I got a pretty good laugh reading the letter from Mr. William Gilmer published in this newspaper Feb. 2. While I understand Mr. Gilmer's reasons for feeling the need to defend the building profession, many of the comments he made were not in touch with the problems faced in Peachtree City today.

If you follow Mr. Gilmer's reasoning, the easy answer to solving the problem of overdevelopment requires just three simple steps. First, we need to pass a law that prevents any new immigrants from moving into our city. I would assume this would especially apply to the most pesky of all immigrants, the ex-Yankee. Sure, passing this kind of law would probably mean our city could be nominated for the first annual John Rocker Good Citizen Award, but what the heck.

The second step is to stop those foolhardy citizens who believe in having more than two children. Yes, all of you who want to have a “large family” you need to do it somewhere else. If you already live here and have more than two children, perhaps you can pawn one off on a neighbor who hasn't hit their quota yet. The one child per family quota has worked in China, hasn't it?

The third step may prove the trickiest. Somehow we need to find a way to convince the automobile-loving population of our area to give up their cars and either find work closer to home, or to lobby for MARTA buses to come down our way. If we just keep building with no restraint, we can make the roads a virtual gridlock and force people to leave their SUVs and minivans parked in their garages gathering dust. Maybe we can all get jobs at the new big boxes and simply walk to work. I sure hope they will pay a bit more than minimum wage, though.

The way I see it, there is an easier solution, one that doesn't involve fences to keep out immigrants or forced birth control to keep down family sizes. The best solution, the one that we can accomplish, is to control high density growth and deny any move to annex more land into our city.

Zoning rules and other regulations are what has helped make our city the great place that it is. Without those rules and regulations builders and developers like Mr. Gilmer wouldn't be able to market homes here for the prices they can now demand. No one is trying to find a “scapegoat” for our problems; we merely want to find solutions.

There comes a point when we need to “pull up the ladder” and close out new development in our city. There will always be resale homes for those who want to move here, and those newcomers will not add to the population totals (unless they have a large family).

Our city is built out, and unless we move forward with unneeded annexations or decide to cover every bit of green space with more cluster homes, now seems like a good time to say “When!” Let's worry about those that live here now, about their safety and well-being, and not be too concerned about those who may want to live here in the future.

Steve Fodor
Peachtree City

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page