By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Perspective

Peachtree City has commissioned an annexation task force to look at what Mayor Bob Lenox has called “one of the most important decisions this city is ever going to make,” whether to annex property west of Highway 74 to form a fifth village.

The purpose of the Westside Task Force is to look at all facets of the issue and present an overall recommendation to council prior to an annexation vote. Mayor Lenox wants the task force to arrive at a decision by consensus, much like what was done with the recently approved development at Walt Banks and Highway 54.

This is where things seem a little unclear to me. Does Lenox want a consensus on the question of whether to annex, or does he want a consensus on the overall west village development plan?

According to the March 2 council meeting minutes, Mayor Lenox, in recommending that council lift the moratorium on annexation, requested that a “citizen committee of 12-15 members... selected by the City Council... meet... to review every aspect of the proposed annexation and to assist in developing a final integrated plan for presentation to and consideration by the City Council.” So is this a “done” deal already?

According to a legal opinion provided by city attorney Stephen Ott to Jim Basinger March 21, “there is no procedure to allow the residents of a city seeking to annex property to vote on whether or not to annex a particular area.” A referendum can be utilized in some instances, when certain criteria are met, but those are not met in this case.

Furthermore, the referendum vote would only apply to those living in the area to be annexed, not to the rest of us who have to live with the annexation. Astounding, but true. So we have a populace who cannot vote on this issue, many of whom do not favor this annexation. We have a Westside Task Force who is supposed to recommend whether to annex this property, but in reality will be “facilitated” into a consensus decision of “how,” not “if.”

We have a council who voted in January NOT to lift the moratorium, then turned right around and lifted it in March. We have a huge traffic problem at highways 54 and 74 already, and we haven't even opened our big boxes yet. We have schools that are at or beyond capacity now, and no funds in the foreseeable future to finance new construction.

We have land that would require rezoning to accommodate this higher density, so this is not a case of being unable to deny a land owner's legal right to maximize a return on his already appropriately zoned investment. So what possible reason could there be to proceed with this development?

M-O-N-E-Y.

And there is nothing we can do to stop it, period. So why the consensus process? To create the appearance of citizen input, and to be able to dilute blame when complaints start rolling in in five years or so when our quaint little town becomes a traffic-snarled urban land mass.

Consensus decision making is a tried and true corporate management tool to elicit decisions in the best interest of the organization being served, and in some cases an effective method of getting what you want despite the existence of a differing, majority-held belief.

Barry Mallis, a facilitator and manager of MARKEM Corp. in New Hampshire, says that, “consensus is reached when all members can say they either agree with the decision, or can at least live with it, having “had their say,” and feeling they've been heard.” Mallis states that, “Consensus means no winners and losers, only winners.”

In “Educating for the New World Order,” author B. Eakman states that consensus decision making helps to perpetuate an illusion of “...lay, or community, participation (in the decision-making process), while lay citizens [are], in fact, being squeezed out.” Eakman goes on to outline the Delphi technique, a facilitator method used to “squeeze citizens out of the process,” by alienating dissenting opinions from the rest of the group by making them seem extreme or out of touch.

To protect yourself from a facilitator, or change agent, who is trained in the Delphi technique, Lynn Stuter, a political activist in Washington advises, “be persistent, stay focused, always be charming, and never, under any circumstances, become angry.” (This probably only works when you have at least a morsel of hope that the consensus outcome may be influenced by your participation.)

The greatest threats to any consensus process are people with rigidly held ideas about what the end result should be, which is probably why Mayor Lenox preemptively admonished committee members not to betray “their responsibility to the community” by already having an opinion.

Does that also apply to Mayor Lenox? Hopefully we'll all feel that we can “live with” the new village. At least we will have had our “say,” right?

Now don't we all just feel like winners?

Your input is appreciated. Please e-mail to ARileyFreePress@aol.com.

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