that includes hoa oversight. Some people
are starting to realize that there are these companies taking
over HA duties and it's causing a lot of problems.
One of the things I learned, and again this is
why housing is always harder for stay people, because this
(30:02):
is there's so much that happens on a city and
county level that is a little more complicated. But one
thing I learned recently talking to one of our city
council members is that companies are coming in and buying
single family homes. They're pricing out young families, and it
is terrible.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Cities are actually not allowed to have a database to
track how many of these homes are up for rent
versus being sold to actual families, And there are these
laws that we have on the books in Georgia that
preempt local ability to actually handle some of this like
part of the housing crisis.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, that's true. So I heard the same thing, actually.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, And so you know, people of the doors will
say things like, you know, I wanted to, for example,
move or get a larger home, but I can't because
we're being priced out everywhere. I'll tell you that there's
a house on the corner here that is two hundred
thousand dollars more than when we first bought our house
in twenty twenty, and it's only been four years and
(31:00):
I don't think it's it's not I mean, it's a
great home, it's a beautiful home, but I don't think
it's worth half a million dollars. And so you're seeing this,
I mean insane like housing market, and people keep talking about, well,
we just need to build, like they want us to
lower standards in order to be able to build more.
But that's just not true. All you're doing is making
homes less safe, and you're just letting them pocket the
(31:23):
extra part of their profit. So how do we to,
like you said, is there a way to force it?
Is there a way to incentivize it? Is there a
way to you know, I think we use a lot
of carrots here in Georgia because we really do care
about being the number one place to do business. But
the reality is that companies are profit driven and if
there are no consequences to not following the law, the
(31:43):
law is just a suggestion at that point.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I mean, I totally agree. I mean, I was just
speaking to someone else here in the city about a
particular development that went. Now, the schematics for it, or
the renderings for it, doesn't look the building itself does
not look like the renderings given because they end up
using slightly different materials and stuff. And so when rezonings
(32:08):
are done for let's say multifamily and stuff, they you know, cities, counties,
they want to allow, like you said, some room for
innovative creative work, right. But the problem is it is
profit driven. And when you have profit driven, it profit
drives over everything else on that list. And if they
(32:30):
can get away with using slightly cheaper materials or if
you say landscape, these got to be you know, you
got to replace all the trees. They'll put in one
inch radius trees versus three inch radius trees. Unless you
specifically condition these things, they will not do it. Yeah,
So that's that is a problem. The database for knowing
(32:53):
whether buildings bought at least privately, like through an LLCIT
or corporation is out there. They can't be.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Found that like officially, you as a city, you cannot
set it yourself. And I think that's just insane.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yes it is, And I in fact I'm looking at
actually collected that data at some point I'm publishing because
I believe there's at least twelve to sixteen percent that
may be owned privately in the set.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Even worse, in Atlanta, it's forty percent of single family
homes are now owned by private corporations. They are no
longer on the market, they are up for rent. These
aren't like people who have two homes and renting one
out for college kids. These aren't actual hedge funds who
are buying up these portfolio of homes. And sometimes they'll
just sit on them and then sell them for a profit,
(33:45):
and the next one will sell it for a profit,
and suddenly the cost of a home doubles, even though
no updates were made to it, or very little, like
you know, shallow updates were made to it. And yeah,
and if I'm a know, if I'm a new family,
or a young family, or a young couple like me
and my husband are, I'm telling you the reason I'm
(34:05):
in the house I'm in right now is that the
agent for the people who are trying to buy it
to rent was so aggressive that she scared away the family.
They had already outed us. I'm serious, they had outbid us,
thought we weren't going to get this house. And the
agent for the family came back and said, look, they
were very turned off by how aggressive that agent was,
(34:26):
and even though your offer is lower, they're willing to
accept it, and we got really lucky. But it can
it can. I mean it's tough, it's really really hard.
And you know, you add that on, you add the
increase of everything else utilities, so we don't have an option,
you know, of who you pick as your energy provider.
(34:47):
And Georgia Power has increased our utilities four times. Four times.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Isn't that amazing because this is supposed to be camped
at them. They allowed to take right right, and yet
you don't keep getting And I'm sure Georgia Power raised
at tax because of the nuclear plant that went online
that took them years and billions and billions of dollars over. Yep.
It's just like protection.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
That's what I say when I say about consequences. So
I sit on the Energy, Utility and Telecoms Committee and
to tell you how this worked. And I'm a Georgia
Power customer and it's driving me crazy. And we are
trying to figure out a way to allow for more
community solar and solar options for home so that way
we can drive down energy costs. We've seen this work
in other states. It's really really important for us to
(35:31):
be able to create some form of competition because Georgia
Power is a legal monopoly and it's supposed to be
held responsible by the Public Service Commission, but they're not
really fully doing that right now. And to your point
about like plant fogel, everyone's like, oh, we're gonna make
it twenty five percent clean energy, and I'm sitting here
and I'm looking at these graphs and two percent of
(35:52):
it is solar. Two percent. We have farmers who would
love to lease out their lands to solar companies and
become solar forcilities because what it does it creates revenue
for the farmer to then maintain the rest of their
land and not have to sell this land that's been
the family for a long time. But because Georgia Power
is not like keeps, I mean, the only bills they
came after are solar bills. It is wild.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, well, they're protecting an entity. That's fine. And even
in some states where they're allowed to put solar and
you're allowed to feed it back to the grid and
get aid for it, you still have to pay an
infrastructure fee because obviously there's an infrastructure that has maintained.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And I told Georgia Power, I said, I completely understand
you guys do, and they do, to be I like
to be fair, they do a very great job of
maintaining the infrastructure grid. But if you have a monopoly
mostly on that grid and you're part of the grid,
can we come to a negotiation? And I've asked. I
actually got yelled up at the CEO for asking this
because she was like, you know, we came up with
the rebate rates already. You don't need to reopen that
(36:55):
can of worms. I was like, but what does that
range look like? Can you explain it to me? Can
you tell me how many cents on the dollar is
required for you to be able to handle more solar
and maintain the integrity of the grid. And they just
they don't want to answer that question.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, they may not have the answer to it. They
don't care to get it because if they, like you said,
if the information data is important, right, if you have
that information, then you have to make it. If you
don't research that information but you sort of know the answer,
then you don't have to worry about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
So if your bill went up, please email us, especially
to my house. Email it's through at roman at houseiga
dot gov, because I do want to see how much
people's bills have gone up, and I can actually bring
that up during committee hearings and talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Good. That's excellent. And just to jet one more thing
on the private businesses buying property, I mean, the reason
that that works out for them too, I think is
because there's a tax advantage, right yp they get to
write off the mortgage, the interest rates and stuff, but
they get to anetize the property because it's an investment
on their side.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Okay, so nobody knows this. I'm so glad you know this.
I actually co authored a bill on this with Representative
Spencer Fry, and nobody would move it and it was
really weird to me. So I'm gonna try it again
if I'm re elected. But the way that it works
is that if, like you said, commercial property degrades over time,
so businesses actually get a tax break on that commercial property,
(38:21):
well they now count homes that actually appreciate in value
over time to get your tax break, right, So they're
like hipping. It's awful. So we wrote a bill, and
part of the concern was some people who owned small
businesses will also own their home under that small business.
So we didn't want to like go after single family homes.
So I actually helped write this part where it said
that if you are the business owner and your address
(38:44):
is in Georgia, you can be exempt from this, but
everybody else you can no longer get that we like, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Not, so that would that would help to degree I
can sing, although I can see the other side of
that setting up and Georgia corporate ration the subsidiary of
a larger company. I mean those things can.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
They can't have multiple homes, you can't like Yeah. It
was also to take away like any multiple home type whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
The maximum member or something that you can't have more
than two homes or something exactly. Ye, that's great.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Very few people knew about this, and I I was like,
why don't we just bill and so why not?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
You know, you could write a bill about it, you know,
and I appreciate you even think about that, because most
people don't know that. Let's talk a little bit because
were it's just a little bit more time. I'm back
on voting. Right, what that looks like? You know, you're
you're an incumbent, you're running for re election, you have
opposition from the Republican Party. Obviously, did you want to
(39:53):
say about that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, so I have. I've been an organizer way longer
than I've been elected official. And addition to like my
professional life.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And which, by way, what do you do for your
professional I used to be.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
A deloitte Now I'm just like a freelance consultant now
that I work, you know now that I'm an elected official.
But you know, the thing that I really care about
is I really want people to be civically engaged. And
that starts with us filling out our entire ballot. Everyone
always talks about the presidential there's so much you know,
energy and focus on that, but like you, like we
talked about the very beginning on our ballot is obviously
(40:28):
the presidential. We've got our members of Congress, You've got
your state senator, state House, You've got your referendums, You've
got your county commissioners. So our county commissioner is Kirkland Cardon,
who's amazing, and he's up for reelection this year. And
so please, like I cannot stress enough not only voting
but also filling out your entire ballot. We have people
who will go vote and they'll leave the rest of
(40:50):
their ballot, the rest of their ballot blank and it's
you know, a big problem. So if you have any
questions or you don't know how to you know, you're
not sure about something on your ballot, doing a byob
so bring your own ballot to our gotv rally which
is going to be at Shorty Howell Park this Saturday
on the nineteenth. And you can actually vote early in
(41:11):
any voting location in Gwinet because it's early voting, so
as long as you're in the Canny can vote anywhere
between now and November first, and voting locations are open
seven to seven. It's really easy. There's no lines, so
highly recomend people go because and the reason I mentioned
this part is it took me three tries to vote
in the primary this year. The first time we got
(41:32):
there just a little too late. The second time I
opened my wallet and my ID wasn't with me. I
happen to have taken it out like at an appointment
or something. I forgot to put it back in. So
it definitely took three times. Three times. It's just charm.
So I always tell people don't leave it until the
last minute. You never know what's going to come up.
You never know what's going to happen if you request
(41:52):
an absentee ballot, if you don't get it back and
mail it back by the twenty fifth. It's kind of
my arbitrary personal deadline because of just mail. Please go
vote in person. Just let them know to like, hey,
I requested one, either got it or didn't get it,
and I would prefer to vote in person, and they'll
be able to help you vote in person. But please
please go vote early. It's really easy, really quick. If
(42:15):
you have questions or want to go vote with someone,
come vote with me on Saturday the nineteenth at Shorty Howell.
We'll have really great food snacks. It will be from
one to three and we want to make it fun.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
And I think some of the early voting locations are
well at least here.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Are just two in our district.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
So pick the Drill Recreation Center.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yes, it's on the it's the one that's on the
main peatre industrial and not in the back where the
park is correct.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Okay, cool. So you have absentee ballad also that can
like you said, and those who counted based on the
based on when they arrived with the polling place, well
based on the.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Post war so most people say postmark, but again I
don't want to risk it, and I just tell people
please put it in because here's the other thing you
can drop it off. So angry that there's a voting location. Sorry,
not anywhere during early voting.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Some of the.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Locations are have ballot drop boxes. You can check that out,
like Guenette County.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
State Park has one recreation centers a drop shortly now
al does not, yep, so.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Please that's actually if you have a ballot and you're
able to physically go, please put it in a ballot
box by election day. I'm just really worried because there
have been a lot of mail delays. There have been
a lot of like just weirdness happening. Even if something
is posted, it's not getting where it's supposed to be.
So I just want to run into an issue where
somebody relies on USPS to mail their ballot and sid
(43:48):
you know, and it's and it's awful because this is
what happens when you defund stuff, right suddenly services are worse,
And this is people don't know this. USPS is act
a constitutionally mandated thing, so unlike UPS and FedEx, they're
actually required to reach everybody. No matter how far they
(44:09):
are versus these corporations that can just say, well, we're
not going to deliver to you, and so it just
makes it all worse. So that's my long storage feel
of if you do absentee, One, if you run any issues,
reach out to us. Two drop it off. And three
if you're not able to complete that process by the
twenty fifth, please go vote in person.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Do you see have you seen any you know? With
three hundred thousand people voted on the first day of
early voting, which is a record in the state of Georgia,
and so apparently, you know, I think I forget what
the what the breakout was, whether it was like forty
odd percent Republican, because you could tell data. I think
(44:48):
where the breakouts are in twenty odd percent was like
independent system. Are you seeing or hearing? I know this
is early still, but any any issues with voter suppressed?
They like that.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
So you know, what I tell people is that we
have over the past decade have had to build the
kind of organizing infrastructure to be able to get around
a lot of that. So thankfully we're at a point
now where a lot of people in Georgia know what
to expect if they run into any issues. The one
that I keep hearing most recently is that people will
go on MVP dot SOS dot GA dot gov. That
is your my voter page, so MVP dot ss GA
(45:25):
dot gov and they will log on and they will
see that it'll say their voter status is inactive. And
so people have been feeling like, oh, I can't go vote.
So if you log on and you see that it
says inactive, you can still go vote. That is totally okay.
We did have a few people that would try to
log in and their entire voter page is gone, like
(45:46):
it'll give them an error. If that's the case, reach
out to us. We can connect you to a hot
line that can help you figure that out. So some
cases like that, but nothing too crazy.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
So does does that mean? So if they don't see
it all, but I go to a voting place right
and they find the name in the database because they're connected,
they're going to find it. Let's say I'm fine to vote.
Fine if for some reason they don't see it there,
but I know I voted two years ago in a
primary or something, and so I should still be in there.
(46:19):
Can I take Can I request a ballot. Forget what
you call that ballot provisional provisional thank you? Yeah, well
I could ask for a provisional ballot and that So
the rule.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Of thumb is before you get to that stage, very
kindly and politely ask them to either pull up your address.
There are different ways to do this, right. They can
pull it up by your address, they can pull it
up by your driver's license number. And the reason I
say that the provisional ballot should be your last resort
is that once you submit a provisional ballot, you actually
have to physically go to the voter registration location. It's
(46:53):
like the the book borders for Gwinnett and you have
to like go and show up in person to fix
your ballot. So I always tell people like very politely,
because this happened to me when I moved back after
grad school. The person couldn't find me in the system,
and she kept insisting I wasn't in there, and so
she was able to find me through my address rather
than my name, and it worked out. So you know,
(47:16):
first and foremost, try and be very polite about it.
They're doing their jobs. And then obviously, as the last resort, yes,
go ahead, and request a provisional ballot, but be prepared
to go down to the registration office to finish out
what you need to get finished out for your ballot and.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
People run to vote. Still, what is the two at
this point?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
No? The deadline was October seventh, so.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Violence is there anything else you would like to talk
about before we sign off?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
No? Like I said, if you run into any issues voting,
finding out where to vote your absentee ballot, whatever the
case may be, you feel free to reach out to us.
You can, you know, we're on social media, but the
best place to do it is to email us at
info at RUA the number four Georgia dot com. We
are tracking cases and helping constituents vote. If you have
(48:08):
any questions, feel free to ask us too about your ballot.
You're not sure who to vote for, I'm happy to
give you my opinion. I'm very you know, I try
to be very transparent about that, and you know, just
please remember I remind people that my city council member
won his race by four votes in a runoff. So
even if you think your vote doesn't matter, particularly in
a swing state like Georgia, it matters so much. So
(48:31):
you know, take a few minutes, go vote early, make
it an event, take your friends and your family and yeah,
happy voting.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Great. So on that note, I appreciate you being with me.
Rua thank you, and in fact, you know what, why
don't I get off for a second and then you
give us your one minute pitch. Okay, even though you
just did it a little bit like that, definitely use
this momentude to give that picture and answer for the
(49:02):
velop Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
So my name is Rue Roman. I am the Georgia
State representative for House dies Stret ninety seven, and I'm
running for reelection. I ran because I want to put
public service back into politics and I want to keep
doing that work. In my first term, I've been able
to pass a bill out of the House. It ran
out of time, so you're going to keep working on
it to designate EMS as an essential service. So I've
worked on healthcare issues. I've worked on education issues by
(49:26):
fully funding education this year, including the Hope Scholarship. I
want to keep working on that. You know, when it
comes to just making government work better for all of us,
that continues to be my number one priority. And so
if I'm re elected, I want to keep doing the
work that I have been doing and advocating for you
at the Capitol and every way that I can. But
thank you for your support originally and I hope to
(49:46):
have it again come by November fifth.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Thank you for doing that. I'm a little bit with
me for a minute, but everyone else, thank you for
being with us. You're listening to the podcast, If you
listen to this on Apple or Spotify, leave a review.
Love that because that's an easy way for people to
find us. Then if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook,
do leave comments if you like, and we'll see if
(50:11):
there's any questions you have that we can answer thus
for you. Otherwise there'll be links in the show notes
on the website. But thank you again, appreciate everyone joining us.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Thanks m.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Thanks for listening to Peachtree Corner's Life with Rico Figliolini.
You can listen to the show wherever podcasts are found,
like iHeartRadio, Spotify and Apple Podcast. Leave us a review too,
it helps others find the show as well. Don't forget
to like our Facebook page and YouTube channel for notifications
of our live simulcast video streams of the show. Catch
(50:48):
our other podcast shows at Living in Peachtreecorners dot com.
In fact, you can listen to our other popular show,
The Capitalist Sage, twice a month podcast about and four businesses.
The show brings you interviews with business owners, leaders and
subject matter experts. Find what you need to meet to
day's challenges that every business owner faces. Check out the
(51:10):
show at the Capitalist Sage dot com
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