Podcast
How Georgia State legislation affects local cities, self-taxing districts, medical cannabis and more [Podcast]
Published
8 months agoon
How does 5G technology and public safety work? Explore the creation of self-taxing Community Improvement Districts and how they help a city. Urban development, changing cityscapes, new zoning for medical cannabis, and smart city planning—all this and more in the latest episode of Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager Brian Johnson and host Rico Figliolini.
Resources:
State of Georgia Legislative information on the CID
Medical Cannabis Information
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – City Manager Brian’s 5G Initiatives at Curiosity Lab
00:04:34 – Public Safety Initiatives and Legislative Defense
00:09:16 – Exploring the Creation of Community Improvement Districts
00:14:21 – Funding and Benefits of a Community Improvement District
00:16:54 – Upcoming Town Center Improvements and Openings
00:22:26 – New Obstacle Course and Memorial Day Plans
00:28:16 – April City Council Meeting on Development
00:31:06 – Urban Growth and the Limits of City Authority
00:34:37 – Urban Development and Changing Cityscapes
00:37:45 – Navigating City Growth and Zoning Changes
00:41:52 – Planning Zoning for Medical Cannabis in Georgia
00:44:56 – Regulating Dispensary Locations and Processes
00:47:00 – Anticipating Zoning Requests and Smart City Planning
Podcast Transcript:
Rico Figliolini 0:00:00
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. And today, Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager. Hey, Brian, how are you?
Brian Johnson 0:00:09
Good. Rico, how are you?
Rico Figliolini 0:00:10
Good. Good. It’s a beautiful day, actually, when we’re recording this remotely, but we have a lot of things we’re going to be talking about. But before we get into that, I do want to say thank you to our corporate sponsor, EV Remodeling, Inc. Eli, who lives here in Peachtree Corners, where the company is based, is a great guy doing great work, from buildouts to whole house remodels. So check them out at evremodelinginc.com. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. So now let’s talk a little bit about Brian. I know you’ve been busy. You’ve been going out doing speaking engagements. I want to mention one that you’re going to be going to at some point, which is next month, ISC West 2024, which is a conference trade show in the security, public safety realm. You’re going to be talking to them about what we’re doing here. Why don’t you give us just a three minute thing on that, again that’s happening in April. Tell us, what’s the plan?
Brian Johnson 0:01:09
So I was asked to speak at that conference specifically about how we’re using 5g within the curiosity lab testing environment to help enhance and scale certain products in certain areas. This conference specifically is interested in cybersecurity, then some autonomous vehicle and then public safety, like drone, or as our marshals have stood up, body cam testing and using 5g as a way to make those products better or to be able to scale them. An example of that would be if you get a 5g environment to be able to get to where all the law enforcement officers within that environment that are wearing body cameras when they’re turned on, the 5g environment is robust enough that it could actually stream live back to maybe real time crime center. Or they can download video of an engagement where they turn the camera on because they don’t have it on all the time. There are certain times you gotta turn it on. But currently, police officers end up at the end of their shift. They go back to the station and they’ve got to take out the memory chip and put it into a computer and download it directly. That way, just because it’s so much video data really takes a lot of space. And that would be huge if they could both stream it live back to command center, where you have other people watching and be able to download it live and not have to go back to the station. It’ll just be an example where 5G can be used to deal with. So I’m going to be talking about, I was asked to talk about some of those applications that we’re using 5G to help do research and development on.
Rico Figliolini 0:03:09
Which is great because most of these conferences that you all go to, both here in the states and overseas, like Israel and european countries, they end up actually bringing sometimes companies to our city that want to do work here.
Brian Johnson 0:03:24
So good economic impact, just conference speaking engagements. It used to be to where we were always having to make our case as to why we’re interesting enough to speak at them. And it’s kind of, we get reached out to, but we don’t generally go to conferences. And it’s just conference where you’re like walking a showroom floor handing out business cards. We usually use this as, call it an excuse to line up meetings with companies that are in the area, that are in certain sectors that we want to make them aware of curiosity lab and its capabilities as a way to get them to be like, oh, wow, I didn’t know that that existed. And you don’t charge to use it and you have all these cool toys and infrastructure we can use. So we turn down a lot of these things if they don’t correspond to us being able to meet with other companies at the same time. So this is a space that with the Marshall stood up public safety space has certainly expanded. And so it’s more of interest to us than it hasn’t been in the past. So we’ve been asked to speak of this before, but this time we accept it just because we have more public safety r d going on here than we have.
Rico Figliolini 0:04:55
Right. Cool. So let’s bring this back a little closer to home. Now, actually, Atlanta under the gold dome, because there’s a legislative session going on. There’s legislation in there particularly that would affect the city of peace for corners that you all have been working on. So tell us a little bit about that and what impact that will bring to the city.
Brian Johnson 0:05:15
Well, I’ll start with legislative sessions are 95% defense and 5% offense. So as usual, our legislative affairs people, lobbyists that we use and in some internal staff, we’ve ended up playing defense on bills that could hurt us in some way, shape or form. We’ve talked about this before in years past, or I’ve used as an example. But yet again, there was another bill that was introduced that would prohibit property tax bills from having anything other than the one property tax line item.
Rico Figliolini 0:05:58
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:05:59
For municipalities that either don’t have property tax or have a lot of additional fees that they charge residents and don’t want to stand up a billing department or don’t want to have a bill that only has fees on it, it would be significantly negative for us because our collection. So we use Gwinnett County’s property tax bill for us to put on solid waste. So your trash collection is billed annually. Your stormwater user fee is billed annually. And for some locations that have street lights that are assessed based on the frontage of their property that’s on there, our collection rate is 99% because it’s on a property tax bill. And if you don’t pay the whole bill, technically speaking, at some point you can find your property being auctioned off on the courthouse steps.
Rico Figliolini 0:07:01
True.
Brian Johnson 0:07:02
So people pay it. But if you removed it and we had to invoice, just say solid waste and stormwater, our collection rate, for the nationally of cities that do that, their collection rate is about 65%. It’s crazy because a lot of people think, for instance, they don’t pay their trash collection, and then they’re kind of like, whatever.
Rico Figliolini 0:07:31
There’S no recourse doing it.
Brian Johnson 0:07:33
I’m going to dump my trash in a vacant lot. I’m going to do whatever. I’ve abandoned the property. I mean, just a lot of different things. Water, they’re like, what are they going to do to me if I don’t? Drainage. So just bad bills like that. We try to do what we can to make our state legislators know that it could harm municipalities. We also fight a lot of bills that would remove our decision making at the local level and move it to the state level where cities are generally posed to, because we feel like the best decisions are made by elected officials closest to the area that’s affected.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:23
Agreed. I think some of that was dealing with at one point with building materials, whether it was steel or wood, for three story or higher buildings.
Brian Johnson 0:08:34
Rico. So there the state decided that in their wisdom, they would prevent cities from having any kind of requirements of building material that commercial office buildings are built. And this stemmed from some cities saying that if you hit four stories or more, it had to be structural steel. There are wood products out there that allow you to go up to that height or more that are a wood product that has the same, I guess, structural strength as steel. And the state said, no, we’re not going to let you decide at the local level. Those are ones that know, no offense, but a state legislator from Rabin county or Chatham county is not necessarily the best position to know what is best for Peachtree corners. But anyway, there’s a long way of saying, play a lot of defense. This year, we did have a little bit of offense. We decided to take advantage of this session to do something that we’ve been thinking about doing and may do in the near future. We don’t have it exactly set at our level to execute quite yet, but it’s around the creation of community improvement districts, or CID, as they’re called. Probably the closest one to us here is Gateway 85 CID, correct?
Rico Figliolini 0:10:11
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:10:12
It is an area of city or county in which the businesses inside of this defined CID agree to voluntarily tax themselves at an additional rate. And that additional rate creates resources that have to go back into this particular area to improve it in various things. We’ve kicked around a couple of locations where that might be of value at some point in the future. But in order to do it, you have to have legislation allowing that local government to create it. So we decided this session to go ahead and have that legislation created so that in the future it only requires two things. One is a certain percentage of, again, the property owners within the area that you want to do this, they have to agree to do it and then has to agree, and both of those entities have to match up. But what this local legislation does is at least removes us having to go back to the general assembly. This removes that. So it’s kind of the first step of a three step process, and we just wanted to do it. And that bill is moving along. I have every indication to think that it’ll pass this session, and then in the future, it could be the near future, it could be a long time, it may never happen, but at least if the decision was made that there’s a certain area that it makes sense to do, there would have to be a campaign and lots of meetings with all those property owners to get them up to speed on the value. And then you basically have a mini referendum, and if you get the required number of votes that’s presented to city council, and the last step is city council to say, yes, the id is created.
Rico Figliolini 0:12:13
I’m assuming the. Let’s not assume it would be votes of people within a defined district, that you all would draw the boundaries around and it would be commercial and residential or just commercial.
Brian Johnson 0:12:26
Well, it’s kind of property owner, so it can be residential if residents are in there. But there’s an equation. It’s got to be a certain percentage of property owners and then also got to be a certain percentage of the taxable value of the property contained. So, for instance, if you had an area in which there was this big Goliath corporate tenant there, and they were significant part of it, you a don’t want them to be singularly able to say yes or no. But then conversely, you don’t want a bunch of small, little property owners to be able to do something that ends up putting a huge burden on this big goliath. So it’s a combination of both that has to weigh in, and all those requirements are laid out in state law that we don’t get to choose our choices, but we just have to have legislation allowing city council to create CIDs if these other votes are.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:38
And Cids for those that aren’t aware. I mean, the one that you mentioned before covers, I think, Jimmy Carter, 85, Gwinnett Place mall. That whole area over there, Gwinnett Place.
Brian Johnson 0:13:51
Mallette Place is Gwinnett Place. CID is another CID.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:56
Okay.
Brian Johnson 0:13:57
Gateway 85 does not cover that. Gateway 85 is more like Jimmy Carter on both sides of 85. It’s kind of a corridor.
Rico Figliolini 0:14:09
That’s right. It’s more of a corridor.
Brian Johnson 0:14:11
Place CID is its own CID of what was or is the Gwinnett Place mall itself and some of the surrounding businesses that are kind of in that.
Rico Figliolini 0:14:22
So what does it fund, generally? What does a CID fund, they’d want to know?
Brian Johnson 0:14:30
Could be public safety aspect. Could be additional streetlights, it could be cameras, it could be off duty police officers. There could be infrastructure improvements. You could improve roads, signage, facade improvements to businesses. It’s really whatever that CID, because if a CID is created, a board has to be created to govern it. And the board’s composition also is stipulated. You have to have a certain number of board members have to come from property owners, and a certain number are appointed by city council. You just have board composition. And so that board decides the rate which is capped. There’s a cap to decide the rate. They decide what it’s going to go to. They manage. But gateway 85 has done a lot of flock and video cameras. They pay for off duty police protection. They’ve done street lighting. I’m not sure if they’ve done any actual physical infrastructure, but that’s kind of the type of thing, I’ve seen it where facade improvements, where businesses could come in and actually give a refresh to their building through collected there. So the theory is if this defined area kind of rising tide lifts all boats, then that also feeds itself, because then that means the tax value of the properties go up, which means there’s more money collected even without changing the amount because the value is more. So that’s even more money in there. And it just self fulfills.
Rico Figliolini 0:16:18
And it doesn’t regulate anything, usage or anything within that CRD.
Brian Johnson 0:16:25
No, that’s why it’s just community improvement district. It’s just to improve that community through some of those things I said. But no, every business still operates the same. He’s still the regulatory agency for that. You get your business license. If you meet zoning restrictions, you can do whatever you want. Still America, right?
Rico Figliolini 0:16:51
All right, so let’s move on to. Let’s talk a little bit about town center improvements. I know most of it’s coming to a head shortly as far as grand openings and things coming to fruition. So give us a rundown of what’s actually going to be opening soon and where we are.
Brian Johnson 0:17:11
Yes, we got a bunch of the improvements around the town green that are kind of going to be finishing up here in the next month or two. First one is going to be the dog park. The dog park is essentially done. The video cameras over the dog park are getting installed on Monday, which is important because we both know that it’s probably day two. We’re going to get some dog fight, and somebody’s going to reach out to the city to say, I want that video because that dog attacked my dog and they should pay my bills. So we wanted to make sure we had video surveillance. And then Friday, March 15, at 04:00 p.m. Is the grand opening of the dog park. If you bring your dog, we have some peach tree corners, chopskis that are dog related. We’re going to give out. Yes. And the dog park will be open. So that’s the first one.
Rico Figliolini 0:18:23
Before we leave that one. What was it called? The bar or the concession? The bone bar. Is that going to be open, too?
Brian Johnson 0:18:33
It will not be open quite yet. We still have three or four weeks before that’ll be done. But yes, there will be a small, not a shed, but a small little bar that it’s going to look like Snoopy’s dog house. And it’ll have a window that will open into the fenced area of the dog park and also outside. So you actually, when we do, we’ll have to end up bidding out the contract to be able to use that. We haven’t quite decided on hours and whatever, but we’ll bid it out. Somebody will win the bid and then they’ll be able to open up and have some sort of beverage component that you have access to. So before too long, you could take your dog to the dog park and while you’re there, go get a drink of some kind, alcoholic or non alcoholic, and then chill out on the benches there. We got some shade structures that are there, so shaded part. Half of the dog park is artificial turf and then half of it is natural wooded area. Then we have a small dog and a big dog component to the dog park. So it’ll be for dog owners who want to go there. And maybe it’s even in the morning where there’s coffee served out of there. Not sure, but it’ll be used, hopefully to provide a value to the dog owners who are thirsty, cool and town green.
Rico Figliolini 0:20:20
I know they’re getting sod, not sod. Well, sod. Yeah, I guess that’s going to be finished soon, too.
Brian Johnson 0:20:27
Yes. We removed all the old sod and dug down like, I don’t know, 3ft and removed all the old Georgia clay out of me. And we put in a drainage system and good soil backfilled. And we are ready to start laying sod late next week. And we’re wanting to lay it in as soon as possible. It’ll still be off limits for use because we need the sod to take.
Rico Figliolini 0:20:56
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:20:57
And in preparation for our May concert, our first concert in May, which I believe is the Taylor Swift cover, I can assure you herself, I doubt, but it’s a, you know, entertainer. And so as a result, there could be certainly a significant amount of people who go to that concert, and we don’t want the sod to be walked on too early. So anyway, that’ll happen. Then. The tot lot, the smaller kid playground, the mat install around the playground equipment is starting next week, and it’ll be the end of this month at some point, I believe. Lewis Svela, my communication director, is trying to come up with the best date. But it’ll be the end of this month. We’ll have a grand opening of that. And so then that lot, that little kitty playground will be open.
Rico Figliolini 0:22:05
Right?
Brian Johnson 0:22:06
So that’ll be good. And then the end of this month, we should have the towers placed on what was the old fitness trail area. It’s really become an obstacle course now. And just why we’re having to secure it like we are. But the towers are going to make it look like a frontier fort.
Rico Figliolini 0:22:31
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:22:33
Then we’ll have some signage on what age people can use it, because we certainly run into people who have no business being on it unsupervised. It’s just an insurance nightmare potentially for us, but that’ll be good. So I would say beginning of April, everything except Middletown Green itself will be open, fully used, and then by the may concert we’ll essentially be done with all of the upgrades that ring the town green and it’s off to the races.
Rico Figliolini 0:23:14
It’s amazing. It’s just going to be amazing. Especially with the concerts coming in and Peachtree Corners festival happening later. It’s all cool. Can’t wait for that all to be complete.
Brian Johnson 0:23:27
Rico, one thing we didn’t talk about prior to the show that maybe talk about now, the obstacle course presented an opportunity that the Peachtree Corners Veterans association is going to potentially take advantage of, and that is on Memorial Day. As you know, the festival or the Peace Street Corners Veterans association organizes an event for Memorial Day and Veterans day out at the Veterans monument. And the Veterans association is essentially going to have an obstacle course competition aimed at young people, like middle and high school age kids that’ll be supervised, but for the purpose of maybe instilling a greater value to military service than the military right now is getting from young people, recruiting his way down. This might be a way to get some kids excited. So we’ll have the different stations, the ones that we think are good ones to use, and we’ll have them in sequence, and we’ll have the kids go through and see which ones can get through all of them properly in the shortest amount of time, all while followed with a veteran who can both provide them guidance on how to do it and as a safety monitor, if you will. So we’ll have prizes and that’ll be in the morning, I think around from like nine to 1030. And then at eleven, the Memorial day event will take place right there at the Veterans monument. So it’ll kind of be a little bit more of a half a day type of thing. So more to follow on that. But the association is looking and discussed with the city this. And so I think it could be kind of a cool thing for some kids who maybe was there or haven’t been shown some of the best ways to do it, or these are ones. I have a 15 year old son who thinks he’s 10ft tall and bulletproof and he can do all of those things better than most, or at least better than his old man, which I don’t know, I think I can still take him. So we’ll see.
Rico Figliolini 0:26:11
Yes, you’re a vet yourself, so that would be cool. Great. Going to have to check with Lewis on details then. Before we go to press on the next issue. All right, so why don’t we also, there’s a couple more things I want to talk quickly about. One is Da Vinci court in that development that’s happening in pretty much the unused parking area. So that was approved or working through or. How is that working? What’s the details on that insurer?
Brian Johnson 0:26:42
Well, yeah, first I want to say it’s not a development that’s happening. It’s just a property owner who is wanting to do something, but the city hasn’t given them permission to do yet. Da Vinci Court is the name of the road that enters into an area that has a couple of class A, four, maybe five story office buildings. And when we’re built, as is often the case, they put a lot more parking than they need. They really had more parking than they need even before COVID but certainly after Covid with that. And so they have been wanting to do something with the unused parking areas, and they have submitted an application to the city for a mixed use development there on that site. And so it’s headed to city council? It has. I think the March Planning commission meeting is when they’ll present their case to planning commission. It’ll have its first read at the March city council meeting, and then it’ll be the April city council meeting where it’ll be officially considered.
Rico Figliolini 0:28:05
Gotcha. Okay. Because development doesn’t stop in the city. Peaceful corners. There’s always someone that wants to do something. I know the day building is one of those buildings that are being looked at that’s on Peachtree Corner Circle. So there’s always someone looking to develop. So it’s good to have some guidance.
Brian Johnson 0:28:25
It’s probably important for me to bring up. When you say that is, we do get. We’re not immune to this. Probably all cities get this right.
Rico Figliolini 0:28:33
Sure.
Brian Johnson 0:28:34
Some people who end up basically wanting the city to not approve anything, they’re not even getting into, whether it’s equity or rental or anything, they’re just like, we moved to the city back in 91 and it was a certain way, and all this development is happening, and we don’t like it. We get it. I mean, the city gets it. The city is not necessarily, in fact, I would say it’s single digits. The percentage of land use considerations that the city even has anything to do with initiating 90 plus percent of it is the private sector property owner wanting to do something with their property. We don’t have. Cities and counties don’t have the legal authority to just say no. If somebody wants to develop their property, they have property owners. Property rights in America are very strong. Property owners have a legal right to the highest and best use for the property. Now where the city comes in is it can regulate some of it if it doesn’t keep into keeping with the character area of certain place. Or there could be certain things like it would add density that would overwhelm the public, say, transportation infrastructure in the area. Those are reasons we can say no. Or if the zoning. It’s currently zoned a certain way and they want it to do something that they’re not zoned. In some cases, you can just say no, but not in all cases. We can’t just indiscriminately say for the sole reason of it’s adding people, we don’t want to approve it. That was the only reason. And there was public infrastructure that could support additional density, and it met the zoning. He couldn’t just say no. So I bring that up to say growth is inevitable. In a metro area like this. Getting more dense is almost inevitable, because may not be only in residential, it could be other things. But there’s many times where we don’t have the ability to say no. Even know behind closed doors. We’re kind of like, would rather not that happen. But some of it is even a use by. Right. The one that you brought up earlier that was just approved, Dr. Horton on engineering drive came in and got approved for a little over 70 townhomes, right?
Rico Figliolini 0:31:33
75 units.
Brian Johnson 0:31:35
How many?
Rico Figliolini 0:31:36
75 units?
Brian Johnson 0:31:40
That property owner came to the city in the fall of last year, late summer, fall of last year, with like a 225 to 250 unit. Remember that development? And the city denied it. And we had reasons. We were able to deny it. Property owner came back to city staff, myself and staff, and said, well, what? We really want to do something. The building is uninhabitable. The old office building. We want to do something with it. What can we do? And we said, look, why don’t you decrease the density? Equity is always more palatable. So they went from like 250 apartment units down to 75 equity townhome units. And even then, we had residents who at the city council meeting were angry that we were letting anything happen. And that really was a good news story. The city ended up decreasing the density. It’s an equity product. We even had a complaint about the condition where we said no more than 15% of the equity townhomes could ever be rented. And that would be enforced by the Hoa, which we required them to set up.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:03
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:33:04
A complaint that we were even allowing 15%. And the complaint was you should have said 0% rental. That’s another example where legally we can’t do that because there are lots of instances, including even in covenant protected single family detached subdivision, you could have somebody who lives in Riverfield or Neely Farm or Wellington Lake in a house that’s 5000 sqft. They may want to rent the house out or they may be in a financial position where they can’t sell it or they would be underwater or whatever. We can’t just say no, never. We can put some.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:51
Limits to it.
Brian Johnson 0:33:53
On it and even then. But sometimes those are the things that residents don’t oftentimes understand, that government in our country especially was set up to only have certain authorities and that’s what the city has. And so it’s not always exactly what we want. But in this case, we got a much better product than what was originally submitted to the city.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:17
Yeah. Interestingly enough, I mean, that piece of property is on Peachtree Parkway, I think, right?
Brian Johnson 0:34:22
No, it’s on engineering drive. It’s one parcel in from engineering and Peachtree Parkway.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:30
That’s what I mean.
Brian Johnson 0:34:31
It’s east side of where the liquor store is. Yeah.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:34
Right. So the point is that there’s no residential around it. It’s not like butting up to residential. It’s not making intensity change to, let’s say an r 100 and that you’re putting townhomes next to it. The interesting part is that cities have comprehensive plans. Right? I think, wasn’t it the 2040 plan that was just recently approved?
Brian Johnson 0:34:57
Last year we just did a rewrite of ours.
Rico Figliolini 0:35:00
So that comprehensive plan actually spells out where development can go, what densities are possible in certain areas that may not have already that density. But being the way the city is growing, cities take into account through public meetings and input where there might be more density allowed, even though it might already be single family homes. Like Medlock Bridge Road, for example, I point out, because single family homes along the way. But the comprehensive plan looks at that and says because of this corridor, because of development around it, this actually could be multi use, could be apartments or equity, larger density. So there are plans out there. So it’s not like the city’s just making things up.
Brian Johnson 0:35:45
No, even that in our comp plan, there was an AJC article about it like two days ago about technology, parks and what needing to do to stay healthy. And it was that they’re becoming mixed use areas in and of themselves. It’s not just big office parks and office parks only now they’re intermixing different types of use, residential, food and beverage. Our comp plan calls that out. That tech park Atlanta needs to have pockets of residential. In this particular case, it had a three story office building on it that probably, I don’t know, was probably 100 and 2550 thousand square feet. I guarantee when that office was occupied, there was more than 75 employees that went to that building. Now only going to have 75 townhomes. The traffic will be less than it was when that office building was fully open. And it adds some pocket of residential intermixed with the office building. So we’re kind of diversifying the uses. So it even called it out. So it was in keeping with it. But it just goes to show you that, again, some people wish that we could hit the freeze button and just we look like we did in 1981.
Rico Figliolini 0:37:14
Yeah.
Brian Johnson 0:37:15
And it won’t be that way for that to happen. Our job at the city is to regulate that inevitable growth and try to make sure that it happens in a healthy way. But we just can’t stop. It’s like trying to stop water from going somewhere. You just direct it where you want it to go.
Rico Figliolini 0:37:38
Same people that would look at the forum back several years ago and note that there was 16. I would drive through there and count how many storefronts were empty. One point, I think it was about 16 storefronts empty. And people were like upset with nap buying it. There were some people upset with it because they wanted to bring more density to it and they want to adjust the way it was, adjust the feel and look of the place. And they’re doing a great job. And there’s some disruption now, but the fruits of that will show over the next year or two. But things like that have to change, otherwise things go sideways, and then there’ll be people complaining about that. And since we’re talking about use and such, there were two new rezonings, actually, that the city also has developed one dealing when we were talking ahead of the podcast, social recreation and social hobbyist, if you will, and what the difference would be with like a social and pickle if that was based in pastry corners, because is it a restaurant? Is it recreation? So what fermented this discussion in making these changes?
Brian Johnson 0:38:47
So what we’re doing is we’re looking to add two zoning categories, use categories. As a result of some developers, property owners in the city, coming to us with ideas in which they’re mixing things that are oftentimes regulated separately. You use pickle and social, or chicken and pickle. If anybody’s ever been to those, it’s almost like Topgolf. Topgolf will be another one. Is that a recreational use? Golf? Is it a restaurant? Because of the food? Is it a bar? Because it has a bar and it serves alcoholic beverages, they mix it all together. So what category do you put that under? We’re getting a lot of unique type of things. Virtual reality racing simulators that have a membership component and may end up having food and beverage, car, antique car storage, car, club, lounge, all under one roof where you’ve got memberships and you could go there for food and beverage. Pickleball here, another one where there’s some even.
Brian Johnson 0:40:11
We’ve had model railroad, where they want to model railroaders looking at an office building where they were going to not only meet on a regular basis, but build out one of those big areas where you could walk amongst all the paper machete mountains and tracks, but they want to also have it where the club can meet there. There can be drinks. What is it? Is it a hobby? Is it a club? Is it a bar? And we’re getting more of this as office space is such a. There’s so little demand for commercial office space right now with the work from home component that office building owners are looking to fill their space with unique uses. And so we’re trying to get ahead of these things that I just threw out to you, which are, to a degree, just ideas that property owners have come to us with saying, hey, we’re looking to maybe do this if we wanted to. What are our restrictions? What could we do? And at the end of it, we’re kind of like, we don’t really have somewhere where this fits right now, before we get an official request by any of them, we’re wanting to create a zoning classification for them. So that’ll be discussed over the next month or two to create these so that we get ahead of it. These are good things. Those are uses that could be, you add to a particular area, but we got to regulate it.
Rico Figliolini 0:42:00
Most people don’t know. I guess most average citizen might not realize there’s a zoning for everything. Zoning for restaurant, a bar, and regulations that go with those particular zonings and things that have to be done with those zonings. So this is good. I mean, this is what a city does, right? It anticipates things that are going to be going on, development that’s going on, and you have to be ahead of that curve. This way you can know what you’re doing and being ahead of another curve. The last thing on our discussion, if you will, medical cannabis has been made legal in the state of Georgia. We’re not talking recreational cannabis, we’re talking medical cannabis. And in fact, there’s only, I forget what the number is, 15 or 16 approved uses for medical cannabis. And you can find them on. I’ll have a link in the show notes about this. Where can it be sold and how it can be sold in the city of Peace recorder. So you all are going to take that up. I think specifically every city can do mean there’s state legislation that regulates to a degree, but there’s enough leeway in there that each city can adjust particular rules about it.
Rico Figliolini 0:43:18
So tell us a little bit what the city is looking to do on.
Brian Johnson 0:43:21
This a little bit also to get ahead of something that we foresee is going to be an official request is if the city is wanting to facilitate this, because there are instances in which it could happen without the city saying yes or no, because it’s regulated by the state. But there are certain things the city can get involved in, like whether we want to vary on distances between schools or churches, whether we want. I think it’s like 1000ft, the state law says, but there’s a component where the city could issue a variance, so it could be to where somebody’s like 995ft from a school or a church. Do we want to be able to vary or just say no? Also, what distance might we want to have between. If there were two of them that wanted to come into the city, we can kind of draw a circle and say, in Peace street corners, you can’t have them closer than 5 miles or 1 mile or whatever. And then what process would it be for this to happen? Again, these are dispensing locations which are essentially pharmacies, right?
Rico Figliolini 0:44:53
They have to be independent pharmacies, I believe.
Brian Johnson 0:44:56
Yes, independent compounding pharmacies. And they have some extra training I go to. And then these are people who have a note from a doctor and a card, right. That’s essentially when they get it, they get their card scanned so the state knows who’s getting it and they can’t get it more often, and it can be for only those uses. You said, do we want to create a process to where. I don’t want to say encouraging it, but facilitating it in areas where it might require it might be just a little bit closer than 1000 ft to a location?
Rico Figliolini 0:45:43
Well, the way it’s measured, right. I mean, it could be 1000ft door to door. It could be 1000ft property line to property line, right. Different municipalities and counties, you bring up.
Brian Johnson 0:45:54
Some good alcohol is measured door to door as a person would walk or drive, and so you could actually be closer than, say, 1000ft property line. But if you go out one door and then you go in the front door of the other, it would be farther. The way this was written, medical cannabis is property line, right? So you may have cases where the property lines adjoin, but there’s no risk of there being interaction between the two users of the properties because that’s another consideration. The city. So we just got to talk through it and then make sure that we have our own additional guardrails beyond what the state already put in state law. And it’s to do it in preparation for what we foresee as an official request of the city for this here in the near future.
Rico Figliolini 0:47:00
City has done that a lot over the past few years, always ahead of anticipating zoning requests and variances and stuff. So it’s good to see that the city is working the way it should be working. It’s a smart city. We need to be working smartly, right?
Brian Johnson 0:47:17
Yeah, we certainly try. We don’t always get it all right, but we are certainly doing the best we can. That’s kind of a lot of land use as usual going on and other stuff. So I wish there were some days in which we were a little bit sleepier than we are because I’d like to end the day having accomplished everything I wanted to, but it also keeps us young and motivated. When you got a lot of stuff going on, you got to keep your energy up. So good.
Rico Figliolini 0:47:50
Sure. For sure. I want to thank you, Brian, for being with us, for walking through a lot of this stuff. Also want to tell everyone, latest issue of Southwest Gwinnett magazine is out talking about food trucks as our cover story. But a lot of other things going on in the city of Norcross, Peachtree Corners and Duluth. Just lots of stuff going on. So you should be getting that in the mail. If not, pick it up at the local restaurant or place in your community. We’re working on the next issue of Peachtree Corners magazine. Lots going on there, too. It’s going to be a good, really packed issue of things happening, covering people that are retiring, new developments, new businesses coming into Peachtree Corners. Great stories to be told there. If you’re looking for more information. Every day, every other day we’re publishing to livinginpeachtreecorners.com. You could check that out. Certainly check out our podcast. Like this one, UrbanEbb is another one that I do, talking on a wider reach of different cities and things happening in the urban and suburban environments. Want to thank EV Remodeling, Inc. For being a great sponsor of ours. Corporate sponsor. Check them out. Evremodelinginc.com. Thank you, Eli and his family, and thank you, everyone, for listening. Check the show notes for any relevant links. Appreciate you being with us. Thank you, Brian.
Brian Johnson 0:49:16
Yep.
Rico Figliolini 0:49:17
Bye, guys.
Related
Peachtree Corners Life
From Corporate to Sci-Fi Author: Jill Tew Discusses ‘The Dividing Sky’ [Podcast]
Published
3 weeks agoon
October 24, 2024Balancing Creativity and Parenting: Jill Tew’s Journey
In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini sits down with debut author Jill Tew to discuss her gripping sci-fi novel The Dividing Sky. Jill shares her fascinating journey from a corporate career to becoming a published author, revealing how her love for science fiction and storytelling shaped her path.
Dive into the themes of worldbuilding, dystopian futures, and emotional experiences that form the core of her book. Jill also opens up about the evolving publishing landscape, offering insight into how authors today must stay agile and seize new opportunities. Plus, hear her thoughts on balancing writing with parenting and her excitement for her upcoming middle-grade novel with Disney.
This episode is perfect for fans of sci-fi, aspiring writers, and anyone curious about the creative process behind a debut novel. Tune in to discover more about The Dividing Sky and Jill Tew’s captivating writing journey!
Resources:
The Dividing Sky on Penguin Random House: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/736783/the-dividing-sky-by-jill-tew/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/764010/freedom-fire-kaya-morgans-crowning-achievement-by-jill-tew
Jill Tew’s Website: https://www.jilltew.com/books
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – From Corporate to Creative and Spreadsheets to Sci-Fi
00:08:12 – Exploring the Dividing Sky, A Dystopian Tale
00:13:17 – Worldbuilding Responsibility for Sci-Fi Authors
00:17:49 – Exploring Mixed Media Formats for Storytelling
00:20:43 – The Evolving Publishing Landscape
00:26:22 – Balancing Writing and Parenting
00:28:00 – Writing Tricks and Techniques
00:30:02 – A Young Black Girl’s Renaissance Faire Journey
00:32:11 – Writing for Young Readers
00:33:06 – Capturing Friendship, Uncertainty, and the Power of Perspective
00:35:40 – Closing Thoughts
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, a podcast here in the city of Peachtree Corners in the county of Gwinnett, just north of Atlanta. So I want to welcome you all for visiting with us today. We have a first-time author, Jill Tew, who’s visiting with us, who lives here in Peachtree Corners, actually, as well. Hey, Jill.
00:00:20 – Jill Tew
Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you.
00:00:23 – Rico Figliolini
This is great. I mean, I just love the idea of being an author myself. I’m sure I have a book in me somewhere, but I can appreciate the endeavors of a first-time writer and author doing this. Yours is actually called The Dividing Sky and is available on Penguin Publishing, their website, and anywhere else that you can find a book.
00:00:50 – Jill Tew
Anywhere books are sold. Yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I’ll always shout out local indie bookstores. If it’s not on the shelf, you can always make a request.
00:00:58 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. So you were born in Georgia. You went away for college. You ended up in Denver for a few years, and then you came back to Georgia. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and where you’ve been in life.
00:01:14 – Jill Tew
Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up not far from here in the Dunwoody, Sandy Springs area. When I was growing up, it was Dunwoody, and then they incorporated, and so that changed.
00:01:22 – Rico Figliolini
Right.
00:01:23 – Jill Tew
And yeah, I grew up, I always loved writing and storytelling and went away for college to do something more practical. I thought that that was kind of what I was supposed to do. So I went away to school in Philadelphia at an undergraduate business degree and did that and was convinced that that was what I was going to do. I was going to go be an international businesswoman. And I was on the right track. You know, I graduated, I did pretty well in school, I got a very sort of like prestigious corporate job out of school, I was a management consultant. So I was working in New York advising major corporations. And yeah, after that, you know, I decided that maybe the corporate environment wasn’t quite for me, but I still loved business and I loved solving problems that way. And so I ended up moving out to Denver and worked at a startup for another couple of years. That startup ended up getting acquired by Comcast and it was kind of a really cool process to be a part of from start to finish. And that was when the time that I realized that I still had this like creative bug in me from when I was younger and I began to pursue writing as a hobby. And then a few years later, as things kind of shifted, the pandemic happened and I was growing in my craft. Then it shifted from being, you know, less of a hobby to more of, you know, a full kind of wholehearted pursuit. And now it’s a career.
00:02:47 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. What did, when you were younger let’s say, I don’t know growing up being a tween and stuff, what was your, did you have any, did you see yourself being creative at that point? What transpired even at that age? Because usually it seems to start young.
00:02:58 – Jill Tew
Yeah, totally. So it’s funny, you know, I never had any like visual art ability so I never thought of myself as like a creative person because I was like, oh I can’t paint or draw for beans. But I loved wordplay and so I loved like making things rhyme and making up funny like poems and like parodies of songs. My favorite book when I was growing up was actually my rhyming dictionary because I would use it to just like make up funny stories and poems and stuff. I loved books you know, I loved, I think, storytelling in all of its forms. So my favorite at that point ended up being musicals. So I, again, kind of love musicals for the storytelling ability. And I would find myself, you know, watching, you know, science fiction movies or books, or shows, excuse me, or when I was a little bit older, the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out. And I would just like, think about these worlds and thinking about these adventures and, you know, kind of come up with some of my own. I never wrote any fan fiction, but I read it heavily. And I just loved, you know, kind of imagining the different places that these stories could take me. And looking back now, it all kind of clicks. And I see, you know, where that spark kind of started. I loved writing stories and creative writing in school, but when I pivoted to that point of more pragmatic and practical approach, I should have known that eventually I was going to end up circling back.
00:04:17 – Rico Figliolini
That’s funny. So was science fiction, fantasy, was that area mainly your interest?
00:04:23 – Jill Tew
Yeah, mainly. I grew up you know reading animorphs. That was probably my first like science fiction love as a kid. I watched this show that not everyone remembers but if you know you know. There was a show that ran like the late 90s early 2000s called Farscape and it was like yeah. So it’s like Jim Henson Studios, like Muppets in space, but for like adults, like, you know, just like the best, like found family space opera of these like kooky alien characters coming together. I imprinted really hard on that show actually. And I feel like that was kind of where I got the bug.
00:05:00 – Rico Figliolini
Okay, cool. I agree. You listen, people get it from different places and depending on your age, it’s just, you know, it goes. I mean, my kids are voracious readers, and they’re into fantasy, sci-fi as well. Lord of the Rings was like a 13-year-old kid reading it. It’s a dense piece of work also.
00:05:21 – Jill Tew
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:25 – Rico Figliolini
I can see that. So with the work you’ve done, you know, getting into it as a hobby, how’d you get into it as a hobby? What were you doing as far as writing profiles, short stories, trying to pull together a novel idea? How’d that work?
00:05:38 – Jill Tew
Yeah, it’s really funny. I have some friends who kind of started writing with short stories. I have a lot of friends actually that feel like they’re either good at short stories or novels. And like very few can really do both because they’re very different kind of media, like very different formats.
00:05:52 – Rico Figliolini
Sure.
00:05:53 – Jill Tew
So for me, you know, when I thought about a story, when my first story came to me, it really was this kind of bigger story that needed kind of a full length novel. I was at the startup job on the verge of burnout. And some coworkers thought that we should go see a movie after work. And so we went to the theater and it was Divergent. It was that movie that came out probably a decade ago. And walking home from the theater, I remember like that spark, like reigniting in me and me saying like, oh my gosh, like I’ve been missing this. Like this is what I want to do. I don’t want to make spreadsheets for the rest of my life, I just want to tell a story and I went home and instead of like working on work that night I started like plotting out this novel that I had in my head. It was the idea for like a parallel universe like sci-fi story and seven years later that story got me my agent. And then we went on submission and which means like you take the story to publishers and see if they want it. That book did not sell. But while it was out to editors, I ended up writing the book that became my debut, The Dividing Sky. So yeah, that was kind of the beginning of the journey was seeing Divergent and remembering that part of who I was.
00:07:01 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, Divergent. That was a YA novel that that movie was based on. A trilogy, I think, even because they came out with some more stories.
00:07:09 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:07:10 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. I love the process of writing the whole idea of doing it. You know, reading up on and listen to, you know, podcasts about writing the craft, like you said, because it is a craft, right? It’s an artisan craft almost in some ways. But putting things together, usually most authors that I’ve heard about or read about say that first book is usually that exercise of writing. But it’s not the book that ever gets published. It’s always the second or third book that might get you there. So is this book a duology, a trilogy, or is it a one-off book?
00:07:47 – Jill Tew
Yeah, right now it’s a standalone, I think. So actually I should say that next fall, actually I’m publishing The Penguin Random House again, a book that you could think of as like a companion novel. So it’s another kind of dystopian romance. It’s about a hundred years before the events of this book. So it kind of sets up how we get here, but you can read them in either order, honestly. Readers have been clamoring for a sequel already for The Dividing Sky. And so I am putting some thoughts together about what I want to pitch to my editors. It definitely has, it’s not a cliffhanger, but it leaves some questions open-ended at the end. There’s room for more. And so I’ve been thinking about where else the story might go.
00:08:28 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. No, I could tell. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but just the synopsis of what the story is about. It takes place in 2364. It’s an 18-year-old Liv Newman. Interesting storyline about what she does.
00:08:43 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:08:43 – Rico Figliolini
And that the rookie police force person, I guess, Adrienne Rowe, that follows her and finds her, and she’s lost all her memory, even though memory is part of her job. So, I mean, it’s just I think it’s such a great premise, and I can see how it could go further. You’ve done a lot of good reviews, it seems. Kirkus Reviews called your debut a gutsy novel. You’ve had other reviews in there and your comparisons even to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. What does it feel to be talked about like that? You know, to get those reviews?
00:09:21 – Jill Tew
Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean, when I finished it, and we were kind of wrapping up the editing process, I knew it was something special. But you never know, you know? I think, a lot of the power of those reviews comes in, like, who they assign to read it. And all you can do as a reader, as an author, honestly, is like, hope your book finds its people, like at every level, even, you know, bookstores. And so when I saw those star reviews, my first thought was like, oh my gosh, like this book might have a shot at like finding its people. And, you know, I mean like any author I think would like dream of being compared to Octavia Butler. I feel like I don’t want the book to be like overhyped, but you know, it’s funny. Like, I mean, I love Parable of the Sower. I love that book and Octavia Butler, her writing was brilliant. I think when I reread Octavia Butler or the Parable of the Sower this past year, I was reminded of how much of that story kind of seeped into my authorial DNA. In that book, the main character has this sort of like, you could call it a gift or a curse or just ability to feel like the physical things that others feel you know like if somebody gets punched in the face like she feels that pain and this idea of like a character like having empathy for like extreme like speculative like couldn’t possibly be real like empathy for others in that way has leaked into my DNA for sure. I think you know Liv in the Dividing Sky she’s what we call an emo proxy meaning that her job is actually to read books, watch movies, look at blades of grass blowing in the wind or sunsets, and have emotional experiences about those things. And then sell those emotional experiences, those emotional memories to wealthy clients who are too busy working to live life for themselves. And so this idea of transferring emotions, of channeling an emotion so that someone else can experience it, I feel like is tangential to that ability and Parable of the Sower in a lot of ways.
00:11:13 – Rico Figliolini
I love that idea. I mean, the fact that we look at COVID, we look at the sense of loss of personal connections with people, eventually losing you know I could see that it’s sad world almost a dystopian world where you literally have to work through other people’s emotions. Which is really what we do with social media right? When we scroll through TikTok for about 30 minutes we’re living through other people’s lives. It’s not that much different.
00:11:39 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:11:39 – Rico Figliolini
So is there, and as you know, every book always says, none of this is based on real events or real characters or people, but you know, an author writes from what they know a bit, right? Is there a particular part that was difficult to write or a particular part that you felt more deeply about in this book?
00:12:01 – Jill Tew
Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I think, there’s the world of the book starts off and it’s called the Metro. And it’s sort of this like hyper capitalist world where everything is hinged around productivity. And so you’re only valuable insofar as you can earn money for this mega corporation that we call Life Corp in the book. And that’s why everyone is so, you know, focused on working is because like, that’s how you get not only money, you know your productivity score dictates you know where you can live what you can do kind of just like the confines of your life. And so like of course you’re going to outsource reading books or child care or you know repair work or like dates with your wife to like proxies who will go and handle that for you. Now Liv and Adrian end up discovering this other community outside of the borders of the Metro called the Outerlands. And there are people out there who have been kind of vilified. But the closer they get to this community, the more they realize that they have a very different way of living that feels more connected and feels more like in harmony and is slower paced and appreciates the value of human life, not for being productive, but just for being intrinsically valuable. And that was hard. I mean, I did some thinking about what I wanted that world to look like, because, you know, I think as an author, like you’re going to be depicting a society that is like, you know, in some ways, kind of what you’re saying, what we should like swing closer towards or keep in mind, something that’s supposed to show, you know, what could be be possible. And you have to like take that responsibility really seriously. So I thought a lot about the elements I wanted to highlight and you know what I wanted to kind of telegraph as yeah, like a way of life that is you know maybe more in balance.
00:13:37 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. I mean you’re not too far off with the, with what you were saying before about how work or credits may affect your life because, I mean China does that right?
00:13:42 – Jill Tew
Oh yeah, the social credit, exactly, right.
00:13:48 – Rico Figliolini
And we’re not that far from that. I mean, we’re stepping towards it a little bit because even credit ratings, it used to be that apartment rent wasn’t counted in that. Now it is. Utilities and the use of utilities is being counted in that. It wasn’t before.
00:14:10 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:14:11 – Rico Figliolini
So I don’t think we’re too far from that social credit kind of deal.
00:14:13 – Jill Tew
I agree. Yeah.
00:14:15 – Rico Figliolini
So, and you do take responsibility as an author to be able to, I mean, as a reader, I take responsibility of what I want, what I like. So it’s a two-way thing, two-way street, right? To a degree like that?
00:14:31 – Jill Tew
Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:32 – Rico Figliolini
But I like where you’re going with that. World building is a very difficult thing.
00:14:36 – Jill Tew
It’s hard. It’s real hard. Yeah.
00:14:38 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, you do it well. I think people realize that without even putting too much thought into it they all of a sudden realize they’re in it and they like it. A bit like Blade Runner.
00:14:52 – Jill Tew
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think you know all of those stories. I think it’s funny as a sci-fi author and like dystopian author especially like you just realize you’ve been like swimming in this like ether and like all these ideas and you know there’s like androids in my book you know like all these things have just kind of like seeped into like your, the compost pile that you’re using to you know to grow your story.
00:15:13 – Rico Figliolini
Definitely, for sure. So where do you find, so you mentioned like movies, a couple of movies and stuff and obviously some books. Are there other books of sci-fi or movies or shows besides Farscape and some of the ones you’ve mentioned already that you’ve taken inspiration from?
00:15:28 – Jill Tew
Yeah, definitely those. You know, I mean, I haven’t really, I haven’t sold a book in space yet, but like I love Battlestar Galactica. That’s kind of like a classic space, you know, space story. What was I talking to somebody in an interview the other day about when I was younger, there were these two movies that came out back to back that were both about like androids that like you know kind of bordered on being human. So one was like AI, the Haley Joel Osment movie but he was like a little boy almost like a pinocchio metaphor. And then the other one was Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams.
00:16:00 – Rico Figliolini
Yes.
00:16:06 – Jill Tew
Where he lives over like 200 years. And I think those books, I mean the movies came out like back to back and I just feel like there was a moment there where everyone was kind of thinking about like technology and humanity and like where do you draw the line. And I think like I always wrestle with those ideas. The android character in Dividing Sky, Naz is Adrian’s like partner on the force. They’re like buddied up and he like he’s got a heart of gold right? Heart of like chrome and gold, I guess. But he you know, for being you know a robot essentially like he cares a lot about his partner. And I wanted to kind of subvert the idea of an android being clinical and like hard and cold and have one who’s like prime directive really was like the care of his partner. And there’s a book that is a little bit more recent it’s another like YA sci-fi book a trilogy actually, called the Illuminae Files. So if anyone’s listening and like has a young reader in your life that likes science fiction, this book is fantastic. It’s like a mixed media format so instead of just like prose on the page it’s told through like chat transcripts and like security camera footage and like all this really cool like artifacts. It’s a really fun read and also great on audiobook so I would highly recommend that one as well.
00:17:18 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. I haven’t heard about that one yet. But I guess trending today, I mean, you see, my kids are into YA novels too, or at least they were in YA novels. They’re into young adult novels, maybe, right? And so there’s trends out there, right? Different ways of writing. Like you said, I mean, it could be multimedia. It could be transcripts. It could be just different ways of doing it. Do you find, are there any, is there anything out there that’s trending that you think would work for you even for you to do?
00:17:53 – Jill Tew
I like, it’s my dream to someday do like a full mixed media like mixed format book like that’d be awesome. There are a few of those in Dividing Sky like we have some like police reports there’s some doodles in there that are really cute. We have like a scientific study abstract and a job description actually opens up the book so there’s like some fun little things we did in there from a design perspective to kind of make the world feel more fleshed out. But I would love to be able to play around with different mixed media formats because it’s almost like a puzzle coming together even more than like a novel already is. It’s like thinking about what elements you pull from like the real world that you’ve created to give a full picture of the story. So I think that’s really cool.
00:18:34 – Rico Figliolini
I’m curious. Your book is probably available as an audible.
00:18:38 – Jill Tew
Yeah. Oh, the audio book is fantastic. So we have two amazing voices. The story is dual POV. So it’s Liv’s perspective and Adrian’s perspective. And so we have two narrators, which is great. So Kaya Freight does Liv’s voice, and she is like a well-known anime voice actress. She does a bunch of audiobooks. She just did the voice of Violet from Fourth Wing on the like full cast edition of the audiobook so she’s amazing. And then Junior Nyong’o did Adrian’s voice and he’s a fantastic actor in his own right. He’s done a few audiobooks as well I think some things for the stage. He’s also Lupita Nyong’o’s little brother which is really cool too. So they both did a fantastic job. I’m like so, I’m a big like audiobook, I have like a high standard for audio books. And so I was like, okay, like can’t get just anybody. But I’m so pleased with how it turned out.
00:19:30 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, no, I can appreciate that. When I go on my two, three mile walks, I always listen to a novel or something. And if I hear a really good performance or voice, I always look for what other stories they’ve read.
00:19:42 – Jill Tew
Yeah, exactly.
00:19:42 – Rico Figliolini
Because I mean, just, you can have a really bad reader or performer just.
00:19:51 – Jill Tew
They can ruin a great book, yes. That’s happened to me, unfortunately, a few times when I’ve listened. It’s like, ugh, yeah.
00:19:55 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, same on that, but it goes that way sometimes. So you’ve gone through the process of writing your book, publishing it. I’m sure it took a little time to, like you said, it took seven years to get an agent. You wrote the book for seven years, but your first book.
00:20:09 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:20:12 – Rico Figliolini
And you got an agent. Were you surprised about the process of actually, behind the scenes process of what it took to get the book published?
00:20:19 – Jill Tew
Yeah. So the process of going on submission, I think, was more straightforward. It’s basically like getting an agent, but like all over again. So, you know, you send the manuscript out to editors, you know, your agent ideally has relationships with different editors and publishing houses. And, you know, in science fiction and speculative work, especially, it just takes a long time because editors are also editing books they’ve already acquired. So they’re editing those things. They’re reading a bunch of submissions every day, every week. So the time it took, like that was kind of expected for me. The Dividing Sky actually sold in like five or six weeks, which was pretty fast. And that was amazing. But yeah, so after that, I think, you know, I knew that it would take about 18 months to two years for the book to come out after that, which is about right. So we sold it in October 2022. It just came out. So that’s about right. And over that time period, yeah, you’re editing more at the high level story structure level. And then you go into line edits. So that’s like at the prose level. And then you get to copy edits, which is like typos. So all of that takes, you know, months and months and months. You know, I think what might have been surprising to me is that, you know, a year before the book even comes out, that’s when like marketing and sales and like cover conversations really kick off. And so, you know, you might be working with your editor for a year before that, but it’s like that one year timeline like starts like now all of a sudden it’s a real thing for like everybody else at the publisher. So that part’s always really exciting. So now we’ve got, we’re going through that process now for my next YA book.
00:21:55 – Rico Figliolini
Gotcha, okay. And publishing has changed right? So I mean you have Amazon selling books you have Audible selling books on credit. So authors aren’t making the millions that they used to make before, let’s say. And it was definitely an exclusive club to some degree, right? Where you can make at least a full-time living between a book and then talking tours and stuff like that. Did you find anything about that that was surprising?
00:22:27 – Jill Tew
Yeah, you know, I don’t have much to compare it to because I’m an author now. But you know, from what I gather, you know, I think the biggest thing that’s changed is that people’s attention is just split in so many different ways. And that has upstream effects, right? So if people don’t read the way that they used to, you know, we have so many different things vying for our attention between, you know, the different streaming services and social media, and, you know, all the other forms of media out there, video games. And so I think authors are not, you know, one of only a handful of different forms of entertainment anymore. There’s so much more out there. And so, yeah, I think it’s harder. You know, I think publishing houses definitely feel this, you know, both because, you know the big five publishing houses that they have their own like traditional way of doing things that now may not be as effective and because new players are entering the fray. Like TikTok has their own publishing house now called Bindery. And Bindery partners with local TikTok influencers to like who become editors and like kind of curate their own stable of authors and then promote them through you know going viral on TikTok. And so you know there’s all, and it’s working really well. I mean, I have good friends that have Bindery deals and they’re being treated very well. And I think for authors it’s a totally viable path. So yeah it’s just fascinating to see and then also even downstream you have like book boxes so they’re these companies that will create these beautiful exclusive editions of books and kind of spray the edges and maybe redo the cover and put the illustrations inside and now they have their own publishing houses as well. So they’ve spent years getting to know what readers want really, really well. And now they’re like great, like we can just go buy that we don’t have to pay the publisher to acquire the licenses for these books, we’ll just edit and like have our own authors. And so I think from all these different angles, publishers are feeling this push of like, okay, how do we get closer to readers, but also explore these new channels of marketing, right? I think it’s kind of a free-for-all right now. And I think, yeah, authors can just stay agile and nimble and kind of react to what the market’s doing and just try to seize opportunity where it comes honestly.
00:24:29 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah and hopefully that you know maybe one of these becomes a Netflix series or movie or something, right?
00:24:35 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:24:40 – Rico Figliolini
With all the streaming services looking for content and stuff it’s unbelievable. And with ChatGPT. I’ve had a few friends that think they’re authors now because they can just get ChatGPT to write a piece for them. It’s amazing. It’s not that easy.
00:24:57 – Jill Tew
No, it’s not. And like you, if you don’t enjoy the like puzzle and like mental exercise that is writing, maybe being an author is not for you. Like you should enjoy, it’s hard, but you should enjoy the process.
00:25:10 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, that’s for sure. It is hard. And it’s, if you’re not willing to spend weeks, months and several years on it, then just drop it. You’re a parent of two kids, two young kids. I think one of them is starting school, maybe shortly? How do you balance? Writing is different than a 9-to-5 job, and it’s even different than some of these remote or hybrid jobs. Because someone could say, well, you can write almost any time. Although your creativity might be good at 6 to 7 in the morning maybe, or maybe at night after the kids go to sleep. So how do you balance that? How does that work for you creatively?
00:25:49 – Jill Tew
Absolutely. So yeah, so when I, before I got an agent, when I was like, when they were very young, I would write mostly at night. Now I write in the morning. So, you know, you can write anywhere. But for me, like once my kids are awake, like a good half of my brain is just like tuned in to wherever they are, like whatever they might need. Even if like I’m in the basement of my office and they’re upstairs, like you hear the pitter patter of little feet and I’m like, oh, like there goes like a chunk of my focus. So I need to write when they’re asleep. So, yeah, I get up early. I write, my like dedicated writing time is usually in the morning from like 6:30 to 8:00 or so. And now because my oldest is in like full time school now and my youngest is in a half day preschool program, I have more of the time during like waking hours to write. But you know, I’m still a full-time mom so my you know, I’m doing grocery shopping, I’m doing laundry. Like that time gets filled with other things too. So I really protect that 6:00 to 6:30 to 8:00 time and I can get a lot done in that time. If I’m like plotting out my story and I know what the next scene is and I know, you know, what I need to happen and what conversations need to happen in that part of the book, I can bang it out. You know, as long as I’m just like keeping that time and like holding it sacred and getting up every morning to do it a little bit at a time, I can chip away at a manuscript.
00:27:11 – Rico Figliolini
Do you set up an outline? Do you start with an outline?
00:27:15 – Jill Tew
I do. Yeah. Some authors can be more kind of like flexible and kind of discover, you know, where their story takes them. I always outline. I’m a plotter, as they say. So I plot out my story. I made spreadsheets for a living, you know, before I was an author. Now I make them for my like outlines and my revisions. Love a good spreadsheet still. And yeah, I need that. Yeah.
00:27:37 – Rico Figliolini
Do you create profiles for some of your characters or do you let them tell you where they go as you’re writing?
00:27:44 – Jill Tew
Yeah. Some authors do that and have like a big story bible. I’m not, I don’t do that only because I know that it will make me procrastinate. Like I could spend forever building that out and then never actually get to the story. So I kind of let, I have like a few character details that I use in service of like figuring out how the plot works. And then the rest of it, I kind of build in over the course of revisions as things kind of flesh themselves out. Yeah.
00:28:06 – Rico Figliolini
Are you a bit of a procrastinator?
00:28:09 – Jill Tew
I’m not, but I can get in my head about like a story not being good enough to get started and I think that’s the biggest thing when you’re writing. Even, you know, for an established author writing the next thing and like that blank page is always scary. So yeah, if I don’t just like start then like I can get in my head and say like, oh let’s wait you know, a few more days. Like just, nope, just got to do it. You cannot revise what doesn’t exist. So you have to start first.
00:28:29 – Rico Figliolini
That’s good. I love that. Do you set goals for yourself, like word counts or time or anything like that?
00:28:37 – Jill Tew
Yeah, I try, you know, I’m generous with myself because I know that I, if I’m not careful, I’ll burn out. And then like that goal won’t be hit anyway. So especially when I’m on my own deadlines, not my editor’s deadlines, I try to take it easy, you know. I can do 1000 words a day pretty reliably. And so you know, that gets like three months later, that’s a full book, right? So that’s kind of usually my pace. And I do like to kind of backwards plan and think about, okay, by the end of the week, I want to be at this chapter. By the end of the month, I want to be here. That way I just know that I’m on track. Or that I need to adjust my plan if I’m falling behind or, you know, sometimes as you’re writing, you’re like, oh, like that scene actually belongs somewhere else. Or I can like accomplish that in a paragraph instead. So you’re always revising, like you’re not holding it too tightly, but I like a good plan. It just helps me know where I’m going.
00:29:26 – Rico Figliolini
I know the kids are kind of young, but the oldest, what does she feel about mom being a writer and author?
00:29:34 – Jill Tew
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the moment they began to kind of finally get it actually was last February. I sold my middle grade book, which is like a nine to twelve year old reader, kind of like that’s like younger than young adult right? I sold two books to Disney. So my first one, my first Disney book’s coming out in April. But when I told them that it was with Disney, they were like, oh, Disney, like we get it. That was amazing. And then actually like three days ago, I was going to, we were picking up Mellow Mushroom for dinner. And we went to Johns Creek Books and Gifts, which is like right down the street. And my book is there. And so I was like, our oh, pizza’s not ready yet. Let’s just go in this bookstore. So my oldest was with me. And I was like, hey, do you see anything that looks familiar? And like her eyes popped out of her head. I think for her, she was like, oh, like mommy writes real books. And they’re like in the stores. And that was, I think she was like proud, but like also just like over, like it was very cute. But yeah she like, she couldn’t believe it so that was really cool.
00:30:33 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that must have been a great feeling.
00:30:35 – Jill Tew
Yeah, I mean she, you know, like the whole house, my husband’s been amazing about this too. Just like the whole house has been like, mommy’s books coming out. So we have like just keep track of like whose birthdays come in like the calendar year and so it’s like, oh like daddy’s birthday, mommy’s birthday, you know my youngest, my oldest, whatever. And they slotted my book’s birthday in there so they’re like, mommy’s book’s birthday. And then yeah, and then Christmas. And so yeah. So it’s been like a big thing we’ve been building up to so yeah.
00:31:00 – Rico Figliolini
That’s fun. Now you did mention a middle grade book you wrote. So tell us a few you know tell us about that.
00:31:10 – Jill Tew
Yeah. So that’s coming out April 1st. Oh I have that, I’ll show you the cover because it’s very cute. So that book is, it’s called Kaya Morgan’s Crowning Achievement and it’s about a, let’s see put the camera, a black girl growing up in suburban Atlanta who is competing to be crowned the first black queen of her local Renaissance Festival summer camp. And it’s really good. I loved the Renaissance Festival growing up. It was a big part of my nerd awakening, probably. And there’s just so much in here about this girl kind of discovering where she belongs and what she’s interested in, even as society tells her that maybe those things don’t make sense for who she is. And also a bunch of Renaissance Faire puns in here.
00:31:54 – Rico Figliolini
So that’s great. And that’s a great festival. First of all, anyone that lives in Atlanta should be able to visit.
00:31:59 – Jill Tew
It’s amazing. Yeah, I go every year. So, yeah, that one’s coming out in April. And Disney has, it’s been great to work with too. It’s kind of fun to think about younger kids and readers that are maybe still looking for, they don’t know that they’re readers yet. They’re looking for the right book to hook them. And so I think a lot about the reader looking at this on the shelf and saying, okay, maybe I can get into books.
00:32:13 – Rico Figliolini
So that’s a lot different to write than a YA novel.
00:32:21 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:32:22 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, did that process take longer? Is it the same agent or you had to find a different agent?
00:32:30 – Jill Tew
Yeah. Same agent, different publisher, obviously. So yeah, for this one, you know, it’s interesting. You know, I love a good love story. There’s no romance in my middle grade, right? So where’s my romance arc? But that’s okay. There’s a friendship arc, which is really good. And yeah, the voice is different. I think younger kids, I think even for a young adult, like in YA, everything is so immediate and urgent, but for middle grade, even more so, right? So your best friend doesn’t invite you to the birthday party, your world is crashing. It’s crumbling down, right? And so it was fun to kind of get back into my like 12-year-old headspace. Remember what it was like, like not knowing who I was going to be, like who I was going to end up becoming. There’s a lot of that uncertainty and like, who am I, where do I fit in? It was fun to revisit that and kind of provide, you know, one perspective.
00:33:20 – Rico Figliolini
That’d be interesting for your kids to pick that up as they get older.
00:33:24 – Jill Tew
Yeah exactly. It’s different yeah.
00:33:37 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, critiquing mom on, I don’t know about this mom.
00:33:38 – Jill Tew
Yeah I can’t wait. Yeah my oldest is still, she loves her like Dog Man and Captain Underpants right now. But I think as she gets older she’s like, she’s close to getting ready for this. yeah we’re going
00:33:42 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I remember Captain Underpants, my kids bought those too. Actually, because of the school book fair, it’s scholastic books and stuff.
00:33:50 – Jill Tew
Yeah.
00:33:56 – Rico Figliolini
How far out do you think? I know you’re working on the other book. So how far out do you plan? I mean, or are you taking it as you go?
00:34:08 – Jill Tew
Yeah, I think I take it as I go. I mean, I have a few books, book ideas in me. So right now I’m actually, I need to start drafting. My second Disney book comes out April, 2026. So I need to start drafting that. I have the outline ready to go, but that’s kind of where I’m at in terms of my like workload. After that, I have no other contracted books yet. We’re on submission with an adult space opera, which I’m holding my, crossing my fingers for. But I’m excited to have some time in the early part of next year for a book that like, is not under contract, like nobody else knows about like, I just want to like play around again. Because I think, like, you know, it’s amazing to have book deals. But you know, there’s, you know pluses and minuses to everything and I miss that feeling of like this is just for me. So I’m excited to get back into that.
00:34:51 – Rico Figliolini
That’s cool. So have we missed anything that you’d like to cover that’s maybe, that I didn’t quite get to?
00:34:59 – Jill Tew
I don’t think so. I think that’s me.
00:35:02 – Rico Figliolini
Do you want to show us the cover of your new book? Do you have that?
00:35:04 – Jill Tew
Yeah, I do. Let’s see. This is The Dividing Sky, which this cover is absolutely gorgeous. It gives me all of the science fiction, romance vibes. Yeah, they did it, so pretty.
00:35:17 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. Excellent. Well, we’ve been speaking to Jill Tew, author, first-time author, lots of books out at this point with Disney and this first novel. Appreciate you spending time with us. And it’s great to see, you know, Peachtree Corners has a lot going on and it’s good to see, again, I’d love the opportunity to talk to different people from different areas of different professions, different skill sets. So this was great. Love talking about the, talking shop to some degree, although I don’t do writing, I publish magazines, but that’s about it.
00:35:53 – Jill Tew
It’s all connected. Absolutely. Thank you so much for this and for having the spotlight. I love the city. When we were moving back, it was top of our list. So we’re so happy to be here.
00:36:02 – Rico Figliolini
Great to have you. Hang in with me for a minute. I just want to sign off a little bit, but I also want to tell everyone EV Remodeling Inc. is our sponsor for these podcasts and for our publications. So check them out. Eli lives here in Peachtree Corners with his family. They do great work from start to finish. So no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s one room or all the rooms in your house, you should visit them. So EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can get that info. And if you’re listening to this through our website or wherever you’re listening, I’ll have links in the show notes. So this way you can find more about Jill’s books and about the Disney book as well. We’ll have that link as well. So thank you all for being with us. Appreciate it.
Related
Peachtree Corners Life
Ruwa Romman’s Re-Election Bid: Addressing Housing, Taxes and Transportation in Gwinnett [Podcast]
Published
3 weeks agoon
October 20, 2024Early voting is open; Election Day, November 5
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.
Resources:
Ruwa’s website: https://www.ruwa4georgia.com/
Ruwa’s House email: Ruwa.Romman@House.GA.Gov
The Georgia My Voter Page has all of your voting information, including your polling location and which districts you fall in. You can also request and fill out your absentee ballot on your My Voter Page, or by visiting this Gwinnett County specific page.
“Gwinnett 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 going to be able to handle the businesses that want to come here. It’s not going to be able to handle the kind of growth that would bring better jobs and that would improve our communities. And the sooner we can start prepping our infrastructure for that kind of a demand, the less disruptive it’s going to be.”
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
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in Gwinnett County. Beautiful day, although it started out freezing this morning, but we’re up to about 62 right now. We’re here with a candidate that’s running for re-election, Ruwa Romman. Hey, Ruwa, how are you?
00:00:19 – Ruwa Romman
I’m good, thanks. How are you doing?
00:00:21 – Rico Figliolini
Good. Good, thank you. Ruwa is running for Georgia State Rep House District 97. Actually, she’s running for re-election. She’s been in the term for one term, I believe. And so it’s time for a re-election, right? She represents, the area that she represents is Peachtree Corners, Berkeley Lake, Duluth. That’s about those three cities mainly, right?
00:00:44 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah, it’s four. So it’s Berkeley Lake, Duluth, Norcross, and Peachtree Corners.
00:00:50 – Rico Figliolini
And as far as Peachtree Corners goes, it’s about a little bit more than half the city.
00:00:55 – Ruwa Romman
Yep.
00:00:56 Rico Figliolini
I believe, if it looks right.
00:00:58 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah.
00:00:59 – Rico Figliolini
So we’re going to hop right into this. We’ve interviewed her, the 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 going to be discussing a few issues we may not have touched upon with Michael Corbin. One of them is the constitutional amendments that are coming in this, actually, that’s going to be on the ballot this November. So, and you all should be aware of it. So one of them, the biggest one we’ll start off with, to me is the biggest one, because I’m a homeowner, so I can be a little soft on this, is a statewide exemption to local homestead tax. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about, you know, in brief, what that means to a homeowner who, they’re in Peachtree Corners?
00:01:47 – Ruwa Romman
Absolutely. So what it does is it puts a cap on how much home assessments can go up by about 3% 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. But what ended up happening is that we passed a bunch of referendums, including the Gwinnett 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, particularly for local municipalities. So what do I mean by that? If a city or county’s funding is disrupted too quickly, suddenly you’ll start to see even slower responses to things like potholes, streetlights 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 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 the Gwinnett Homestead exemption.
00:03:10 – Rico Figliolini
So what is the? Okay. So if I look at my property tax, right? The way it works is that an assessment is made. Most people will know this, right? So usually it’s 40% of your market value of the home, which means that the county or the municipality doesn’t have to increase your millage rate. But in effect, because of the appraisal, your property tax can’t go up. So nothing is owed on it, just the appraisal’s done, and your property tax can be 20% higher. My property tax essentially I mean, won’t say 20% higher, but it was probably 12-13% higher. Due to COVID, right? Because it was then it went up, assessed, and they don’t assess every year I mean, they do, it doesn’t always change every year. So I think we’ve gone through that struggle where I don’t foresee a 12% increase again.
00:04:12 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. No, no, no. And we’ve already increased your homestead exemption. 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 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 Gwinnett one specifically, it is tailored to Gwinnett residents. The problem with this bill is it creates sort of a weird opt-out mechanism that can create some problems 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 constitutional 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.
00:05:11 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. So, but the next time around would be two years from now, if it goes through the process.
00:05:15 – Ruwa Romman
We can decide. We can actually do anytime. So the Gwinnett homestead exemption was immediately put on the ballot during, like immediately during the primaries.
00:05:26 – Rico Figliolini
Okay, alright. So in your opinion this shouldn’t, this cap of three percent would wreck havoc possibly with our county or you’re talking about statewide with a variety of counties?
00:05:38 – Ruwa Romman
And we’ve seen this in California as well where it has increased things like homelessness and 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. 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 for your specific district or location. The other thing I will say is that this referendum in particular did not have a 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 in bringing small businesses to Gwinnett County or Peachtree 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 disruptive on top of the Gwinnett one that we’ve already passed. It gave me pause and that’s why I switched from yes to a no.
00:07:10 – Rico Figliolini
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 a Republican thing, right? Keep, yeah. Keep the power local versus.
00:07:25 – Ruwa Romman
Big local. Yeah, I’m a big local person and fan, so…
00:07:28 – Rico Figliolini
Right, so keep it local. You know, if we don’t like what’s happening at the county level, I know in Peachtree Corners, there is no millage rate, but at the county level, obviously, there is. So if you have a problem there, you can either appeal your assessment or, listen, just vote the county commissioner out, that’s like voting these things in like this. So let’s move on to tax court in the judicial system and what that means in brief.
00:07:53 – Ruwa Romman
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 queue. I would much rather that a case where somebody is waiting for their case to be adjudicated to not have their life hang in limbo because of a tax case that’s taking up a lot of time. The other thing is that tax cases require a lot 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 the governor gets to appoint those judges, not us as people, we don’t get to vote for them. So less oversight. The other one that people had mentioned to me recently is that if you have a tax case, it might be a little more burdensome or costly if you’re low income. But for me, I really think that we should just kind of take those because there’s such a niche type of law that, you know, take it out of the generic queue and put it in its own queue because then, you know, businesses can kind of deal with their own stuff and not take up the court’s time. But again, per usual, if you have concerns with it, vote no and let’s fix it.
00:09:04 – Rico Figliolini
So just, is there, I mean, I’m sure there’s statistics about who is in the tax courts, not tax courts, but you know, how many people, what the demographics are, like, is it majority business people that are going to these? Okay.
00:09:24 – Ruwa Romman
So it’s majority 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 you 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 to do that. But again, as I always say, when it comes to constitutional 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.
00:09:58 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Referendum A, not one, two, but A, is tax exemption for tangible personal property.
00:10:02 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. So I voted no on this one during session, and will 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 exemption for certain types of 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 take this tax exemption. And what it does, it actually raises the exemption from 7,000 to 20,000 and just a lot of room for misuse. And the intention was to help businesses. But the reality of the situation is that it would mostly help larger companies and corporations and could actually inadvertently hurt small businesses. Because the way that 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 taking away from that support.
00:11:09 – Rico Figliolini
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 a computer system. It’s a $5,000 system. You’re paying sales tax on it. The tangible personal or the tangible property tax, you have to pay an additional tax on that equipment, if I understand correctly.
00:11:44 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah, and it depends on how you’re 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. 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 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 owner, but actually ends up hurting you in the long run.
00:12:31 – Rico Figliolini
So, but the larger businesses, I mean, this is a maximum of 20,000. The larger business, 20,000 is like a drop in a bucket or is it per?
00:12:40 – Ruwa Romman
Again, it totally depends on how it’s set up. And that’s what I’m saying. It’s, these are like, this specific referendum was written in such a way that I voted for it, no, on the house floor. And will 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 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 20,000, 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. 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.
00:13:37 – Rico Figliolini
So if anyone wants to find out about this particular referendum, I mean, any of these three, they can go, I’ll have links on in the show notes, but it should be easy enough to find where they are.
00:13:49 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. So we have put up a voter guide on all of our social media channels. I’ve 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 through how I voted for it during session and how I’ll be voting for it at 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 costs possible. Like, cool, totally no problem. I just never want people to question what their elected official is doing and why.
00:14:28 – Rico Figliolini
I appreciate that transparency. So even if you change your vote and you decided to vote yes or no, it’s good to know why you changed that. Alright. So let’s move away from that a little bit. There’s another referendum coming up just for Gwinnett County, and that’s the transit referendum. I think on infrastructure concerns here in Peachtree Corners, I mean, we’re mainly a car city, if you will, and the autonomous vehicle Technology Park thing just drives that. It almost feels like Michigan sometimes. So how do you think this referendum would address our issues or impact us locally here in Peachtree Corners?
00:15:08 – Ruwa Romman
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 a convenient bus to the fall festival in Duluth or, for example, to any of the Norcross festivities that happen in addition to the Peachtree 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 115 miles of quick ride BRT light is what it’s called. 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 26 miles of bus routes. It would have nearly 346 miles of county ride services, 20 transit transfer centers, two airport connectors. And for Peachtree Corners specifically, there is going to be one of those airport connector routes in Peachtree Corners.
00:16:27 – Rico Figliolini
Now, this would connect to the Doraville station or?
00:16:33 – Ruwa Romman
These are like express buses. So to give you an example, right now, I can drive about 10 minutes to Sugarloaf 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 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 HOV 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 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 to build that out for the entire county. Now, it’s going to be a 30-year project because 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 40 cars, it’s going to be just one bus. And I don’t know if any, you know, for the listeners who have to commute, it just gets so, so awful.
00:18:00 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, it’s interesting because with remote work now and hybrid work still being in place, I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere. If anything, it just brought me more hybrid rather than just dedicated remotely working. But coming from New York, I mean, and having lived here since ‘95, I can see some, there’s good reasons in my mind. Like there’s the Long Island Railroad. There’s other rail systems or even express bus systems that are coach seats and stuff that work really well. You paid a premium for that above the normal 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. And even here sometimes you hear things happening on MARTA. MARTA’s 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 total cost like over the period of time for this referendum?
00:19:15 – Ruwa Romman
It’s a one percent levied. I gotta double check the number but.
00:19:23 – Rico Figliolini
It’s a one penny tax actually. It’s a one penny tax on your sales tax. So it would be adding one more penny to any Equinet sales tax, right? And so over 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 not spending, you know, billion dollars to do two miles a track or something.
00:19:45 – Ruwa Romman
No, no, no. 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 Gwinnett. This is like, by Gwinnett for Gwinnett kind of a program that focuses on only Gwinnett. I mean obviously it’s trying to also, you know, connect people to other transit 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 Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Norcross, and Berkeley Lake. You have the airport ride also connects into Peachtree Corners.
00:20:36 – Rico Figliolini
When you say airport ride? That goes straight to the airport?
00:20:39 – Ruwa Romman
Correct. So there’s going to be what’s called 20 new transit stations. One of them is going to be in Peachtree Corners. The other one’s going to be in Norcross. And the third one’s 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, rapid ride, and airport ride along these transfer stations and facilities. So one of them is going to be here in Peachtree Corners.
00:21:08 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. 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 here in Peachtree Corners, pick up the bus, and it takes you 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.
00:21:30 – Ruwa Romman
It’s still the same system. 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 Gwinnett one. And the, based on, I’m trying to see like, there’s a, it’s called Hartsfield Jackson ride and I’m actually trying to open it up.
00:21:49 – Rico Figliolini
So the one from Gwinnett county or from Peachtree Corners or these micro hubs, they won’t take you directly to the airport. You would still have to make a transfer somewhere?
00:22:01 – Ruwa Romman
Yes. Or drive your car directly to the airport. You would still have to make a transfer somewhere. I’m reading the map as we’re talking right now because I don’t have it memorized, 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 to be able to get on the bus and go directly to the airport. Or you can, I’m trying to find where the hub is.
00:22:22 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. So you can go there. So that’s my point because originally some of these things were, you get on it, you get to, let’s say, the Doraville MARTA Station, you hop on and then you get to the airport. But what I’m hearing is that if you’re hopping on the Peachtree Corners hub or Duluth or Norcross, that you go directly from here to the airport without making any jumps anywhere.
00:22:46 – Ruwa Romman
Exactly. Exactly.
00:22:49 – Rico Figliolini
So, I mean, I find that more convenient than having to stop somewhere, get off, walk, get another transfer, wait for that. Okay. So it’s straight.
00:23:02 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. So if you have a car, 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 the Mall of Georgia, goes down to Sugarloaf Mills, goes down to the Gwinnett transit center at Gwinnett Place, Indian Trail. I can’t fully read what that says. 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 park, get on the bus, and it’ll take you directly to the airport.
00:23:38 – Rico Figliolini
Gotcha. Okay. Alright, cool. So this way everyone knows some of that. We’ll have a link also to that map. And so this way people can check that out also. There’s pros and cons, obviously, and we’ll try to find those links for people that want to look at that. Because it is a penny that’s being added to our sales tax, and it’s a commitment that will stay there for quite a few years, I think.
00:24:09 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah, when building it, it’ll be about no more than 30 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’ll always be 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 designate some of the lanes for rapid transit bus as 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 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, increased exhaust, that kind of thing. But it does take time. So that was one of my cons is that it’ll take time for all this to be rolled out to the county.
00:24:59 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. 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 Peachtree 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 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 Mall of Georgia.
00:25:31 – Ruwa Romman
Yep. Hello. I love cats.
00:25:35 – Rico Figliolini
I’ve got three of them. Do you want to take one?
00:25:37 – Ruwa Romman
Awesome. I’ve got two. But it’s great. 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 can be on your phone, you can relax, you can read. It’s just, I don’t like traffic and anything that will make that better would go a long way. And I will say too, Gwinnett 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 gonna be able to handle like the kind of growth that would bring better jobs and that would 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 going to have, you know, hopefully more families and more kids and that kind of thing. And the sooner we can start prepping the, our infrastructure for that kind of a demand, the less disruptive it’s going to be.
00:26:44 – Rico Figliolini
And I agree with you on that. We’re seeing more apartments being built, multifamily. People aren’t buying as many houses because of the nature of mortgage rates and there’s less land to build on.
00:27:03 – Ruwa Romman
And we don’t buy these corporations. I mean it’s so infuriating.
00:27:05 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. I mean the trend is build to rent. I mean it’s just like crazy the amount of private industry purchasing these homes that you’re gonna, even in subdivisions where you’re gonna just, you know, 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 city manager about having affordable housing. How do you create that? How can you incentivize that or 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 the transit system is certainly one way to do that.
00:27:53 – Ruwa Romman
Yep. Yeah.
00:27:56 – Rico Figliolini
Let’s move on to, so let’s see, we’ve done the transit. Though there’s feedback. Alright. A little guy likes to chew on wires sometimes. Get electrocuted. So there’s feedback from the community, I think, that would be, that you’re hearing probably, especially if you’re campaigning, going door to door and stuff. So what type of feedback are you getting, whether it’s national thoughts or just local? What are the pressing issues that you’re seeing from this district?
00:28:30 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah, so my favorite part about campaigning, and for those who don’t know, as state representatives, 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 canvases, it doesn’t matter if you’re the candidate or if you’re brand new, everyone’s doing the work. And 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 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 that has gotten like more, like we’ve seen more at the doors over time is actually, we were just talking about, which is housing. Whether that includes HOA oversight. Some people are starting to realize that there are these companies taking over HOA 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 state people, because 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’s terrible, right? 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 part of the housing crisis.
00:30:12 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that’s true. I heard the same thing, actually.
00:30:15 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. And so people at the doors will say things like, 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 $200,000 more than when we first bought our house in 2020. And it’s only been four years. And I don’t think, 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 insane housing market. And people keep talking about, well, we just need to build. 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 extra part of their profit. So how do we, 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 law is just a suggestion at that point.
00:31:21 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, I totally agree. I mean, I was just speaking to someone else here in the city about a particular development that went up. The schematics for it or the renderings for it doesn’t look, the building itself does not look like the renderings that are given because they ended up using slightly different materials and stuff. And so when rezonings are done for, let’s say, multifamily and stuff, 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, profit drives over everything else on that list. And if they 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 is a problem. The database for knowing whether a building’s bought, at least privately, like through an LLC or corporation, is out there. It can be found. In fact, there’s an app that interacts with it.
00:32:40 – Ruwa Romman
Like officially, you as a city, you cannot set it up yourself, and I think that’s just insane.
00:32:47 – Rico Figliolini
Yes it is. And in fact I’m looking at actually collecting that data at some point and publishing it because I believe there’s at least 12 to 16 percent that may be owned privately in the city.
00:33:00 – Ruwa Romman
Even worse. In Atlanta, 40% 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 are 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. And the next one will sell 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.
00:33:52 – Rico Figliolini
Right. Just cosmetic.
00:33:54 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. And 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 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 outbid us. I’m serious. They had outbid us. We 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. And even though your offer is lower, they’re willing to accept it. And we got really lucky. But it can, I mean, it’s tough. It’s really, really hard. And you add that on, you add the increase of everything else, utilities. So we don’t have an option of who you pick as your energy provider. And Georgia Power has increased our utilities four times. Four times.
00:34:27 – Rico Figliolini
Isn’t that amazing? Because they’re supposed to be capped at the amount of profit they’re allowed to take in a year. And yet you keep getting. And I’m sure the Georgia Power raised your tax because of the nuclear plant that went online that took them years and billions and billions of dollars over. It’s just ridiculous.
00:34:44 – Ruwa Romman
Yep. 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 homes 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 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 going to make it 25% clean energy. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at these graphs and 2% of it is solar. 2%. We have farmers who would love to lease out their lands to solar companies and become solar facilities 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 in the family for a long time. But because Georgia Power is not, like keeps, I mean the only bills they come after are solar bills. It is wild.
00:35:50 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. Well they’re protecting an entity that’s why. 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 paid for it you still have to pay an infrastructure fee because obviously there’s an infrastructure that has to be maintained.
00:36:08 – Ruwa Romman
I told Georgia Power, I said, I completely understand. You guys do, and they do. 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, we came up with the rebate rates already. You don’t need to reopen that 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 don’t want to answer that question.
00:36:45 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. They may not have the answer to it even, but they don’t care to get it. Because if they, like you said, 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.
00:37:01 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. So if your bill went up, please email us, especially to my house email. It’s Ruwa.Romman@house.ga.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.
00:37:16 – Rico Figliolini
Good. That’s excellent. And just to tap 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? They get to write off the mortgage, the interest rates and stuff, but they get to amortize the property because it’s an investment on their side.
00:37:36 – Ruwa Romman
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 going to try it again if I’m reelected. 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. Well, they now count homes that actually appreciate in value over time to get that same tax break, right? So they’re like double dipping, it’s awful. So we wrote a bill. And part of the concern was some people who own small businesses will also own their home under that small business. So we didn’t want to 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 is in Georgia, you can be exempt from this. But everybody else you can no longer get that like absolutely not.
00:38:28 – Rico Figliolini
So that would help to a degree, I can see. Although I can see the other side of that setting up a Georgia corporation that’s a subsidiary of a larger company, I mean those things can’t.
00:38:40 – Ruwa Romman
So they can’t have multiple homes. You can’t like, yeah, it was also to take away like any multiple home type, whatever the case may be.
00:38:47 – Rico Figliolini
Or maximum number or something that you can’t have more than two homes or something.
00:38:52 – Ruwa Romman
Exactly. Yep.
00:38:53 – Rico Figliolini
That’s great, Ruwa.
00:38:59 – Ruwa Romman
Very few people knew about this. And I was like, why don’t we just write a bill? And so we did.
00:39:05 – Rico Figliolini
Why not? You know, you could write a bill about it. Yeah, no, I appreciate you even thinking about that because most people don’t know that. Let’s talk a little bit, because we got just a little bit more time, about voting, right? What that looks like. You know, you’re an incumbent, you’re running for reelection, you have opposition from the Republican party, obviously. What did you want to say about that?
00:39:31 – Ruwa Romman
Yeah. So I have, I’ve been an organizer way longer than I’ve been an elected official, in addition to like my professional life.
00:39:38 – Rico Figliolini
Which by the way, what do you do for your professional life?
00:39:41 – Ruwa Romman
I used to be at 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 we talked about at the very beginning, on our ballot is obviously the presidential. We’ve got our members of Congress. You’ve got your state senators, state house. You’ve got your referendums. You’ve got your county commissioners. So our county commissioner is Kirkland Carden, who’s amazing. And he’s up for reelection this year. And so please, 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 their ballot blank. And it’s a big problem. So if you have any questions or you’re not sure about something on your ballot, we’re 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 19th. And you can actually vote early in any voting location in Gwinnett because it’s early voting. So as long as you’re in the county, you can vote anywhere. Between now and November 1st. And voting locations are open seven to seven. It’s really easy. There’s no lines. So highly recommend 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 there just a little too late. The second time I opened my wallet and my ID wasn’t with me. I happened 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 is just the 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 an absentee ballot, if you don’t get it back and mail it back by the 25th, it’s kind of my arbitrary personal deadline because of just mail delays. 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 you have questions or want to go vote with someone, come vote with me on Saturday the 19th at Shorty Howell. We’ll have really great food, snacks. It’ll be from one to three and we want to make it fun.
00:42:03 – Rico Figliolini
And I think some of the early voting locations are at least.
00:42:10 – Ruwa Romman
Pinckneyville and Shorty Howell are the two in our district.
00:42:12 – Rico Figliolini
So Pinckneyville Recreation Center?
00:42:14 – Ruwa Romman
Yes. It’s the one that’s on the Main Peachtree Industrial, not in the back where the park is.
00:42:20 – Rico Figliolini
Correct. Okay, cool. So you have absentee ballot also, like you said. And those are counted based on when they arrive at the polling place or based on the postmark?
00:42:38 – Ruwa Romman
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 anywhere that there’s a voting location, sorry, not anywhere. During early voting, some of the locations have ballot drop boxes. You can check that out on the Gwinnett County website.
00:42:54 – Rico Figliolini
Pickneyville Park has one, the recreation center. There’s a drop box. Shorty Howell does not.
00:42:59 – Ruwa Romman
Yep. So 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 don’t want to run into an issue where somebody relies on USPS to mail their ballot. And it’s awful because this is what happens when you defund stuff, right? Suddenly services are worse. And people don’t know this. USPS is actually a constitutionally mandated thing. So unlike UPS and FedEx, they’re actually required to reach everybody no matter how far they 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 story spiel of if you do absentee, one, if you run into issues, reach out to us, two, drop it off. And three, if you’re not able to complete that process by the 25th, please go vote in person.
00:44:06 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Do you see, have you seen any, you know, with 300,000 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, I don’t know what the breakout was, whether it was like 40 odd percent Republican, because you could tell from the data, I think, where the breakouts are. And I don’t know, 20 odd percent was like independents or something. Are you seeing or hearing, I know this is early still, but any issues with voter suppression or anything like that?
00:44:40 – Ruwa Romman
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.sos.ga.gov. That is your My Voter page. So mvp.sos.ga.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 tried to log in and their entire voter page is gone. It’ll give them an error. If that’s the case, reach out to us. We can connect you to a hotline that can help you figure that out. Some cases like that, but nothing too crazy.
00:45:37 – Rico Figliolini
So does that mean, so if they don’t see it online, but I go to a voting place, right? And they find my name in the database because they’re connected they’re going to find it. Let’s say I’m fine to vote, 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, can I take, can I request a ballot? I forget what you call that ballot.
00:46:05 – Ruwa Romman
Provisional.
00:46:07 – Rico Figliolini
Provisional. Thank you. I can ask for a provisional ballot and call that?
00:46:13 – Ruwa Romman
So the rule 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 like the headquarters for Gwinnett. And you have to go and show up in person to fix your ballot. So I always tell people 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, first and foremost, try and be very polite about it. They’re doing their jobs. And then obviously as a 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.
00:47:11 – Rico Figliolini
Can people register to vote still? Or is it too late at this point?
00:47:16 – Ruwa Romman
No, the deadline was October 7th.
00:47:21 – Rico Figliolini
October 7th. So, final words, is there anything else you would like to talk about before we sign off?
00:47:27 – Ruwa Romman
No, like I said if you run into any issues voting, finding out where to vote, your absentee ballot, whatever the case may be, 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@Ruwa4Georgia.com. We are tracking cases and helping constituents vote. If you have 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, you know, take a few minutes, go vote early, make it an event, take your friends and your family and yeah, happy voting.
00:48:21 – Rico Figliolini
Great. So on that note, I appreciate you being with me, Ruwa. 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. Even though you just did it a little bit like that, but definitely use this moment to give that pitch and ask for the vote.
00:48:44 – Ruwa Romman
Thank you. So my name is Ruwa Romman. I am the Georgia State Representative for House District 97, and I’m running for re-election. I ran because I wanted 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 we’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 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 reelected, I want to keep doing the work that I have been doing and advocating for you at the Capitol in every way that I can. But thank you for your support originally and I hope to have it again come November 5th.
00:49:33 – Rico Figliolini
Thank you for doing that. Hang in there with me for a minute, but everyone else, thank you for being with us. I appreciate you listening to the podcast. If you’re listening to this on like 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 there’s any questions you have that we can answer those for you. Otherwise, there’ll be links in the show notes on the website. But thank you again. Appreciate everyone joining us.
00:50:01 – Ruwa Romman
Thanks, y’all.
Related
Podcast
Michael Corbin on School Safety, Teacher Pay and Election Integrity [Podcast]
Published
1 month agoon
October 7, 2024In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini interviews Michael Corbin, the Republican candidate for Georgia State House District 97. With his background as a parent and husband to a Gwinnett County public school teacher, Corbin shares his deep commitment to school safety, advocating for immediate actions like enhanced security measures, mental health resources and more school resource officers. They dive into topics such as using state-of-the-art technology to protect schools and fostering a safer learning environment without making schools feel like prisons.
The conversation also spans broader issues, from the importance of teacher pay to ensuring fair and secure elections in Georgia. Corbin emphasizes his dedication to making housing more affordable for teachers and public servants while also supporting job creation in tech-focused communities like Peachtree Corners. Tune in to hear Corbin’s thoughtful perspectives on the future of Georgia’s schools, housing, and government.
Resources:
Michael Corbin’s Campaign Website: https://www.corbinforga.com/
Michael’s email: Michael.Corbin@corbinforga.com
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Michael Corbin’s Perspective
00:04:11 – Securing Schools and Practical Measures to Protect Our Kids
00:06:48 – Addressing Mental Health and Warning Signs in School Shootings
00:09:51 – Leveraging Technology for Student Safety
00:11:48 – Addressing Teacher Pay and Affordable Housing for Educators
00:17:27 – Cost of Living Adjustments for Teachers
00:21:29 – Leveraging State Support for Tech Hub Development
00:26:30 – Identifying and Fostering Technical Aptitude in Students
00:28:48 – Balancing Healthcare Access and Affordability
00:31:36 – Healthcare Costs Crushing Middle-Class Americans
00:33:30 – The Real Costs of Natural Disasters
00:35:13 – Navigating Disaster Recovery for Businesses
00:38:53 – Ensuring Secure and Accessible Elections in Georgia
00:40:53 – Secure Elections and Voter ID in Georgia
00:45:01 – Importance of Accessible Voter IDs
00:49:02 – Voting for Candidates with Your Interests in Mind
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hey, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, Georgia. I have a special guest tonight that we’re going to be spending some time with. Tonight, I say, because it’s Thursday at 8 o’clock p.m. and nothing ever stops around here. We just keep going on. So it’ll be an interesting time with Michael Corbin, who’s running for Georgia State House District 97 as a Republican candidate. Hey, Michael, thanks for joining us.
00:00:32 – Michael Corbin
Hey, Rico. Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure. I was on a couple of years ago when I was running for Congressional District 7 at the time. And yeah, thank you for doing this and having candidates on so voters can hear directly from us and get a little bit more background about just also our stance on some of the issues.
00:00:52 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. The candidate interviews, funny enough, days or a week leading up to election is always the most searched on our website. So it’s always good to see that people actually look. It’s good that people are looking.
00:01:06 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, that’s good to know. Yeah, that people are looking and researching the candidates before they cast their vote.
00:01:13 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that does my heart well to see that. We’re going to be touching on a lot of subjects here tonight. We’re going to be touching a bit on school safety and education, public safety in general, jobs in the economy, healthcare, voting, election integrity, I forget too, its technology and online safety. So a bunch of topics that we’re going to start off with. Let’s get right into it. School safety and education. I know that obviously with more shootings going on, more active shootings, whether it’s schools or it’s a candidate like Donald Trump out in the field making speeches, there’s just a lot going on. It seems a lot more violent for some reason this year than most. But schools have, from some of the recent shootings, it just becomes, you almost feel like if you’re watching enough TikTok and Instagram, it feels like it’s happening all the time. But we should attend to school safety, right? I think one of the proposals you made was obviously, as many candidates do, that we should be looking to create a safer environment in our schools to protect our children from active shooters. So I guess the question would be, can you elaborate a little bit on what those solutions might look like? What are your thoughts about implementing what should be done along those lines?
00:02:41 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, definitely. And it is near and dear to my heart. Number one, both of my children are in public school here in the state of Georgia, right in our community. And you don’t want to be a parent worrying about your kid, not coming home at whatever level it is. They’re in elementary school now, but time flies and they’ll be getting into middle school as well as high school soon. And just to mention, it was a few weeks ago, right after Appalachee, there was a middle school student that was found with a gun for Duluth Middle School, which is where my daughters will be going. It’s where I went to middle school. So it’s near and dear to my heart. And my wife is a public school teacher here in Gwinnett County. So I am highly invested in this. There’s a lot of people that I think, you know, propose, I would say, feel good, do nothing proposals out there. Number one, because they’re too partisan in nature, you know, with red flag laws and gun safety. Those are such high overarching discussions that are going to take so long. And I’m tired of it. We, there’s things that we can do and we can do now to protect our kids. And yes, we need to, we need to look at some of the issues when it comes to gun safety and mental health and things of that nature. But why are we waiting to protect our kids? Why do we have metal detectors in airports to protect people that are traveling? Why do state legislators have to have people that come through the Capitol doors get screened for guns, right? So there’s all these technologies that are out there that we’re using in other places, courthouses, that we’re not putting into our schools. Why? That’s the question that I ask. That should be the most bipartisan thing that we can talk about is investing in the technology, security assessments and gaps to make our school safe. And nobody wants their kid going and feeling like they’re in prison. But I’d rather have my kid going to where I know somebody is going in and out of the school. And they’re being screened by and these days, I’m in technology, we have very state-of-the-art metal detectors that aren’t these you know 1980s looking metal detectors that you see and have. If you picture in your head they can be embedded in walls, you can put them in to where it doesn’t look like a prison. And we have the money as a state to spend on this, and we’re not doing it. You know, so you asked about your question, just to get back to that, but, you know, nobody likes to hear mandate, but, you know, we need to mandate having security assessments. Where are the gaps at every school? And then we need to make sure that those gaps are filled with the technology that’s available. You know, talking about metal detectors, cameras, alarms, at all ingress and egress points, entry exit points. Another simple thing that we can do is hire more school resource officers. You know, those jobs can exist. There’s people that want to do it. And you can maintain a ratio of student resource officers to student body enrollment. And then also, you know, mental health, right? We don’t have the mental health experts in our school system to identify. And once it has been identified to adequately deal with those people that may be vulnerable to using a gun or some type of violence. There’s a lot of things we can do right now.
00:06:34 – Rico Figliolini
Would it make sense to, obviously you want to prioritize things, right? Past shooters have always been a mental issue or family issues that starts it off. I don’t want to lessen the importance of metal detectors in schools, but if you look at the state of Georgia, how many times has an active shooter happened in the state of Georgia? How many schools do we have actually out there? And what type of investment would that be? I think that a lot of times that we find out that a child is just not being listened to. And if they were, we would know what the problem is, right? Several of these shooters had already been in touch with either school officials or police, and they weren’t taken seriously, right? So we’re prioritizing getting social psychologists into the schools, staff of that nature first, makes sense, and then work your way through. Because budgeting, you know how that works. It takes two years to budget a bill out of the senate or even that, right?
00:07:48 – Michael Corbin
Right. And it does and I agree. You know you have to, all of them were not really in, I would say an order of priority. Getting one of those things that I listed in action would be great and then work your way towards what you can work towards, because there will be an investment. You got to get it passed from a budget perspective. But I do believe that it can be done. There can be something that’s put in place. But yeah, we need people that can identify and deal with those situations and isolate those situations when it comes to known issues of mental health. Now, there’s going to be some that slip by, right? Even the best of mental health experts, the people that are around them, that’s going to happen. But I agree with you. Like most of these that we hear about, there were warning signs and there just weren’t adequate enough resources to take care of or help the individual that was affected. So I think that that’s an easier entry point in. And then the second piece is you’re not going to be able to catch all of it. And not all of them, a lot of them do have mental health, but some of them just could, it could just be somebody that, you know, wanted, gang violence, something else that, that comes up. So, you know, the technology would still have to cover for that because that person may not have been identified with somebody with a mental health issue. So it’s really kind of all encompassing, but I think we have to really have that comprehensive program in place to protect our students because they shouldn’t have to worry about going to school and dying and parents shouldn’t have to worry about sending their kids to school to die. I grew up through the Columbine, you know, school shooting. That was my senior year in high school. And it was kind of one of the first times it really hit home for everybody. And it was a very odd time. And even me, you know, as a high school senior, big football player, I was scared to death to go to school. We had no resources there to protect us. So I don’t want my kids growing up in that. I know nobody wants their kids growing up in that state.
00:09:54 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, of course not. Like you said, the technology allows the ability if it’s done that way, to install these things so then you don’t feel like you’re in prison. Because that’s the biggest thing. I mean, I went to a public high school in Brooklyn, and that particular high school did not have, back then, those types of metal detectors. Although there was another high school a little further away from us that did, that I visited. And you could tell the night and day. I mean, it just felt like you were in a high, you know, in almost a high maximum security prison to some degree. You know, and they had to chain the doors shut and stuff. I mean, here in Georgia today, I mean, you have kids sometimes, I won’t say which particular high school it was, public high school, but the kids would just leave the building when they pleased and would just hang out somewhere not too far from there because that’s where they can either wait until the end of the school day and then go home or do whatever they were doing, but they would leave. They’d just walk out through the parking lot, just hang out somewhere at some office park or something. And you can’t stop them. The same way you can’t stop anyone from really walking into the building either. So you’re right. Having detection would be helpful, I guess.
00:11:14 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. And to your point, we have such great technology now that we can leverage to where students don’t have to feel that way and they can still be protected. Unlike, you know, back, when I was in high school or you were in high school, if they walked those in, were those archaic looking metal detectors and you felt like you’re going you’re into prison.
00:11:36 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, for sure. So let’s stick on education a little bit and let’s talk a little bit about teacher pay, you know, specific steps about what it would mean to raise teacher pay, whether it’s a salary, a bonus, a signing bonus. What is the adequate amount? I mean, I know that sometimes these departments like the police, they have their tasks or they understand they need to hire a certain amount. They budgeted that money, and yet they cannot get enough candidates to fill the spots even. So I guess that works hand in hand. What do you see as a solution to something like that?
00:12:18 – Michael Corbin
You know, I do have to applaud Governor Kemp. He’s put a lot of emphasis on raising teacher pay. And I think that’s a great first step, but I think we need to continue doing that. And I think there’s reasonable ways to do it based off of inflation, but also just based off of certain criteria factors when it comes to really poverty level. When we’re looking at a teacher’s base salary, take my wife out of it. If she was raising our two kids and living in Peachtree Corners, well, she wouldn’t be living here. She can’t afford, she wouldn’t be able to afford it. It’s not attainable. So the problem is, you know, we don’t budget for it and we don’t feel like it’s necessary, I think as a society to pay teachers the amount of money that they’re worth. And eventually what happens in any industry is you will get unqualified people doing those jobs because people will move on to get higher paying jobs or they’ll quit. And my wife sees that all the time, especially in struggling school districts, right? We talk about, not to pivot away from teacher pay because teacher pay, there can be a, let’s just call it a path to progress kind of system put into place. We’ve got it in the corporate world. We can have it in the public service world as well when it comes to teachers. But the funny thing and is, it’s not funny, it’s teachers that teach in the hardest school districts sometimes get paid less or they still get paid the equal of teachers that are working in safer school districts with less transient families and their jobs are so much more challenging right? And we did pass the you know the voucher for the bottom 25 percent schools right you know to be able to take your child out and use that money to apply it somewhere else. And I think that’s a great thing for underperforming school districts. But the second step to that is we need to be able to pay teachers that are in those districts or attract teachers that want to be in those districts a higher wage. Otherwise, what’s going to change? If you have teachers that are not performing well today, we’re not able to incentivize those from a monetary perspective to do better or to attract people to get into a tougher situation and try to make education better in those areas, then we’re just going to be in a really bad cycle. So it kind of goes hand in hand, right? I think it depends on the school system you’re in, depends on where you’re teaching, and also depends on where that school ranks, how much you should get paid.
00:15:18 – Rico Figliolini
Right. True, for sure. And every county is not equal, right? And every district is not equal I know for example in where we live in Peachtree Corners, Simpsonwood, Simpson Elementary you know the PTA raises lots of money because of the affluence of the parents in the area and they share some of that with some sister schools so they’re not just keeping it to Simpson. But if you’re able to do that, that’s good. And if you’re in a district that can’t, then, well, that becomes a problem, right? Affordable housing is another issue. Not that I want to segue to that yet, but affordable housing for teachers that can actually live in the community that they’re teaching would be nice. You can’t do that in Peachtree Corners because there is not affordable housing here. I think housing starts, for the most part, any new housing now starts at like $400,000. Is that a starter home? Not really. Not for anyone that teaches or if there are two teachers in the family. So maybe, you know, do you see housing as being an issue as well? I mean, do you see the state looking at taking some responsibility for crafting the ability to have affordable housing in communities, but incentivizing developers to actually create affordable housing? Because they can, if they want to, if the rules are in the right place they can you’d have to restrict who buys those houses this way private companies like the biggest trend right now is is build to rent versus build to sell and things are moving that in that way because most people can’t afford to buy a house, although you’re probably paying the same in rent as you would for a mortgage, if you could get that mortgage. So it’s no different. In some cases, you’re paying even more in rent than you would for a mortgage. So do you see the state doing something along those lines economically to help? What do you think that could look like from your point of view?
00:17:23 – Michael Corbin
I would think it would be a cost of living adjustment based on where they’re teaching for housing specifically. So I wouldn’t say it would be government-owned housing or anything like that to put them in, but I think you can look at it from a cost of living adjustment. You do that in the corporate world today, right? If you move from Atlanta to New York to take a job, you get most companies will give you a cost of living adjustment to make sure that you can have the same type of lifestyle or at least similar based on where you’re coming from to where you’re going to based on housing prices, all the other different economic factors that are going to influence you. So if we’re doing that at the corporate level across many states and even countries, I’m pretty sure we can fix it here with counties and school districts. Data is not that hard to really gather. And thanks to AI, it can spit it out pretty dang quick in terms of what those adjustments probably would be. I’m not saying we’re going to use AI to do that, but it’s not rocket science. But to answer your question, yes. If you’re living in Peachtree Corners or an area that, that has a, you know, higher standard of living just to be able to get by and you don’t want to have to drive three hours to work because that’s what’s happening in a lot of cases, then there could be a cost of living adjustment that would be able to help bridge that gap when it comes to housing, whether it’s buying or renting.
00:19:02 – Rico Figliolini
And you’re right. I mean, there are people that are traveling and all sorts of things. There are a couple of people I know that work in Peachtree Corners, and they live in Sugar Hill or Beaufort, and they’re driving south here. So, yeah, because they can’t afford to live here, and yet they work in the city of Peachtree Corners. I think as many people work in the city sometimes as work outside the city is the way that it was pointed out at one point. I don’t know if that stat has changed, but with new housing coming in, new apartments, new townhomes, these things aren’t cheap. $750,000 starting. I don’t know who can afford to buy that. When I was at the Peachtree Aquinas Festival, a couple came by, a young couple. They found out that the boyfriend was a real estate agent. They’re late 20s, early 30s maybe. And they were looking at buying a townhouse on the green. You know, those things are like easy, $750, $800.
00:20:01 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. They’re like mini brownstones in New York. It’s like they, you know, put them on their beautiful townhomes list.
00:20:13 – Rico Figliolini
Oh yeah, they’re really nice townhomes. And you want to listen to the concert across the way sit out on your patio and do that.
00:20:18 – Michael Corbin
Exactly, exactly. So yeah it’s a nice area. There’s been a lot of building going around, you know at Peachtree Corners and say, hey, that’s where I want to start my life? And not many. It’s expensive.
00:20:54 – Rico Figliolini
So let’s talk a little bit like that because you’ll be representing, if you’re elected, District 97 represents more than Peachtree Corners, but Peachtree Corners is part of that representation, right? A great bit of it, yeah. And, you know, we look at ourselves as a smart city. Different cities, like Alpharetta has like 700 different tech companies, let’s say there, right? They’re probably one of the most populous of the smallest cities outside Atlanta with tech companies. What do you see the state’s responsibility in to be able to help a place like ours, like Peachtree? I want to be centric to Peachtree Corners. What could you leverage to help create jobs here or support small businesses or startups in the city of Peachtree Corners? How should the state be working with localities like us?
00:21:56 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, to me, it’s about just making it easier to do business, right? When it comes to Peachtree Corners, there’s a very specific plan. And I know that. You know, it’s, we’re a tech hub or we’re going to continue doing that with incubation of tech. And we’re going to continue attracting that type of talent here. We’re providing easy access for companies to come in here and whether that’s, you know, through some type of, want to call it a stimulus, but, you know, some sort of incentives that we can give to different cities based off of what type of industries that that city is trying to attract to their communities would be huge, right? Because cities are all in competition with each other. And yeah, so you’re trying to attract tech companies, Alpharetta is trying to attract tech companies, the city of Atlanta is, and you have to really get it specific to what those cities are trying to attract. And that’s where we’re at in our community. We’re not in an industrial community in South Georgia or a farming community. To support the businesses that want to go there long-term and that the state has the backs of those communities based on the type of business that they’re trying to cultivate within their communities. Because schools and businesses are the lifeline of communities when it comes to their success or failure, if the schools start to fail and the businesses start to fail, the people start to leave their houses, the housing market crashes and you end up with a failed city. So you have to invest in business and you have to invest in the businesses that those cities want to attract. And you have to invest in the school systems that are in those, in those areas as well.
00:24:07 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. When you go back just to the 20th century, when Ford decided to make his line of cars and stuff, how to educate the plant workers to be able to operate the systems right? So it’s no different today in a way, right? You have to have an educated workforce to be able to do things. So, for example, Intuitive Robotics, which is building their campus here in the middle of Peachtree Corners, they have 500 jobs. They look to expand to 1,200 jobs. They’re always constantly recruiting. It’s an assemblage plant, so they don’t manufacture anything, but they put things together there. The parts come from other places, but they need skilled labor to be able to do that. And they look at what they can hire local, and they don’t need, necessarily college level. If you have a kid graduating from a good STEM school that does not want to spend four years in college because they feel, I’ve learned CAD, I’ve learned 3D printing, I understand coding, they could go right out in the workforce through Melchior and be trained in that environment. Do you see, you know, I mean, we don’t have shop classes, for example. I mean, you don’t learn, unless you’re in a STEM school, you’re not able to learn any niche stuff like that, right? Do you see any changes needed in the school system to be able to accommodate the kids that don’t want to go to college at that level and be indebted $100,000 and then decide that what they went for, they’re not going to be doing that job. They’re going to be doing something else. Because that’s what’s happening for the most part. If you’re not a doctor or an accountant, you’re doing philosophy or psychology, you might not end up in the job that you think you want.
00:26:09 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, I think it needs to be identified. And there needs to be a pathway for those students. I think, you know, not everything in life is linear and maybe they change their mind. But there are kids that, you know, and students that have that aptitude and that’s what they want to do. And there needs to be curriculum that will foster that, number one. And number two, be able to identify and make sure that those students are on the right path. Because there are a lot of great programs out there. I mean, Gwinnett Tech’s one school system here in Georgia, just down the road, that does miraculous things when it comes to scholarships, to training and all kinds of different trades, and not just kids out of high school. I mean, there’s adults that can get in there, get trained and come out and be making 80, 90, and be making 120 thousand dollars with no liberal arts degree, college, no master’s degree, no nothing. And they love what they do. So I think you have to identify that. But you also have to have those classes for those students that have been identified, because I don’t think every, if you force all the students into it, some of them are just going to take up spots of people that really are serious about it. So I think you have to identify it, get them in there, cultivate it and get them on a path that will either send them to a technical college or a technical program, depending on what their decision is after high school. But I mean, we’ve got, you know, Paul Duke STEM. So I mean that is, you know every time my wife goes in there because they have training in there for her for Gwinnett county she’s like, this place is ridiculous like you should see it. I still have not seen it. You know, they just don’t, it’s hard, which it should be, it’s hard to get into a school. So I can’t just go in there. I would have to go maybe with my wife while she was going there for some training or something. But she’s like, you know, it’s amazing. So we need to be building more of those. I think we’re blessed to have that in our community so close by.
00:28:22 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. Let’s talk a little.
00:28:24 – Michael Corbin
To your point, just, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
00:28:25 – Rico Figliolini
No, go ahead.
00:28:28 – Michael Corbin
To your point, I think we are producing too many people that go into college. And there’s a high percentage of those folks that could go into the working force immediately. And businesses are looking for that talent, to your point, that we could be tapping into right here in our backyard and keeping those businesses here and keeping the talent here and helping the community. I don’t think that’s happening. I think that we can make sure that that happens by funding those programs at the public school level.
00:28:58 – Rico Figliolini
So keeping businesses here, I guess part of that, you know, so part of it’s education, part of it is taxation, part of it’s health care costs for their employees and for the company. One of the things you talk about is the continuing rise of health care. And especially for people that need specialists, you know, out of pocket becomes more expensive. Everything’s just becoming more expensive. I mean, whether you’re going shopping or wherever you’re going, healthcare is no different. Although that doesn’t really have a price that you can look at. You don’t usually see the price until way after you get the bill of the explanation of benefits all of a sudden. And you may not realize how much you’re out of pocket. How do you see your position if you were to win the seat? You know, what innovative solutions would be in mind when it comes to healthcare in the state of Georgia?
00:29:59 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, you know, there’s been a lot talked about when it comes to health care. You know, Kemp has the Pathways program that he pushes outside of, you know, expanding Medicare here in the state of Georgia. But when it comes to just having health care in general, let’s just take it back to a general statement here. You know, everybody should have access to healthcare, whether you want to, whether you want to say it’s, you know, a socialist thing, a non-socialist thing, I think it’s a human thing. But at the same time, people that can afford healthcare shouldn’t be price gouged. So there’s that balance. And I think it comes with competition in that space. Working in the corporate world for over 20 years now, I mean, I haven’t put a percentage on it, but it would have to be 50% at least higher than I probably did when I first entered the workforce after college for medical expenses. And at that time I didn’t even have a family, but you know, it’s so hard. And I’ve seen so many people that I’ve worked with get crushed in a year, literally crushed in a year financially because of the healthcare program that they have. I had a friend with hip surgery. And then his wife had multiple medical visits. And with the high deductible and premium, ate up everything, things that could have been socked away for savings for them for retirement, for their kids. And in my opinion, the insurance companies, the medical industries are ripping off and taking advantage of middle-class Americans. I think it’s a universal right to have healthcare, but I also think it’s a universal wrong to punish those that are middle-class Americans that don’t have very much choice other than to take what’s given them by their company. There’s no competition really. They go out and they shop it right? Per se, the companies do. But how can you really trust that? When they talked about price transparency, you get the statement in the mail afterwards. You see what they charge, you don’t see the cost. I don’t see what they paid. No. I would love to see their margins.
00:32:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. I mean, the cost and the pays. Yeah, you don’t. And even if you’re using healthcare.gov to do comparisons between plans, let’s say if you went out yourself to do it, right? There’s so many. It’s not a price per price. It’s not apples to apples. It’s like car insurance in a way. You know, someone says, well, I can get that cheaper. Sure you can. But, you know, you’re getting the same liability coverage, same comprehensive insurance. There’s too many variables to be able to say, to be able to shop it smartly. You almost need AI to actually do it for you. Because this way at least you can get a sense of what the real costs are, which is going to be also something that’s going to be happening. And I’m sure the state, the elected officials, as well as some of the insurance commissioners are going to have to look at. Now with what happened with Hurricane Helene coming through and causing billions of dollars in damage, it’s probably the most expensive hurricane in a century. I’ve seen insurance companies leave a state because they just can’t afford to insure anyone in that state. I mean, most people, I think in the state of Georgia, I think the percentage was less than 1% of the people that had huge flood damage are insured for flood damage. Most insurance doesn’t carry that. And so they’re going to be looking at FEMA, if FEMA even can help them in the short term. It can help them in the short term. Do you, there’s businesses that are affected by it too, see, just like Ingles shopping center locally, for example. Their main distribution was out of the Carolinas, completely flooded. Probably some of their servers were damaged there too. They were taking the financial charges from their stores because they’re only accepting cash at this store, for example, in Peachtree Corners. They’re not even accepting card.
00:34:28 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. Well, we shop there all the time. My wife went there on Monday or Tuesday, and they were only accepting cash. The lines were so long, she had to go up to Lidl.
00:34:36 – Rico Figliolini
Really?
00:34:40 – Michael Corbin
Yes. We never shopped there, but yeah, she didn’t have time to wait.
00:34:49 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. I mean, and I shopped there a pretty decent amount of times and, just, having seen that there almost felt like, what’s happening here, wow. But you know, that’s one store. Previlex gets most of this stuff coming out of Florida. Wasn’t as bad, I guess, as South Carolina. But how do you work with businesses then, that are being hit by insurance and how they have to provide it to their employees? Disasters like this happening, how do you cut through red tape? How do you make businesses able to survive in situations like this? Can the state do anything along those lines?
00:35:26 – Michael Corbin
The state probably can, but I also want to look at the insurance companies, those that say, we can’t afford to insure people in the state anymore. If you’re saying that you’re going to make an exit from the state, then your entrance to the state should be that much more rigorous when it comes to checking your books. If you’re going to tell me that you’re that broken when it comes your financials, then I need to see your books. If you’ve been doing business in our state for 10 years and we had one natural disaster and now you’re saying you’re going to exit, I want to see your books. So if there’s going to be laws about if you’re going to be doing business in our state as an insurer. And I don’t want to make it completely ridiculous or almost impossible, but there’s companies that want to come in and do business, insurance companies in the state of Georgia. But if you tell them, hey, here’s the guidelines, if you enter, if you try to exit, this is what we’re going to do when we look. We’re going to look at your books. We’re going to look at your profitability. We’re going to see what you guys were doing because if you were not adequately keeping enough cash on hand to be able to help out your customers to where you’re now so razor thin and you can’t survive another national disaster, then you shouldn’t probably ever been here in the first place. Or you just mismanaged your finances.
00:36:49 – Rico Figliolini
And there’s been insurance companies like health insurance companies that have left the state because they don’t want to insure here anymore to one reason or another.
00:37:00 – Michael Corbin
But I don’t think they, and I’ll have to fact check myself on this one, but I don’t think there’s penalties for them leaving.
00:37:09 – Rico Figliolini
I don’t believe so.
00:37:09 – Michael Corbin
So they get in, and we let them in because we want the business. But if you want in, what is the penalty to get out because things may have changed or maybe they didn’t change? And you just want to get out right?
00:37:28 – Rico Figliolini
That’s when you need a real strong insurance commissioner that doesn’t bend to the will of the companies. But you need the legislation in place, I think, right? To be able to… You do. You have to have the laws to hold them accountable. Yeah. Let’s move away from that a little bit. We’re obviously heading towards November. The VP debate was recent, and it was a bit of a snooze. I think most people were just like, I hear people say, well, fell asleep during part of it and stuff. I mean, they were very nice to each other, which was good. It was a little different than usual, right? I think they both spoke well, although not that I’m a Trump supporter, but J.D. Vance actually spoke better, I think, than Walz. Probably a little bit more experience, maybe. But, you know, we’re moving towards that. We’re moving towards an election where Georgia may or may not be a swing state, probably is. You know one of the things that I think you mentioned is voter and election integrity and the voting down the ballot right because do people follow down the ballot. Do they stop at some point? You know, what is, so I guess that’s the topic that will get hotter as we get closer to the elections, although early voting has already started in some states. I think it has started. I think it started in Georgia.
00:39:03 – Michael Corbin
Right. Early, 15th in Georgia, but absentee voting has already started. North Carolina has already started, I believe, early voting, yeah. That’s another major issue there because a lot of them can’t vote because they’re obviously, the disaster.
00:39:23 – Rico Figliolini
So how do you ensure what do you, you know, how do you ensure elections are going to be secure and accessible to every voter in the state of Georgia? I mean, are you comfortable with the way the system’s run at this point?
00:39:38 – Michael Corbin
So, you know, this is always one of those issues that bothers me, you know, being a Republican because you can’t make everybody happy. Like it’s, hey, are you a Kemp supporter? Are you a Trump supporter? Did you believe the election was stolen? Did you not believe it was stolen? And, you know, the past is the past. And I think, you know, we had some flaws in our election process, right? Without voter IDs, I think most, if not all states, there’s only a few, and Georgia was one of them that didn’t have that. And a lot of blame got pushed on to Raffensperger and to Kemp, but nobody foresaw COVID happening, right? Massive absentee balloting coming in. So he’s fixed it. You know, and I think there’s going to be much more secure elections. I think it’s being taken seriously. I think Kemp has been a good governor of the state. He’s got like a 60 percent approval rating, which is, you know, fantastic. I mean, even among Democrats, he’s got a pretty high approval rating. So he’s done a great thing when it comes to, he’s done a lot of great things, I think, for the state of Georgia. It’s just this internal battle between, do you think the voting is still going to be fair and secure here in Georgia? And yes, I do. From a technology perspective, people say they can or can’t be hacked. It would take a lot and those machines are pretty, I would say from a technology perspective, pretty archaic. It would be very obvious that they were. So I feel confident that the votes that are cast are going to be correct and that we’re going to have a fair election. You know, when it comes to whether people think the laws that were passed are fair or not, I think that just comes down to people wanting to win. And you know, and what is more fair and what is less fair, but, you know, most states have always had a photo ID to vote and you have to have a photo ID to prove who you are for just about anything in life. And one of the most important things that we have in our country is to vote and you should be able to prove that you are who you say you are. And that is one of the biggest things that’s going to safeguard our elections moving forward. There’s too many other hosts of conspiracy theories that I don’t entertain or get into. And as a Republican, people will gripe up and down about me because I’m not going to entertain that because I’m going to look forward and look forward to what we fix and making sure that every vote cast is one that’s going to be true and valid.
00:42:36 – Rico Figliolini
Great. I mean, I feel the same. I mean, looking forward makes sense. And voter ID, I just don’t understand why no one would want that. Because you have to, if you buy cigarettes or alcohol, you have to show an ID to be able to do those things in life. And like you said, most things you have to show some sort of identification. And to say that we don’t need that for voting, there’s no respect then for the system that so many people have died for. I mean, I just don’t get that.
00:43:17 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, I don’t get it either. And it was very disheartening back when that bill was passed and you saw even Major League Baseball go as far to take the All-Star game out of Atlanta over that. Why african-americans, not people born of the dominican or venezuela or curacao or anywhere else, african-americans that are truly from america why that’s dwindled and dwindled and dwindled and he is calling out the state of Georgia racist. He polled, I think, all five African-American players in Major League Baseball now to get their opinion in the United States, not outside of the United States, Mr. Commissioner, and taking money out of the state of Georgia over political stances. So it was very disheartening to see that you would play politics and hurt the economy of a city over something that was so simple, like you just mentioned, showing an ID.
00:44:43 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that doesn’t, an ID being racist. Yeah, I don’t. That doesn’t mean anyone’s racist. If anything, I think what might have helped, and I don’t think the bill provided it, is that an easy pathway to get that ID. Because not everyone needs a driver’s license, right? So a state photo ID, you know, you shouldn’t have to travel 30 miles away to be able to get that. To make it as easy as possible for anyone that needs an ID to be able to get it at least the initial time in their life and then they can renew it later online or it lasts for 10 years, just like a passport lasts for 10 years, and then you have to renew a passport, right? It’s no different. I mean, if it’s just, as long as there’s no barriers to getting an ID, a photo ID, then there should be no problem with that. But I think that’s, you know, where people get into the muck and stuff.
00:45:41 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, and, you know, there could have been, you know, some provisional. You know, I would just say, flip notes to that bill of, you know, we will be building out, you know, more centers to be able to get voter IDs based on areas where they’re lacking. You know, I think that would have been something that was, would be very prudent. And saying that, hey, you know, if there are gaps, we will do an assessment and see if there are gaps when it comes to people’s accessibility to get, to being able to get to a physical location, to get an ID. And we will build that out and make sure that those are, you know, whether they’re smaller, let’s call them satellite offices and not a major DMV, way to get there and get those licenses or I call it licenses, voter ID, call it just an identification card. So I agree. I haven’t actually, being completely transparent, dug into the data to see how many centers there are based on the population, based on travel. But, you know, there’s probably some room for, or I would say opportunity for growth there.
00:46:56 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. So I have, we’re actually at a good point to start winding down on the interview. What have we not spoken about that you think that we, you want to share in the next few minutes. Any issues that you want to cover that we haven’t?
00:47:14 – Michael Corbin
I would say we’ve covered a lot of them. You know, I would just urge any voters that are, that do look this up, because voters do look it up you know when they come down to the ballot, whether it’s them standing in line, looking at their phone, being like, I saw Mike Corbin sign, let me look at his website, what the heck is he about? I mean, sometimes it takes that, and sometimes people just go up and down the ballot. What we have to, and this is starting to become a potential threat in our government at all levels, local, state, and federal, is down-the-ballot voting. And more so in state than anything because they’re often overlooked, but they’re very important. And they impact your life faster than any federal legislation. And Peachtree Corners does even quicker. So people don’t pay attention. People need to pay attention to what people like me are running for. Why I even ran, why I even care. And it’s because I love this community. I love this state. And you have to make sure that who you’re voting for has your back. And if you don’t feel like they do, then don’t vote for them. And there’s some nefarious characters out there that have now determined and have made public that they know they can get in regardless and push their own agenda and not really even care about their own party because it’s not really their party. They just will get on a ballot because they’ll get into a district where they know that down the ballot will win because it’s a Democrat or Republican district. So I just urge people to really look into the backgrounds of the candidates that are running, especially for state office, because you may end up with people in there that don’t have Georgia’s best interest, don’t have America’s best interest in mind, and eventually it will become a national security threat. So people just need to really look into that because there is a blueprint out there for people to infiltrate into our government at the state level and continue to work their way up at the federal level.
00:49:29 – Rico Figliolini
If anyone wants to find out more about Michael Corbin, where would they go?
00:49:35 – Michael Corbin
It’s www.CorbinForGA.com
00:49:41 – Rico Figliolini
All right, cool. So if anyone has any comments, you could leave it in the comments, either on here, if you’re watching it on Facebook or on YouTube. If you’re listening to this as an audio podcast or from the website, I’ll have show notes so you could find these links as well. Early voting starts the 15th, we said. And in-person voting is November 5th, if I remember that right.
00:50:07 – Michael Corbin
Yep, that’s correct. All the early voting locations are on the Secretary of State website, as well as the Gwinnett Elections website.
00:50:16 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. And if anyone wants to reach you directly, how would they email you, or where would they email or call?
00:50:23 – Michael Corbin
You can email me directly anytime. People do all the time. I will respond right back. So it’s just michael.corbin@corbinforgeorgia.com.
00:50:35 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. Alright Michael, I appreciate you being with me this evening and having this discussion. Everyone else that’s listening, so why don’t you hang in there for a second, but everyone else that’s listening, there’ll be other interviews over the next few weeks. Certainly look at the candidates that are representing not only, you know, in the state house, but where they’re representing, right? So the majority of District 97 is Peachtree Corners. So you should really understand who’s representing you. And like Michael said, look into the backgrounds of everyone, where they stand on certain issues and such. Whatever is important to you, and make sure that you go out and vote. Thank you, everyone.
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PCBA Awards $3,500 to Georgia Alliance for Breast Cancer
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Doing Good1 week ago
Good Samaritan Gwinnett Receives State Authorization to Launch Access Academy
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Around Atlanta5 days ago
Metro Atlanta Redevelopment Visionaries Honored at 2024 MARS Summit
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Food & Drink1 week ago
Three Local Chefs Share Their Favorite Holiday Recipes