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Inappropriate Signage at Mason Mill Residence
Mary Hinkel from Mason Mill
If anyone is disturbed by the aesthetic nuisance, danger to motorists and pedestrians, and potential devaluing of surrounding property caused by the signage at 1840 Mason Mill Rd, please contact Officer Gordon (desk: 404/687-3753; cell: 404/456-7325) of DeKalb Code Enforcement.
Shared with Mason Mill in General
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Bobby Rasulnia from Mason Mill
My house is on the market, and several potential buyers cancelled showings due to the "crazy neighbor". He is more than a public nuisance, he is affecting our property values. I urge neighbors to complain to Dekalb County Code Enforcement.
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Bobby Rasulnia from Mason Mill
If you want to read his bio and view his signs, go to his blog at minusfleshequalswaterandspirits.blogspot.com
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Diane Benjamin from Mason Mill
I now think of the spectacle as performance art. Bad performance art, but certainly speech protected by the Bill of Rights. If he is really trying to "epater la bourgeousie," he is succeeding. It may be consoling to know that he takes off his masks and stops whirling his flags if people walk their dogs on the sidewalk so that he does not frighten the dogs.
Bobby Rasulnia from Mason Mill
If he lived next door to you, i doubt you would be so glib to call it performance art. He is a neighborhood nuisance.
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One night a few years ago, he pointed a red laser light on our chests while we were sitting in our back yard from his bedroom window. Another time he came to our house banging on the front door holding three rubber ducks asking us to help him join the trinity with the elderly neighbors across the street. That elderly couple obtained a restraining order and eventually moved away due to his stalking behavior. The next time our neighbors defend his insanity with freedom of speech, we want them to talk with those who are most affected by it. This is not a freedom of speech issue people. It's a safety issue, an aesthetic nuisance, and a detriment to property values. U can not infringe upon another persons rights by exercising your rights. The explicit tone of his "message" and the use of profanity is obviously and clearly hate speech. As a society and a neighborhood we cannot tolerate his hate speech and asthetic nuisance any longer.
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If it wasn't a right to free speech, why hasn't anything been done before?
Good question David. Bottom line, the neighborhood has been complicit around this issue by perpetuating the idea that this is freedom of speech and performance art issue. We have tried since 2011 to galvanize the neighborhood with minimal results.
In 2012, our household, the elderly couple forced to leave due to his stalking behavior, and the former president of the mason mill civic association (John Bugge) took him to court. He was fined $1500 for code violations and later charged with violation to a restraining order.
In addition he has been banned from the church on Emory campus, your church, banned from going on to the Emory campus due to hate speech toward the Emory president, DEA agents have swarmed his house, and homeland security paid a visit.
Jim Ed has continued to push limits with his illegal behavior and hate speech to the point where the community and neighborhood now accepts it as his legal right to freedom of speech and "performance art". We have an opportunity to work with the county to end it. It's time to take our neighborhood back by stopping this nuisance.
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Bobby, I take issue with your comment that the neighborhood has been complicit around this issue. Neighborhood associations have no legal standing in Georgia; they can only support those who do - the property owners surrounding Jim Ed. As you state, the civic association appeared with you in court, and that is, until now, the last time that I know of that we were asked to be involved. Unfortunately, that did not stop Jim Ed's behavior.
I also spent an hour and a half talking to Jim Ed in January 2015 to try and understand how we could resolve this matter. And, we have welcomed him to neighborhood picnics, hoping that it would help for him to get to know us and we to know him, thereby leading to changes in his behavior.
As many of you know, it is hard to follow his logic and even harder to persuade him to consider the community's concerns. He told me he considers himself the Lorax (character out of Dr. Seuss) responding to all the trees being cut down on your property. (While the tree removal may have been done in compliance with DeKalb regulations (?), he was/is angry about this.) That may have sparked his public displays, but I'm sure there other reasons he continues to make them. For example, his anger toward St. Mark's and Emory. (They seem able to obtain restraining orders against him, something our neighborhood as a whole cannot do, since he lives here.)
Anyway, it is my understanding that code enforcement can't "make" a property owner change his behavior; code enforcement can only continue to cite and fine the property owner to "motivate" him to change behavior.
Speaking for the civic association, I would say we don't know how to help here, other than to facilitate the communication process and support property owners in any court hearings that occur.
Could you ask the code enforcement officer, and I'll follow up with Comm. Rader and Gannon's offices, to determine what other steps we can/should be taking here? I do think at this hearing we can raise the issues of his use of vulgar, obscene words; the large number of signs cluttering his property; and the placement of signs beyond his property lines on the sidewalk along Mason Mill. And, anyone wishing to take on drafting a petition is welcomed to do that. And/or if there are any lawyers in our midst who have thoughts about what to do here, we'd appreciate hearing from you. It is a complex matter, and I think most of our residents appreciate our difficult, and how unfortunate, this particular situation is. I also know we are all grateful we don't live next door to him, and with that in mind that is one reason I personally want to support Bobby and Charlie and those other residents who do.
Thank you Mary. We have absolutely valued your support and that of the civic association in this matter. Our reference to complicit is directed towards those in the neighborhood who view his behavior as a non-issue. We look forward to working with concerned neighbors and the civic association to further elevate this issue. This includes county commissioners office, code enforcement, district attorney, and the legislative representatives you mentioned.
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