Rausch Ravings: EXPECTATIONS

I'm in the ceramic tile and flooring business and part of my job is to oversee our customer satisfaction programs.  I track and work to correct situations that our customers find unacceptable to them. Rarely is the complaint an actual product failure, but rather a failure to meet some expectation that the people have about the product that they purchased. If you buy jeans or sneakers you should expect them to wear a long time and not change colors. You expect that the money you spend for a product, after you've been told that it will meet or exceed your expectations, won't be wasted and the product will actually do what you thought it would for as long as you thought it would.

When this doesn't happen things go terribly wrong! Is it that the person who sold you the product didn't know what the product was capable of? Were you able to ask questions about the product and it's expected performance before you bought it?  Were you outright lied to by the person selling the product? Should the consumer be the one to have to manage the expectations or the person selling the product?

I ask these questions as a long path to get to my point about the situation we face here in the new city of Peachtree Corners. At the town forum earlier this week the Mayor and Council members wanted an open discussion of many subjects including the "Roberts Property" situation. The officials presented their version of what has and is happening and why it happened. Then we the people were allowed to ask questions. Most questions were dismissed with standard answers such as "We don't know yet" or "We're not at liberty to discuss that yet" answers.

My question was far more basic than that, in fact more basic than any ONE issue: My question had to do with the promises made by EVERYONE who ran for the offices when they ALL pledged (A) "City-Lite" with only 3 area's of governing, (B) nothing decided behind closed doors, with plenty of time for discussion from the public after information was provided, and (C) Absolutely no spending of funds for purchasing land or public area's.  I questioned WHY ALL of them TOTALLY ABANDONED their pledges and threw ethics to the wind on really the first issue that faced them?

Nobody, myself included, wants low end apartments on that property across from the Forum, however, we all knew going into this city situation that the property was in fact zoned for apartments by the county, enforced by the courts, and we needed to work with the owner to get some better use agreement for that land.  Nobody seems sure how we got to the point that Mr Roberts contracted for the land with a low end apartment building developer, but that did happen. Then the new city officials went against their promises (OUR EXPECTATIONS) and wanted to purchase that same land from the new owner for even more money. Fortunately, it appears currently, that a white knight developer has stepped forward, willing and ready to correct this situation with acceptable development plans. Let's hope that the developer has more ethics that our city officials have shown, remember the zoning still currently exists and the new buyer will need to change that to comply with the new plan that we've been told (MORE EXPECTATIONS) will happen to that property.

My point being with all of this: The citizens of this city have expectations that we were given by all the new city officials when they ran last year to form this new government. Looking forward today, let's move to live the promises and give us satisfaction of our expectations.  Remember, November is coming around again and several of you are going to be running for re-election. I'd like to see expectations fulfilled that folks are satisfied with our selections.

These are my thoughts, what are yours?

Steve