Where Has Amanda Been?? January 2012 - November 2013

At the conclusion of my term on the Flowery Branch City Council in December 2011, I decided to take a different path than many of the former Council members who have served our city.  I made a decision to stay actively involved with our Council, continuing to attend almost every single meeting without fail since the conclusion of my term on the Council two years ago.

About four months after my term ended, I was approached by a start up news site known as the South Hall Gazette to help provide coverage on the workings of our City Council.  You can find many of my reports from the meetings by searching on that website at www.southhallgazette.com.  The small volunteer staff we had working on that site at the time really did, in my opinion, provide fair, comprehensive coverage on the Flowery Branch City Council that far exceeded the light, cursory coverage provided by the print and broadcast media in our county.  Presently, the lead editor for the site is pursuing other opportunities and so the site is currently dormant which is unfortunate.  I really hope there is enough interest on the part of the editor to continue the work of the site one day.

Following the conclusion of my term on the Flowery Branch City Council in 2011, I also maintained an active presence on social media, regularly updating my accounts with posts and even blogging live directly from Council meetings so followers could stay up to date on the immediate process of our city government.  You can visit the page I maintain on Facebook covering the City Council by visiting www.Facebook.com/CouncilMemberSwafford.  I still regularly update that page frequently with important information pertaining to upcoming Council meetings, City festivals and events and many other items of interest to Flowery Branch residents.  I encourage you to go check it out as there's a lot of information there and on the South Hall Gazette website.

I provide this background to inform my readers that while my web page and this blog in particular doesn't show a lot of activity since the end of my Council term in 2011, I have been hard at work nonetheless staying involved and using the knowledge I gained from my years on the Council to make sure our interests in Flowery Branch are protected from an ever encroaching and growing government bureaucracy.  Because as local Republican activist Gordon Sawyer can often be heard saying in his morning radio commentary, "A government big enough to give you all you ever want is big enough to take all you'll ever have."

Amanda