Some residents favor project at Wieuca and Roswell roads
To the editor:
An article [“Scrutiny slows down development,” Sandy Springs Reporter, Nov. 30-Dec.13] listed High Point Civic Association (HPCA) as one of four neighborhood associations that opposed a planned development near the intersection of Wieuca and Roswell Roads.
I wanted to at least send you a different perspective as my wife and I are HPCA members that are in favor of this development for the reasons below:
1) The development will help revitalize the area and will bring a new image as well as new retail shops and restaurants closer to our neighborhood.
2) This has potential to increase property values.
3) Several apartment complexes on Roswell Road could use facelifts or a rebuild, and these two complexes are two of many that could use some modernization or a dynamic shift is space utilization (which is what this will do).
4) This has potential to help our neighborhood school with population control. High Point has been making great strides toward re-establishing its prominence as a great neighborhood school. No one that has kids going to High Point (or those that live in the High Point school district) wants to see trailers added to accommodate growth. By revitalizing this area, there is a strong possibility that the High Point population will see a small decrease in the student count which helps the school maintain its focus on the number of students the school is set up to support.
5) Now that the HPCA community has sidewalks on Windsor Parkway that run from High Point Road to Roswell Road, there will be even more potential for neighbors to walk to and from restaurants and shops located in the revitalized area.
6) We would like to see a thorough traffic plan laid out in order to support this development (we agree with everyone with this concern), but we also are cognizant that this new development will possibly attract a different work classification which in turn could help minimize the early-morning traffic patterns we see today. A younger generation (or simply a more technical/professional generation) could potentially provide more work from home-type scenarios.
We do understand there is much more to discuss on this and we only ask that the Sandy Springs Reporter also cover some of neighbors that are in favor of this development as well as those that oppose.
We just think this is a great opportunity for the neighborhood and want to show our support.
Rodney and Autumn Murray
Tennis programs have taught many local children
To the editor:
The SSTA is a Community Tennis Association (CTA) of the United States Tennis Association (USTA). The SSTA is a nonprofit organization under 501C3 regulations and its main mission is to grow tennis through teaching the sport to the elementary schools of Sandy Springs at after school programs. We have taught more than 500 children in about four years of existence. Our funding depends mostly on small fees, grants and donations, and many of the children are underserved, being part of the Hispanic and African American diverse population.
In the past, the SSTA as a CTA of the USTA, has partnered with many entities which include the city of Sandy Springs, the Sandy Springs Tennis Center and others. The Reporter Newspapers has been very kind to the SSTA in publicizing our various events. The health and welfare of the children of Sandy Springs is a by-product of learning the sport of tennis and the children are always foremost in our mission. We continue to look forward to a safe and stable environment for our programs and to the long-term support of the Sandy Springs community.
Best regards,
Manny Guillen
Chairman of the Board of Directors
SSTA
Cars cause more harm than firearms do
To the editor:
Mr. Dan Whisenhunt’s commentary on gun control [Reporter Newspapers, Jan 11-24] is summed up in one quote… “A right to life without feeling the need to arm myself everywhere I go deserves equal consideration.” In other words, Mr. Whisenhunt feels scared because Americans can own firearms and he really wants to feel safe.
In his mind (and other squeamish progressives and weak-willed liberals), his emotions trump my right to one of the basic tenets of natural law, the right to self-defense. But what is even worse, is that it is a selective and highly irrational emotion on his part.
If his concern for his health and well-being were accurately placed, he would demand that cars be pulled from the road and banned forever, as far more deaths, injuries and overall misery is caused by auto accidents. His chances of becoming one of those traffic statistics is far greater than ever even seeing a private citizen with a gun in public, much less ever being hit by a stray or intentional bullet.
If he used a little more logic and a great deal less emotion, he might just cry himself to sleep every night worrying about two tons of steel whizzing by his pretty little head hundreds (if not thousands) of times a day. But he doesn’t, because he feels OK about it.
The comparatively high likelihood of death or dismemberment by driving (which is not a protected constitutional right) is fine, but lawful gun ownership by lawful citizens (which just happens to be the Second Amendment to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights) is cause for hysteria, hand-wringing and bed wetting.
It just doesn’t ring true… because it isn’t.
This is a political dogma, not a safety issue, plain and simple. Ill-informed anti-gun advocates want us to ignore the vast experience of history about oppressive governments and tyrannical rulers. Instead, people like this want to pretend that an all-powerful government is going to take care of their every need by day, coddle them asleep at night and benevolently nurture them from cradle to grave.
But human nature hasn’t changed in thousands of years of recorded history and the cliche is still true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Second Amendment was written to give armed citizens the power to not only defend themselves, but to keep a power-hungry government from oppressing them and to physically and forceably resist that entity if necessary.
And it is true that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Ask the Poles, Jews and eastern Europeans during WWII, ask the Russians during Stalin’s purges, ask the Chinese during Mao’s rule, ask Cambodians about Pol Pot, ask the black man during the repressive Jim Crow era and ask every other disarmed people throughout history.
The disastrous results were always the same when a government succeeded in removing firearms from the hands of the ordinary citizen.
So please, I am unmoved by Mr. Whisenhunt’s need to feel good. I’d rather live with him being irrationally uncomfortable than for all of us losing our freedoms and liberties because we were too weak to defend them.
Price R. Potter
‘Spooky-looking dog’ not a coyote, but a cared-for stray
To the editor:
The animal [shown in a photograph accompanying a letter to the editor headlined “Spooky-looking dog” and published in the Buckhead Reporter of Dec. 28-Jan. 10] is not a coyote.
A large group of people in the Northlake/Tucker/Embry Hills area has been feeding and looking out for a dog like the one in your photo for well over two years (her pups also) and they also put heartworm medicine in their food to make sure they are protected. We all participate in a group email list.
We call our dog Parker; she has a Facebook page and we all keep up with her. She lost part of a paw in a snare so she limps and is always seen during daylight hours. I’ve seen her many times in my yard near Tucker usually in the early daylight hours, rain or shine. Neighbors see her when walking their dogs and she just lays and watches, and will leave when anyone walks toward her trying to temp her with treats.
Coyotes are out and about hunting at night and one killed a cat less than 10 feet from my front steps sometime just before Christmas Day. I found what was left of it when I returned home Christmas Day and it was an obvious coyote kill.
We all think our “spooky-looking dog” is a full-blooded or mostly a Basenji, and she looks very much like the one in the photo.
Coyotes in metro Atlanta hunt at night and not during the day unless they are rabid and this animal is not rabid. Don’t put a death sentence on animals you obviously don’t fully know enough or anything about.
Carolyn Lassiter