If you’ve seen the handful of campaign signs scattered about town, you may be wondering exactly who Samantha Piovesan is. After all, she hasn’t been in the obvious political scene in the City of Sugar Hill very long. She touts her involvement with the City’s Inclusive Taskforce headed by Council Member Joshua Page, although that involvement does not require an appointment. And, she was appointed in February 2025 to the Citywide Development Authority by Council Member Taylor Anderson, apparently attending only two meetings (February and May 2025) before resigning as required by the City Code to run for City Council.

The signs all feature the seemingly open and humble slogan, “Your Voice, My Mission.”

But, I’ve personally had three documented interactions with Piovesan that strongly suggest she’s only all about her own voice.

Piovesan Joins the Bully Brigade on Facebook

My first indication of Piovesan’s existence in the world and activity within the Sugar Hill sphere was in November, when she joined Bullying Brandon and his Bully Brigade to attack me for a post showing a Sugar Hill Marshal outside the jurisdiction performing an errand while on duty.

On his page, Hembree went into full-blown attack mode on a private citizen for questioning whether this officer was improving public safety when he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, and providing photographic evidence of the claim.

However, going into aggressive bully mode on his own page wasn’t enough. He had to send the Bully Brigade to MY page. And rather than debate the issue (because as it turned out, there WAS no debate to be had, a fact Hembree probably knew from the beginning), his followers whipped each other into a rabid frenzy, repeating the untrue mantras of career-threatened government officials everywhere (“pettiness,” “misinformation,” “mental illness,” “illegal behavior,” to name a few).

Piovesan, ever eager to put on a show and make a reputation for herself in that group, quickly piled on and would not shut up. She started out by insulting me and continued to belittle my work and accuse me of a lack of integrity. She claimed to be a “Fraud Investigator,” but was interestingly oblivious to the obvious impropriety of the government officials and quick to join in on that impropriety.

First, she was following Hembree’s lead, trying to make the issue about the dog to obfuscate the real issue, the Marshal. Even in that path of misdirection she indicates her lack of knowledge, because I published the line item with the budgets and actual expenses in the comments, and the fact that the City only has one dog is a well-known fact. She also said, “you are painting a narrative with data you don’t have access to.” But, you see, I do have access through the Open Records Act, which she seems completely ignorant about, even though you would think that might be basic knowledge for a “Fraud Investigator,” or even just someone who wants to talk about government.

Where her dubious comments really shine is when she starts trying to pretend to be a lawyer, even though she says things that are just patently false.

This officer could not, in fact, file a “protective order” or file a criminal charge for doxing. Trying to do so would have failed legally, embarrassed the officer far more than my Facebook post ever could, and probably caused the City some serious bad publicity, probably from other news outlets.

It is perfectly legal for me to photograph a Marshal in uniform and on duty. That is a First Amendment right that I, or anyone else, am free to exercise, provided that we do not interfere with the officer’s performance of duties. It’s also perfectly legal for me to ask questions about what I see, privately OR publicly.

As far as doxing, no personal information was revealed (the City and different officials have identified him personally by name and picture on various social media channels), and the fact that he works at the City of Sugar Hill was obvious from his uniform and vehicle. The doxing law, passed in 2025 (after Piovesan’s silly comment show), also explicitly states that “It shall not be an offense under this Code section for a person to…provide another person’s personally identifiable information in connection with lawful and constitutionally protected activity as it pertains to speech, assembly, and petition.”

She concludes her weird, multi-comment speech by saying she has never seen me at a meeting (probably because she wasn’t going much until this year), insulting me a little more, and then bragging about how she was brunching with the City Council and condescendingly offering to buy me breakfast.

She stood steadfast in her ignorant and/or dishonest statements and refused to back down. And like all campaigns by Bullying Brandon and the Bully Brigade, these statements were made to shut me up AND send a message to everyone else in town to shut up. Because she would not self-correct her inaccuracies, I ultimately had to block her to prevent her from spreading bad information and using my large platform to indirectly bully current and would-be supporters. And I am well within my legal and ethical rights to do so.

After the comments on my Facebook page, she decided to send me a private message as well. Her message was just as rude and condescending as her open comments had been. She offered again to buy me breakfast, which I politely, but directly, declined.

Piovesans’s DMs were still egotistical (without a single thing I can see to warrant that ego), and extremely condescending and rude. They seemed more like one final attempt to shove me into some kind of submission to her and her goals. Nothing about this contact was an apologetic or conciliatory “olive branch”, as she has more recently claimed in the video shown later in the article.

Plus, I think most reasonably intelligent and well-balanced adults understand that even when you ARE apologetic and conciliatory, no one has a responsibility to accept your apologies or outreach at all, much less in the very specific and domineering way that you demand. When I politely put her off, she came at me again, as insulting as ever (“a REPUTATION in our community”), because she failed to get her way.

August DDA Meeting

Often, I am the only resident who attends meetings of the City’s Downtown Development Authority, even waiting through their lengthy Executive Sessions in the Council Chambers, alone, so I can witness and record any binding votes that might take place afterward.

I had long figured that sooner or later someone was going to take advantage of my solo presence in the government facility for the specific purpose of getting me to talk with them off the record for some reason or another, and probably not a good reason.

At the first meeting after qualification for the 2025 election (in which I’m running for Mayor and Piovesan is running for a City Council seat), Piovesan decided to attend, after not seeming to care much about those meetings before. I figured she was again up to something, so I had my camera at the ready. And I was right.

As soon as the DDA adjourned to the side room for Executive Session and left us alone out in the main City Council Chambers, she started to talk.

She started out by asking me how my campaign was going. Generic enough question, and maybe just a polite pleasantry, so I just replied to that with another polite pleasantry that it was “chugging along.”

Then, she asked how I was feeling about it. Considering the way she had treated me in the past and that she is actively campaigning with my opponent, that wasn’t a polite pleasantry. It seemed a little nosy and really weird, given our dynamic. So I just said, “Good,” to be polite enough.

I figured she’d know that my short answers were an indication that I wasn’t really going to talk to her very much, and she’d end the brief conversation with an “Okay, well, good talking to you. See you around” kind of thing, and I switched off my camera in anticipation of that (as shown by a black screen in the video).

But no, she somehow read that as an opening and just kept going. She said something about announcing my plans to the rest of the city, and asked what my thoughts were about that. I told her that I‘d be doing that in my time, not announcing it first to the competition.

She then just lies and says she isn’t the competition, and says “we can work together” and continues, “I think we need to just get to a point where not only are we building the problem statements out, but we’re also building the solutions. And that has to happen with collaboration, you know.” Her second attempt to get me to talk about solutions I’m proposing didn’t seem like outreach as much as surveillance.

Next, I flipped the script and asked her, “So where would you say you differ from Brandon? I’m kind of curious about that.”

She jumped headfirst into the answer, “Yeah. You know, I would say that in several different aspects, I’m a little more strategic and slower-paced. I would say that you know, especially with...”

I think she immediately realized she’d said too much, and decided to ask, “Are you recording me?!” I informed her that I indeed was.

I also told her, “I don’t have off-record conversations with hardly anyone. I’m very judicious about that.” What I did not explain to her, but will explain for everyone else, is that off-record conversations in government are where the shadiness happens. People looking for shadiness love to go off-record for the obvious reasons. I’m not looking for shadiness, and I’m also not looking for the drama of someone claiming I told them something I did not in an effort to hamstring my work to improve the government here.

If she COULD understand all that, I don’t think she’d want to.

She told me, “That’s interesting. So that’s unfortunate because I am a big person around trust, and so I would want someone to tell me if I’m being recorded.”

It's also unfortunate because I, too, am a “big person around trust” and should be able to trust that I can exercise my right to attend public government meetings without weird people from the government cornering me into self-serving off-record conversations. Alas, I guess we were both disappointed that night.

Given that I was really obvious about holding my phone up and am known widely for recording things at City Hall, I suspect she KNEW she was being recorded and didn’t mind when she thought she was coming across a certain way. When she realized I got a real answer out of her that she wasn’t interested in sharing, she flipped out about the recording, and just in general.

She flew into the same bully mode she had displayed previously and started whipping out everything she could think of to try to get me to engage with her, fight with her, pay attention to her - even though I obviously could not have been much less interested in her comments or her presence at that point.

After a while, I think it finally occurred to her that she was not in control of the situation and wasn’t coming across especially well. She then started pretending to be a lawyer again, saying that “Just because Georgia is a single-consent state on recording doesn’t mean that I don’t, I can’t send you a cease and desist.”

Georgia’s laws regarding single-party consent of recordings apply specifically to communication that occurs in a “private place” where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, like a phone call, not to conversations where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, such as ones that take place in the Council Chambers at City Hall during a regularly scheduled government meeting. The fact that the meeting was poorly attended doesn’t matter. It’s a very public place and people are free to record without anyone’s consent anyway.

As for the cease and desist letter, I just told her to go ahead and send one if she felt like that’s what she needed to do. If you have grounds to sue someone and want to sue them, you get quiet, confer with your attorney, and sue. Telling someone to cease and desist a legal activity that they’ve already done doesn't make a lot of sense. It was clearly an attempt to threaten me into not disclosing the video. When I didn’t get scared, she started talking about her “very large legal team.”

I never did get a letter from Piovesan, although I did get one very recently from her friend and the Hembree/Piovesan/Hicks campaign cheerleader, Amy Parris Cook of the City of Sugar Hill Downtown Development Authority (DDA), who seems more impressed with Piovesan’s legal playacting than I am. Cook decided to send a cease and desist letter of her own to get a retraction by Election Day that would probably be used by the Bully Brigade to try to discredit everything I do in an attempt to stop my criticism of the City government.

This is the letter, with that specific attorney’s name and contact information redacted. No matter how angry the truth makes powerful people, retracting the TRUTH is a lie. I’ll let an attorney who specializes in government lawsuits against citizens explain those details to her on my behalf.

During election years, but especially during election seasons, politicians are generally on their best behavior. Even here in Sugar Hill. That’s to be expected, because if you think about it, campaign seasons are extended job interviews where you’ll hire some folks who are supposed to represent your interests (especially property-wise) and help manage Sugar Hill’s giant joint checkbook for the next four years. It’s a pretty serious job.

Interestingly, Brandon Hembree decided to show everyone a glimpse of his WORST side during this critical interview. He basically walked into this interview holding a six-pack of tallboys (that’d be all the apartments built during his time here) and burped loudly right in the interviewers’ faces with a bunch of unprofessional bullying.

He reveals some understanding that he ought to be acting better than this by dialing it down slightly (he’s actually been worse in the past) and trying to act like the bullying is not him, just the commenters on his page, which tend to be the same little group. But, if you bring a bunch of misbehaving monkeys to your job interview and they start slinging poo all around, that’s really on you for bringing the monkeys there in the first place.

With this ridiculously bad campaign performance, he’s actually done the People of Sugar Hill the biggest favor he has ever done, and you didn’t even have to lobby him for it - he’s showing you exactly how incompetent and unfit for this level of power that he really is.

He clearly just believes that he’s entitled to the job and has made his entire interview about trying to crush all the interviewers (voters) who won’t fall in line and give him what he wants.

You’re also getting a little preview of how bad he can and will get if he manages to get another term. Campaign season is the only season when political hacks care the least little bit what the voters think. If he doesn’t care any more than this now, he certainly won’t settle down and act any better if you give him another shot. He’ll just go buy some more tallboys and bring in a bunch more monkeys.

One of the worst examples of Bullying Brandon and the Bully Brigade actually took place about a year ago. While many of the comments were largely the same schoolyard insults and silliness you are seeing now in election season, there were some from some government officials that were grossly over the top, especially given their roles. Also, the seriousness of his bullying goal was much worse - to cover up an issue with law enforcement.

Regardless of how you feel about law enforcement (I love all the good ones and want to empower them to get rid of the bad ones), I think we can all agree that government law enforcement wields the ultimate power in our society. That’s a power that Bullying Brandon seems a little too thirsty to introduce here, and he’s not using healthy, positive methods to do it. That kind of makes me think, does he really want public safety here, or a Bully Brigade with sharper teeth?

But that incident went down like this. Last November, I posted a picture on Facebook showing a Sugar Hill Marshal outside the jurisdiction performing an errand while on duty, and questioned whether this was public safety.

This was not the first time that I had observed a City of Sugar Hill Marshal out of the jurisdiction in a City Marshal’s vehicle (on errands), and I had been asked about it recently by a government official from outside Sugar Hill who had also seen the Sugar Hill Marshals out of the proper jurisdiction.

About an hour after my post, Hembree posted a screenshot of my post, calling it “weirdly unstable to follow our law enforcement officers and take pictures of them.” He then attempted to misdirect the public from the real issue, disingenuously making it about the dog, the dog’s food, and “defunding public safety” in a paraphrasing of the charged political term “defunding the police.” He’s belching misdirections and political clichés all over the place.

In case anyone is wondering (and Brandon Hembree would be if he cared about doing his job properly), the proper mayoral response is to either not make a statement at all, or issue a benign statement admitting no fault but also respectfully addressing the public for whom you work. Something like, “The City of Sugar Hill proudly holds its Marshals to the highest standards. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We will investigate the matter to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and City policies.” Even just, “thanks, we’ll check it out,” would be okay.

Then, whether you address it publicly or not, you have the City Manager (who’s the one in charge of the Marshals according to City Code) direct the appropriate staff to investigate it and see if your law enforcement guy is doing what he should, and deal with the findings accordingly.

That’s what I’d do.

Not Hembree, though. He just got nasty, and then worked with Council Member Taylor Anderson to misrepresent the law in this situation. Although this particular incident is largely about me, that’s just because I am the most prominent voice raising concerns about this government and seeking change there. After six and a half years (five and a half at the time), they know I am not scared of them and not going anywhere. They’re trying to scare YOU.

No matter how many people read my page, I was a completely private citizen at the time. And he was, as his supposedly personal Facebook page stated, “Mayor of Sugar Hill.” So, he was not only bullying a private citizen in his capacity as a government official, but forming and egging on a Bully Brigade to do the same. What’s sad is that plenty of people who hold and have held government positions in the City of Sugar Hill enthusiastically complied.

His total intimidation campaign involved City Council Member Taylor Anderson, Hembree’s top lackey. Hembree’s post also included commentary and support with varying degrees of name-calling from establishment government folks, such as former mayor Steve Edwards, the spouse (Chris Walker) of former Council Member Susie Walker, one of the former City Council Members who had recently lost her re-election bid (Jennifer Thatcher), a former DDA Chairman (Marc Orcutt) and his wife, the current DDA Chairman (Jack Wolfe) and his wife, Development Authority member (Lexie Crowson), a member of the City’s Historical Preservation Society (Darrell Pruitt), and a couple of individuals who were subsequently given appointments on the City’s development authorities (Amy Parris Cook and Samantha Piovesan, who is currently running for a City Council seat).

You can see all their comments at the end of the article. (I took screenshots at the time of the original post, about a year ago. The timestamps in the screenshots reflect that.)

There were also comments from individuals who do not and have not held government seats, of which I am aware. I’ve blocked out their profile pictures and names in my screenshots, because that’s how you handle the public. However, they did mean for their comments to be seen widely because they put them on the sitting mayor’s page instead of on their own personal pages.

Part of them complained that they had been blocked from my page for no reason, lacking either the honesty or self-awareness (maybe both) to realize their hostile comments on this post effectively demonstrated the reason why a private citizen might not want them on their page. (My page is not run by a government or government official or entity and does not receive or use taxpayer funds. I have no obligation to allow anyone, especially the goverment, on my page who is there to insult and belittle me, hijack the comment threads to stifle comments from others, contact my supporters to bother them, or report the page and its posts without cause to prevent other people from reading it.)

Brandon Hembree complains about being blocked, but then also admits that had he not been, he would have sent people directly to my page to make the same kinds of comments they did on his page.

Here are some of the most ridiculous and offensive comments. Some of the comments were toxic, and one was honestly, a bit sexist (although it was interestingly made by a female supporter), which the Bully Brigade seemed to enjoy. I would not even be surprised if she were simply parroting comments from a male who was afraid to say it openly, knowing it would create a political issue for him.

Another suggested that “someone” should follow me. It’s not clear if that “someone” is supposed to be the government, law enforcement, or him. It also kind of sounds like he wants the “someone” to do more than follow me, making the comment at least borderline threatening. The Bully Brigade expressed approval, and Bullying Brandon left it up.

You’ll notice that Anderson’s name seems to come up A LOT. This is not a guy doing a job; this is a guy sitting in the government who desperately wants to hide what he and his friend do in the government (indicating they have much to hide), who’s just pissed as hell that private citizens are legally and constitutionally protected from government bullies like him. He lies to gullible people to convince them that it is not the case.

Council Member Taylor Anderson accused me of “stalking” the Marshal, who was considered to be on duty just by virtue of the fact that he was in a Marshal’s vehicle at the time, according to the SHMD own Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). That’s a fact that Anderson either should have known and did not, or was lying about. He’s also grossly incorrect that anyone is obligated to request permission from law enforcement before photographing them while they’re on duty.

As far as baseless accusations, his propensity for projection is absolutely astounding. My pieces are more well-documented than anything else you’ll see on other real media outlets or his Substack page, with most of the documentation I use coming straight from this government. You’re going to see a little more of that further in this article.

In a move more fitting for an eleven-year-old mean girl than a sitting Council Member, Anderson told everyone I had withheld information about myself in a recent interview with longtime journalist Elliot Brack in Gwinnett Forum, in an apparent attempt to smear me and implicitly invited people to contact him privately for more information.

He even smeared Brack for not contacting anyone at the City so they could make excuses about things they could have spoken on way before they got caught with their pants down, which is, by the way, NOT any kind of requirement in journalism. So please add “Journalism” to the long list of topics that Anderson erroneously thinks he knows about or just feels comfortable lying about.

Anderson also lashed out at other residents who asked questions, expressed disapproval over Hembree’s behavior, or just failed to participate in his hatefulness as thoroughly as he wanted. Anderson outright attacked me, and is obviously beside himself that I don’t let the government attack me as hard as they really want to. It’s also very interesting that, according to Anderson, I am supposed to throw my page wide open and allow people to speak without limits on my page, but he’s never advanced that same level of openness in the government in which he has held an elected seat for eight years.

Hembree couched his summoning of the Bully Brigade as “standing up for what is right.” Apparently, he’s so twisted from his years of lobbying and political maneuvering in Sugar Hill, he either doesn’t know what’s right anymore or is convinced he’s bullied everyone else to the extent that they don’t know what’s right anymore. Sugar Hill Syndrome, the local version of Stockholm Syndrome.

Activating the Bully Brigade on his page with a screenshot of my post also encouraged them to send them over to bully me on my original post (again, on the page I maintain as a private citizen). People again tried to make it about the dog, dogs in general, and most of all, me personally, with a variety of insults.

There were also many claims from the Bully Brigade in the comments of both of these posts that fetching dog food was a totally legit law enforcement activity. That’s silly at best and, at worst, completely disrespectful of the very serious and dangerous work that law enforcement officers (including other Marshals who really were patrolling at the time) are doing every day.

Had Hembree dealt with this situation honestly, intelligently, and properly, he would have known that it is perfectly legal for me to photograph a Marshal in uniform and on duty. That is a First Amendment right that I, or anyone else, am free to exercise, provided that we do not interfere with the officer’s performance of duties. It’s also perfectly legal for me to ask questions about what I see, whether the government or anyone in it likes my questions or not.

He also would have known that the officer was out of the jurisdiction while he was on duty and misrepresented the reason for being there on his daily report.

The Standard Operating Procedures for the Sugar Hill Marshals Department (SHMD) specifically define their jurisdiction as the City Limits of Sugar Hill, and the Code of Conduct from the SOP explicitly states that they are on duty whenever they travel in their city vehicle.

I requested the Marshals’ activity reports from that day. Parker was accurate about where he was and when, but he indicated that the purpose of the visit was an "S-22B - Area Check - Business." There’s nothing in the available “Remarks” field to indicate this was an errand.

I contacted then-Chief Marshal Diane King via email to get specific information about the “S-22” activity code. While she was initially hesitant to fully answer the question, just stating that it was “an area check” (which is apparent from the report), upon follow-up, she indicated that, "They are done in response to calls/incidents that occurred in that area as well as proactively patrolling to deter criminal activity, checking for suspicious persons/activity." So, real police work that you’d expect an officer of the law to conduct in the course of duty. But nothing there about errands to purchase items. So, he misrepresented why he was there on his report, for some reason.

Also, the location stands out among the other reports of the day that contain references to the Sugar Hill locations we all know. Parker’s location is in Forsyth County. I contacted FCSO to ask if they had asked anyone from the SHMD to patrol the area, and was told, "That Hollywood Feed is in Forsyth County’s jurisdiction. We would not ask any other agency to patrol it for us." Furthermore, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office told me in another email that the last call they received for that location was September 22, 2024, two months before Parker was there.

According to the SHMD SOP, a Marshal on duty can take official law enforcement action out of the jurisdiction in three specific cases:

• The Marshal is pursuing someone who committed a crime in Sugar Hill.

• The Marshal needs to serve a warrant in another jurisdiction, in which case a law enforcement officer from THAT jurisdiction actually serves the warrant and the Marshal is there as a witness and can take action IF that LEO needs assistance.

• The Marshal believes a felony is about to happen, and the Marshal needs to take action to prevent serious injury to someone.

The problem is, none of these were the case. He wasn’t responding to a call, patrolling, checking for suspicious activity, pursuing anyone, or serving a warrant. He was on an errand. And now, there is a photograph (and the Mayor’s own post) to verify that..

And, if THIS activity report was misleading, how do we know, or why would we assume, that all of the other ones are accurate? Most importantly, if an officer would mislead on his report, in violation of the SHMD’s Standard Operating Procedures, what else might he mislead people about?

And those are the specific reasons that government officials ought to take it very seriously when officers misrepresent their work reports.
There are no small lies in law enforcement.

Calling Bullying Brandon’s reaction inappropriate or unprofessional is really a massive understatement and overlooks the gross seriousness of what he did. Mayor Brandon Hembree launched a bizarre, unhinged bullying campaign with multiple current, former, and future government officials to cover up for a law enforcement officer who was less than honest, and to prevent lawful criticism and further investigation of both this officer and the entire agency.

NOTHING says that something (or someone) needs to be investigated, quite like the government telling you it does not need to be investigated and then launching an intimidation campaign to try to tear down anyone who investigates it.

City of Sugar Hill Marshals Department Standard Operating Procedures

Here you can see the relevant sections of the Marshals Department Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) referred to in the article. I am showing the sections in their entirety with the relevant sections highlighted for thoroughness and educational purposes.

As you can tell from just these sections, the code of conduct for officers is very specific and everything is spelled out, so there’s no confusion about what should be done in a given circumstance.

Bullying Brandon with the Bully Brigade

Good government begins with transparency.

For years, the stance of the City was that things were transparent because they hold public meetings (those are required of them by law) and because you can ask your elected officials (off the record on their personal phones or e-mail accounts, of course) what’s going on, and they will (supposedly) tell you.

A meeting that you don’t know about or can’t find isn’t much of a public meeting, especially if it isn’t recorded, and they either don’t take good minutes or you can’t see those minutes until weeks after a meeting. Also, holding a fluff show meeting for the public just to meet legal requirements while you discuss the real business off the record or by bending the rules on Executive Sessions is a public meeting failure.

Likewise, having to call up some elected official so they can say whatever the hell they feel like and do whatever they want afterward because there’s no record of what they actually told you is complete and obvious nonsense. That MO lets them work the public politically without even the vaguest semblance of transparency.

When you don’t have transparency, you don’t have accountability - and THAT’S been a real goal by the officeholders here for a long time.

WINS

In the almost six and a half years that I‘ve been here, this government has made some positive changes regarding SOME of those concerns. Those changes were made with a great deal of pressure that I initiated and sustained through my involvement, with elected officials fighting and complaining about me all the way.

Those changes included:

1. Summary minutes on the website within 48 hours for City Council meetings.
   Previously, minutes only went on the website within a few days after they were formally approved at the next month's meeting, meaning that you had to wait at least a month to see the minutes for any given meeting online.

2. Improvements in announcing meeting cancellations on the website. Previously, meetings were canceled, and you didn’t know until you showed up at City Hall. If you were lucky, you might find a sign on the door. At the first meeting I ever tried to attend, I showed up, and the front doors were simply locked. I didn’t know if they had canceled the meeting or just forgot to unlock the doors. Public meeting attendance was so poor before I started coming around that no one person was aware of this problem to point it out to them for correction.

3. More accurate City Events calendar featuring official meetings with correct times and locations.
   Previously, this was hit or miss for one-off meetings or regular meetings that were being held in a different location for some reason. They finally got tired of my emails and phone calls over every mistake, and the calendar improved. GREATLY.

4. Improved advance notice of off-site Mayor and Council retreats.
   Georgia Law requires 24 hours’ notice of these meetings. I filed a case with the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, which found that the City was technically following the law. However, they agreed with me that the City could have, and should have, provided better notice to citizens who might wish to attend these meetings on their own.
   
   After that, I attended the City’s next off-site retreat in the City of Thomasville, 260 miles away from the City of Sugar Hill. I booked the trip on my own dime and was sitting in their rented conference room, ready to observe upon their arrival. My supervision, followed by documentation of the trip and some shenanigans related to meals provided by unknown benefactors/lobbyists, has discouraged the practice of the expensive long-distance and arguably pointless off-site retreats. For now.

5. Detailed line-item budget reports on the website prior to the annual budget vote.
   Early on in my work here, I started requesting and publishing detailed documents reflecting every revenue and expense of the City of Sugar Hill government. Because they knew I would request it and get views by publishing this info that people are intensely curious about but had never been widely shown before, they started publishing the information on the City website during budget season. They typically wait a little bit and then take it right back down, so progress was made, but clearly, more should be done.

6. Videos of the monthly City Council Work Sessions and Meetings on the website.
   The City started providing video of City Council meetings on its website in July 2023. The City Council work sessions were placed on the website starting in February 2024.

Those were all changes that I initiated from the outside and was able to obtain either because the City received feedback from readers/supporters who also pushed for these changes, or because the City was afraid that might happen and went ahead and did it to avoid potential pushback. However, none of these changes were in the works before I got here, and it is VERY safe to say that if I’d never been here, things would have likely stayed the same.

Even with these wins, however, I think there is still a LOT more that can be done.

CHANGES

The wins largely center around transparency. And that’s a key part of communication. But there’s still more to do.

Communication is a two-way street, and the City is still seriously lacking opportunities for the public to provide meaningful feedback in a public forum.

Instead of considering ways to open things up, elected officials and appointees have spent the six years or so deflecting and distracting by spending lots of their time talking about who is or is not able to talk on MY Facebook page, as though I am already IN this government (still a private citizen, y’all) and must meet obligations that they don’t even meet as the real and official government right now.

Interestingly, they often use language about me (a private citizen) in those discussions that no resident could ever come in and say to a government official in a public meeting without getting a sharp rebuke, a “decorum” lecture, or potentially the threat of a fine or ejection from the meeting. Let all that sink in.

This list of changes will seem pretty basic to a lot of people. That’s because all of these changes should have happened long ago. Unfortunately, the more entrenched government officials have balked at every request to open up the government and will continue to balk. Only one of the newer City Council members discussed transparency much during his campaign. After his election, he echoed the “just call me” mantra from the establishment. The other two “newest” Council Members didn’t really talk about it much, if at all, either before or after their election.

The most efficient way to change these things is to finally get someone with some backbone to push from the inside. The next best thing would be to institute a large and organized push from the outside. I’ll do as much as the public will back me up on.

Obviously, as Mayor, I would not be making motions for action or voting on anything except on the very rare occasion that a tie needs to be broken. But, I can add items to the agenda for public meetings, present them, make the case for them, and give the City Council members the opportunity to take public action on healthy, community-focused policies.

These policies include:

1. Livestream City Council Meetings

While recording the meetings was an improvement, I don’t see any good reason why we can’t take it a step further and livestream these meetings in real time. Many other local governments, including Gwinnett County, are already doing it. It demonstrates openness and a commitment to transparency. Whether you like everything about Gwinnett County or not, its operations are FAR more transparent than those in Sugar Hill.

Take a page from that part of their playbook.

The City Council meeting videos already seem to have been very popular with the community and have dramatically increased public knowledge and involvement. However, it’s not unusual for those videos not to be available for up to a week.

We can do better.

2. Record All Regular City Meetings for Review on the City Website

Right now, only the City Council work sessions and regularly monthly meetings are recorded and placed on the website. The regular monthly meetings of the Planning Commission, the Downtown Development Authority, and the “Riverlands” Development Authority are not recorded and made available to the public, and the minutes are so limited that they offer little or no benefit to the community.

If those bodies are important enough to exist, they are important enough for their meetings to be very publicly visible so they can be held accountable by the public that they are supposed to serve.

3. Expand Public Comment Time Limits

According to the City Code of Ordinances, citizens speaking “shall limit their remarks to three minutes” during Citizens’ and Guests’ comments, also commonly referred to as “Public Comment.”

There are no rules that I am aware of, or that I have ever seen anyone enforce, regarding the length of time that an officeholder may speak. That makes sense when they’re discussing important business. But during their personal comments, they are allowed to discuss anything they want for as long as they want. This is often used as a campaign/grandstanding time.

All that gives the impression that government officeholders, granted that official authority by the People of Sugar Hill, see themselves as above the People. And, in the time I‘ve been here, I’ve heard repeated complaints about it (both the time limits and the self-congratulation) from others.

We’re a small city government, not a large city or a county. We generally don’t even have that many people who want to address the government at meetings. The ones who do come in are usually nervous and generally are not going to stand up there much longer than they have to. I have seen other government meetings (Flowery Branch, earlier in my Sugar Hill Government Watchdog career) where there were no time limits. There were no resulting catastrophes.

Plus, the People fund the whole operation. Let them talk. It’s time well spent to promote good public relations. The Mayor and Council can save time by making their personal comments a little shorter.

We need to extend the Pubic Comment speaking time, and improve management of the time by using a visible timer so speakers are aware of the time they’ve used. It’s also a great visual cue for the government officials to yield the floor to members of the public and let them speak instead of interrupting them and depriving them of their speaking time.

The City of Roswell implements a large timer at its meetings. Their time limit is five minutes, which still gets criticized by their residents sometimes.

4. Open Forum Events

I’d like to try a regularly scheduled series of events, 4 times a year, just to open up the floor to the public. A meeting dedicated to Public Comment. The agenda would feature some topics introduced by the City just to seek resident feedback, and would then include an “Open Mic” time, for residents to speak or ask about any item of interest or concern.

I’m envisioning these events as an opportunity for officeholders to LISTEN to the public and hear their ideas and concerns to get some direction from more constituents about action items and policies to be pursued.

The City of Roswell does Open Forum events four or five times a year and conducted one recently on September 29, 2025, where 19 residents addressed the mayor and council with various concerns. They record the events. Sometimes, the people are not real happy, but things seem to remain civil. And, the Mayor, Council, and staff listen to them. After the public speakers, someone from the government usually answers at least some of the questions.

Summary

Ultimately, real government transparency is more than following the bare minimum requirements defined by law. It has to be something the government embraces with the understanding that the residents’ trust in the government is never owed; it is earned on a daily basis. Everyone in the government also needs to understand that in the USA, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. Government exists to serve the people. Not the other way around.

No excuses. No deflections. Do the right thing, not just the legal thing.

Change in this government starts best with a change of attitude, from the top.

If I had just wanted political power in Sugar Hill, I would have done what many before me have done - sidled up to the people currently in office and ridden their coattails.

Instead, I spent the past six and a half years speaking directly to the People of Sugar Hill. I knew that people didn’t know I was, and I know trust is earned. That’s why I do “show and tell journalism” so you can see what I’m talking about and where I’m getting my information.

At this point, most of my readers don’t click the links or videos because they trust what I’m saying. But, I believe government work (even when you document and critique government as a journalist) is a matter of not only being open, but remaining open and continuously proving yourself. Earning trust never stops. So, I still document everything as meticulously now as I did in the beginning. That’s a trait I will carry through into everything I do in the City of Sugar Hill.

What I stand for is ingrained in everything I write. I appreciate intelligence, knowledge, hard work, and attention to detail. That’s what I strive for, and I respect and admire those qualities in those around me. I do not respect laziness or the incessant whine that tends to emanate from ineffective politicians. More than anything else, you can probably tell that I absolutely love to burst the bubbles of government officials who think they’re above the rest of US - you know, the folks who hire them via elections and pay for their services.

Challenging the status quo is a tough grind. You have to know so much more than the people who are just echoing established figures. You must have the communications skills to articulate your stances to win public support for unique ideas or with new audiences, And, you must have the backbone to stick with it for your neighbors and the whole community while the entrenched special interests try to bully you into silence with lies, unprofessional and immature social media bullying, and as of this election, baseless lawsuit threats.

Even when I’m not actively publishing, I’m here - working for you. I’m not asking for the City to spend money on special interests - far from it. And I’ve been an outspoken thorn in the side of shady developers. I’ve advanced the interests of the long-forgotten taxpaying public for so long that there would be no switching sides now, even if I were even remotely inclined to sully myself in such a way. Plus, I take so much pride in the uniqueness and effectiveness of what I do that I’m not giving it up.

I have done all that, week in week out, for six and a half years because YOU, the People of Sugar Hill, deserve that kind of service, even when it’s hard for me. I’m not giving YOU up.

And you have the right, and now the chance, to expect that and get it from an elected official in your Hometown. ❤️🌳

Brandon Hembree. Some of you may know him as the lovable social media mayor. Some as the apartment mayor.

What a lot of people don’t know is his path to becoming mayor.

Likewise, a lot of people don’t know what else he does aside from being mayor. You may have heard him mention his “day job” in passing, especially between January and April, when the Georgia General Assembly is in session and his very rare absences from City meetings tend to occur. He doesn’t say too often what that job is. Once on a post of mine, a Hembree supporter (and wife of DDA Member Allen Jorgenson) bragged that Hembree’s job “is literally politics,” but stopped short of applying an actual job title to that literally political job.

Lobbyist

Hembree’s LinkedIn profile states who he works for, although the description is a little bit flowery and vague. In plain English, he’s a lobbyist. And those businesses he mentions are looking to get a portion of your tax dollars.

Hembree has worked at this lobbying firm since December 2003, not long after its founding in January 2003, and is considered one of its founding members.

Between 2010 and 2019, the firm actually bore Hembree’s name - first as Massey, Bowers and Hembree (2010 - 2013), then as Massey, Watson Bowers and Hembree (2013 - 2015), and finally as MASSEY, WATSON and HEMBREE (2015 - 2019) prior to the change to the current name, Impact Public Affairs in 2019.

In a 2012 article entitled “Capitol Who’s Who: The most powerful players,”  the AJC lists Hembree, along with Lewis Massey and Bruce Bowers, as a top lobbyist. Both Massey and Bowers have substantial political pedigrees, while Hembree is just “a veteran Statehouse lobbyist.”

In a 2014 article with the same title, the AJC again lists Hembree, along with partners Massey and Bowers, and a new partner, John Watson. Watson, like Massey and Bowers, also lists a strong political resume, while Hembree is simply “a veteran Capitol lobbyist.”

While Impact Public Affairs prefers the term “government relations firm,” the firm and its partners are required by Georgia law to register with the Georgia State Ethics Commission as lobbyists.

The Ethics Commission also keeps records submitted by the lobbyists of businesses and organizations that paid them in excess of $10,000 to lobby the government on their behalf. This information is available on the Ethics website, although they switched systems in the last two years and you have to look in a couple of different places to find everything.

The firm Hembree works for appears on the publicly available lists (shown in its entirety in screenshots below) on the Ethics Commission website, as do some entities that seem pretty benign, such as the Gwinnett County Public Library and the Georgia Council for Public Libraries. There are also multiple large recognizable businesses, local governments and government entities, vendors for prisons, and some construction companies.

Some of the INACTIVE entries are no longer in existence under the names under which they were originally submitted.

The only entries on THAT list that I already know for certain had any sort of ties to Sugar Hill at any time are Dominion Voting Systems, whose electronic voting equipment is now used throughout Georgia for elections, and Novare Group Holdings, the builder of the Conclave Apartments in Sugar Hill.

Hembree represented Novare for six years from January 2006 through December 2011. He did not actually vote on the development, which was approved in October 2021, after he had resigned from the City Council to run for mayor after Steve Edwards chose not to seek reelection for the office.

Impact Public Affairs brags on its website about some of its current and recent clients who were disclosed to the Ethics Commission, although it also states that, “We do not disclose client names or work beyond what is publicly reported by the Ethics Commission.”

The list of clients provided by Impact Public Affairs shows a construction company and a local Sugar Hill business, Reeves Young, who built the Sugar Hill Bowl and completed the first phase of Ridge Lake Park. The list did not indicate exactly when Reeves Young was a client. The Bowl was built in 2012, the same year Hembree was nominated for Sugar Hill DDA, but predating his time in elected office here. Ridge Lake Park broke ground in 2022, while he was mayor.

Here are screenshots of Hembree’s reported lobbying clients. Associated links are in the captions so you can see everything yourself.

Donations

The nonprofit and nonpartisan organization National Institute on Money in Politics collects records regarding political donations and publishes them on its website, FollowTheMoney.org.

According to those records, Impact Public Affairs donated $298,435 to various candidates, officeholders, and political party committees from 2016 through 2024.

Recipients of those funds include current Georgia House Representatives Soo Hong ($750) and Matt Reeves ($1750), Georgia State Senators Shawn Still ($1500) and Clint Dixon ($2000), and former Georgia House Representative Bonnie Rich ($2000).

The practice of donating to candidates and elected officeholders seems to be standard practice in the lobbying business, and these particular donations have been legally disclosed. However, they undoubtedly and obviously give the lobbyists sway with government officials that most of the rest of us don’t have.

The full list of candidates and officeholders was too large for useful screenshots, and the website itself has useful sorting features that make it so much better than a simple picture. If you visit it, you’ll notice that almost every candidate and officeholder to whom Impact Public Affairs donated money was, in turn, a donor to other candidates and officeholders, forming a web of money and connections.

Sugar Hill Political Career

Hembree began his time in the City of Sugar Hill government in 2012 with the Downtown Development Authority and has basically followed the government career path of former Mayor Steve Edwards, apparently a friend of his who still shows up on his social media from time to time to attack me, using such sophisticated, erudite terminology as “cray cray.” Interestingly, Former Mayor and current Council Member Gary Pirkle was also close friends with Steve Edwards at one point, although now he claims (to me at least) that the friendship has since ended.

Downtown Development Authority (DDA)

Hembree slid into office, starting with his association with then-Council Member Marc Cohen, who nominated him to the DDA on January 9, 2012. Because there were no other nominations, Hembree was appointed automatically.

It’s important to note that until this year, there has been almost no competition for board appointments in Sugar Hill. It seems to be something that is agreed upon beforehand, behind the scenes. The person nominated gets the role without a vote.

Board and authority nominations come from elected officials in Sugar Hill, who overwhelmingly limit those nominations to individuals with whom they have a tight relationship. The City, led by those elected officials, has made it exceedingly difficult for outsiders to crack that system by usually failing to keep the public up-to-date on exactly who’s on these boards and when their posts expire. You basically just have to start schmoozing one of the officeholders and convince them you are a useful asset to their agenda.

City Council

Hembree was on the DDA for a little over a year and a half before then-Council Member Steve Edwards resigned in August/September 2013 to run for Mayor of the City of Sugar Hill, and the City called for a Special Election to fill the remainder of his term.

Hembree was the only candidate for the Special Election. As such, the election was canceled in accordance with GA Code § 21-2-291, and Hembree was sworn in by then-Mayor Gary Pirkle at a Special Called meeting on October 7, 2013, and immediately began filling out the final two years of Edwards’ term.

At the end of THOSE two years, he was again the only candidate for the post. The posts of the other two incumbents were also uncontested, so again, the election was canceled.

Hembree faced a challenger for his City Council post in 2019, financial analyst Marjorie Prophete. However, Prophete was a beginner in the Sugar Hill political scene and completely new to running for office. Hembree’s six years in office and efforts in cultivating a network of hangers-on in that time led him to a fairly easy win over Prophete.

Just two years later, in 2021, Hembree resigned that City Council post to run for Mayor after Steve Edwards indicated to insiders that he would not run again for the seat.

Mayor

Hembree originally had one challenger in the 2021 mayoral race, former DDA Member Nancy Wren, who had abandoned the DDA seat years ago.

According to reporting by Tyler Wilkins of the AJC, the elections superintendent for the City indicated that Hembree challenged Wren’s qualification for the race. Wren was disqualified almost a month after the qualification period for the office after it was discovered that she didn’t meet the voter registration and residency requirements established by the City Charter.

I spoke with Wren shortly after her disqualification. She told me that Hembree had investigated her background and initiated the disqualification. She also said that the City held a private hearing at which he presented evidence for the disqualification. That always struck me as a tad dramatic, because it really could have, and probably should have been a paperwork task.

Summary

So, Hembree entered the Sugar Hill political scene as a DDA Member appointed with no challenge after a decade of Gold Dome lobbying under his belt, then ascended to City Council with no challenge and stayed there for six years before he was challenged, and then took the role of Mayor with no challenge. These are indisputable facts.

We’ll never know for sure how Hembree cracked into the Sugar Hill system because those plans were probably made in one-on-one conversations that were completely off-record and untraceable. But, it looks like he had somehow already made contact with the existing officeholders, and they saw the overwhelming opportunity for mutually beneficial arrangements in a town with a massively and unusually disengaged public.

If his lobbyist background wasn’t WHY they picked him, it’s undoubtedly garnered him a great deal of the ardent and highly aggressive support he now enjoys from people who may be simply looking to tap into the power he wields with the professional and political network he’s built with his 22-year-old lobbying firm.

While Bullying Brandon and his Bully Brigade will no doubt emerge in force to deny all of this, they will never, EVER be able to credibly deny that it raises LOTS of questions, and is just not a great look. The People of Sugar Hill are not obligated in ANY way by any real power to look the other way and assume everything is okay just because they say it is. And the fact that we’re always being forcefully asked to is a massive indicator that something isn’t quite right.

Out of all the clients on his list, though, quite possibly MY favorite is this one, given that he is incredibly dismissive about the concerned citizens right here in his own backyard.

I guess he’s waiting on us to fork over $10,000+.

I was born and raised in Flowery Branch, just 10 miles up the road. My entire family has been in this area for a long time.

I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science (major) and business administration (minor) from the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega. I always enjoyed the practicality of the business classes and took more than I needed for the minor, but not quite enough for a second major.

While I was working my way through school, I worked as a daycare teacher, student liaison in a program for at-risk youth, insurance salesperson for hole-in-one contests at golf tournaments, and a laboratory technician in the bacteriology and virology departments of the Georgia Poultry Laboratory division of the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

Professionally, I’ve served multiple roles in the software business, including software engineer for both a Fortune 500 and a startup company, software QA analyst for a company that made software for local planning departments, and software marketing specialist for a US federal contractor.

In the middle of all these software jobs, I was a substitute teacher (standard K-5 classrooms and dedicated classes for children with additional needs) and later obtained a teaching license from the state of Georgia through a special program to recruit professionals from other fields to teach in hard-to-staff subjects and levels. I spent two years teaching middle school in Gainesville and Hall County (algebra, technology).

Incidentally, teaching middle school was probably better preparation for working with the government than anything else I’ve ever done! 😉

These days, I take care of family and am pretty much retired, but I still enjoy working, learning, and being productive whenever I can.

It’s been a unique path, but I think my combined professional background in computer science (detail-oriented and analytical), business (pragmatic), and education (communication) comes through in my work here in Sugar Hill.

I started my work of observing the local government of the City of Sugar Hill in 2019, when the road I live on was shut down to replace a bridge that goes over a small creek. Because of the inconvenient road closure, residents were getting annoyed.

I quickly noticed that when you asked questions, the City of Sugar Hill government officials gave thin, nonsensical answers. If you tried to push past that, you got attacked by the elected officials and members of a little cloud of hangers-on (employees, spouses of employees, appointees, spouses of appointees, and members of City-sponsored organizations) who were receiving obvious benefits from sidling up to the government officials or were in a very obvious position to do so because of their business type or organizations they were running.

Interested and slightly disturbed by that crazy reaction, I decided to poke them a little to see exactly how far they would go. Eventually, I received a private message on social media from a now-former City Council Member, who made a subtle yet very clear threat to smear me as a liar if I persisted.

More than ANYTHING about the bridge itself, that hostile approach to the people the government is supposed to serve struck me as being thoroughly improper and having no place in what should be a functional, appropriate government in the United States of America.

That year, I got involved in the City of Sugar Hill and started following the government in earnest, attending every meeting to see exactly what they were doing and how they were spending our money. The elected officials and their cronies were (are) obviously incredibly defensive, and I wanted to discover why.

I learned about citizens' rights to observe and collect information under Georgia’s Sunshine Laws, and started submitting Open Records Requests and recording meetings. I continuously seek out various folks in law, other governments, politics, journalism, and community improvement to learn from them and spend lots of time studying the materials many of them generously share online.

At first, I was sharing the things in a blog I created on a website that is still floating around out there, and my active Facebook page, which is now called Amber Chambers, Government Watchdog. I ran for City Council in 2019, 2020, and 2021. I knew it was a long shot, but I saw it as a great way to publicize my work and hopefully motivate more people to get involved and push for better government.

After the last race in 2021, I took stock of my government-improvement project and the best way to move it forward. I decided to focus exclusively on the blog and the Government Watchdog page so I could share my knowledge and observations with a little more bite.

Over time, the posts and their associated documentation grew into stacks of full-length articles that were outgrowing their current platforms, and the public was increasingly requesting emails of those articles. So, in August 2023, I started a Substack called Real Deal Sugar Hill.

When I started pushing for better government in Sugar Hill, EVERYONE told me, “There’s nothing you can do about it.” I always responded, “I don’t know. I never saw anybody really try.”

So I tried.

Now, there are summary minutes on the website not too long after City Council meetings so you can see the results of votes. The City Events calendar does a better job of reflecting times and locations of all official meetings, and meeting cancellations are announced on the website (instead of a note on the door, or simply a locked door, as in years past). And, my presence at City Hall “inspired” the City to start placing videos of the monthly City Council Work Sessions and Meetings on the website.

Due to a complaint I filed with the Georgia Attorney General’s office, Sugar Hill residents now get more advance notice of long-distance, off-site Mayor and Council retreats. The City actually has at least temporarilty discontinued this expensive and secretive practcice because I used the improved notice to attend and cover one of the meetings on my own dime, and disclosed some shenanigans related to meals provided by undisclosed benefactors.

Because of my watchful eye and broad audience, the City finally lowered the millage rate that it had not only maintained, but bragged about for 19 years during the terms of three different mayors (Gary Pirkle, Steve Edwards, and Brandon Hembree). It was lowered a second time by new Council Members after my reporting strongly influenced a change in officeholders. And, the City now publishes detailed expenditures and revenues on its website at budget time.

My reporting has also triggered wins against the uncontrolled growth, undoubtedly THE top issue in Sugar Hill. Residents now have abundant details about controversial planning and zoning requests ahead of time and can speak up against them. In addition, I’ve exposed questionable practices in conjunction with some projects, influencing Council Members to vote against projects that they had not previously seemed inclined to deny, such as:

• an 87-unit build-to-rent subdivision on Sycamore Road.

• a development from a former Forsyth Commissioner consisting of 66 townhouses and 12 single-family houses across from Arbor Clos and next to Warrenton.

• a 73-unit townhouse development off of Sycamore Road.

• a bizarre “ChurchPubEventCenter” next to Emerald Lakes that hadn’t even followed annexation laws.

• a secretive 180-unit housing development with townhomes and zero-lot-line homes on Whitehead Road pushed by a realtor and former Sugar Hill City Council member.

Last, but not least, my reporting put the brakes on an expensive and impractical trolley plan.

Six and a half years later, my camera and I are still a fixture at City meetings. Everyone at City Hall knows that if there’s anything weird going on and I find out about it, YOU will find out about it. I’m still getting hassled by the government and their lackeys routinely, but as one of my journalism advisors once told me,

“If you cover the government and they’re not mad at you at least some of the time, you’re probably not doing your job.”

Whether it’s a journey of a thousand miles, a thousand Open Records Requests, a thousand emails, a thousand meetings, a thousand thousand-word articles (or maybe even one thousand, four hundred and fifty days in elected office 😉),
it ALL starts with a single step.

I enthusiastically took that first step in 2019. And with honesty, perseverance, a lot of FAITH, a little love, and a healthy sense of humor, this journey can continue to make life better for everyone in Sugar Hill. ❤️🌳

Hello! And welcome to The EDGE!

If you’re here reading this, you probably know me from my other project, Real Deal Sugar Hill, which is a little over two years old now. Real Deal organizes and shares extensive information obtained from the government through the Georgia Sunshine Laws, going beyond what most journalists do to SHOW you the sources so you can make up your own mind. It has lowered the longstanding shield of secrecy surrounding the Sugar Hill government and exposed who’s doing what and for whom with their positions and how much money it’s costing you.

Real Deal Sugar Hill contains some very basic, common-sense analysis. For example, if officeholders tell a story that doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t true. If they go to some trouble to hide something (instead of shouting it from the rooftops in that obnoxious way that politicians have), they’re afraid of getting in trouble. Those are not huge leaps. And, there is definitely some snark when something the government says or does is exceptionally stupid or nonsensical. That’s not uncommon in investigative journalism.

While I enjoy doing Real Deal Sugar Hill, what I publish there is only a small portion of everything I’ve seen and know about what goes on around here. For every well-documented article, there’s a backstory. There’s the knowledge that various folks in law, other governments, politics, journalism, and community improvement generously share online or just with me. And, there’s my informed take on everything I saw. There are also LOTS of ideas I’ve accumulated on how to make this place work better.
For everybody.

The EDGE will be a spot for me to share all that. Kind of like the more outspoken kid sister publication to my more studious publication, Real Deal Sugar Hill.

And for the people who read and enjoy Real Deal Sugar Hill, don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere. These two will work together to fill you in on all things Sugar Hill - with Real Deal’s facts and documentation, and The EDGE’s sharpness to cut through dishonest and performative politics and present real ideas for improving the City of Sugar Hill for ALL people, not just a select few.

Thank you, and enjoy!
-Amber