Wednesday, September 13, 2000

I want to see Fayette County have the best school system in Georgia, and the entire United States. That is possible, with the educational and income level we have in our county; there is no excuse not to achieve that goal.

The goal of having the best educational system is an important issue to every Fayette citizen because all the quality of life issues are involved. Economically, our property values will plummet as fast as Fayette County school scores drop. Morally we must prepare the highest educated students for Fayette County, our country and our future. The children of our community are our responsibility, we should prepare and produce only the most qualified as an example of our quality county. Therefore, anything that threatens the quality of our school system threatens our quality of life and the future of Fayette County.

The only reason we have to voluntarily vote to raise our taxes for a school bond is that our elected officials keep voting to annex and rezone. Every time our elected officials vote to increase density with another building lot, your taxes go up. A few more rezonings and the quality of our schools will start to go down. Our school board members have to be at every rezoning hearing [and] smart enough to teach the elected officials that every rezoning raises our taxes and threatens the quality of our schools.

We are just now seeing the results of the last 10 years of rezoning. The bad news is that there are at least five years of building left from them. Traffic is a mess and will get worse before it gets better.

At the last Fayette County Planning and "Rezoning" meeting, Fred Bowen, Al Gilbert, Bob Harbison, and Bill Beckwith rezoned two new subdivisions. Those two rezonings will increase the school system costs and add classrooms. That will raise your taxes. How can the school board ask us to voluntarily vote to raise our taxes and our other elected officials keep annexing and rezoning? If the elected officials do not stop rezoning, we will be voting for another school bond next year.

If our elected officials will not impose a moratorium on rezoning, we will. If they vote to increase the density by as little as one lot, it will be a campaign issue. We will work to replace them with someone who will protect our community. If they vote to throw away our community, we will vote to throw them out of office.

Look at how well we have done in the last several elections Rick Price, Dan Lakly, Bob Sprayberry, Scott Burrell, and Bill Bonner, county commissioners who rezoned themselves out of office. There are others and there will be more.

I will probably vote for the school bond and keep working to stop rezonings. But I will never vote for a tax increase again unless our elected officials stop voting to increase our taxes.

Bob Craft

Fayetteville

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