Wednesday, October 25, 2000

The big box chicanery on behalf of big-time developers continues in Peachtree City. The editors at the AJC (Oct. 17, "Fold the big-box stores before it's too late") were right when they said we need to begin "thinking outside the big box."

You might be thinking that Peachtree City is doing the right thing by proposing a restrictive big box ordinance. Unfortunately, what most people are not aware of is that the latest mutation of the proposed ordinance is a hoax. Shortly before last week's city council meeting, a paragraph was added that exempted certain developers. Pathway Communities and RAM Development would now be allowed to construct big boxes in the very same restrictive ordinance.

City Council member Carol Fritz keeps announcing that "there is no conspiracy." How should we describe what is going on in our midst? The Planning Commission voted down Home Depot. The appeal was crammed into the last city council meeting of 1999 when City Council member and developer Jim Pace could have one final vote in office and the appeal was overturned. At that same meeting, Fritz stated that she did not want the Home Depot in PTC but she conveniently voted in favor of the project based upon the legal opinion of City Attorney Jim Webb who has a shared business interest with one of the big box developers.

Afterwards Fritz was given the necessary information and was offered help in researching and creating a big box ordinance and no action was taken. The City Council members refused to consider a moratorium on big boxes; hence, two more big box site plan applications were subsequently turned into City Hall. Later, City Council member Annie McMenamin introduced the idea of producing a big box ordinance that judging by the latest wording seems to be nothing more than a political smokescreen because of the exemption for the developers.

All of the negative impacts of big boxes are in the preamble to the big box ordinance and it is a shame that many of the council members are looking the other way. Unfortunately, City Attorney Rick Lindsey is meeting with the attorney representing Wal-Mart outside the public forum in order to "rectify" some of the arguments for not allowing the store in Peachtree City. To make matters worse, Planning Commission member Willis Granger was not reappointed. Granger was a proven quality of life advocate and he opposed the big boxes.

The city council continues to rely upon Rick Lindsey for the legal opinions concerning the vested rights of the big box developers even though the top partner in the firm has a financial business relationship with one of the developers. Should not they be concerned that such a situation might arouse suspicions of a violation of trust, clouded judgement and favoritism from the citizenry?

The city council toppled an effort to allow big boxes to pay their fair share of the jail impact fees and now they will pay just a little more than a 10,000 square-foot business and we are stuck paying the difference. Can we say that this is all a coincidence?

Why protect a special interest and its stores when they can be proven statistically to have a negative impact on crime, traffic and our small businesses only for them to move away when a better location comes along? We need to look at what is happening to the once prosperous (and big box laden) Snellville (AJC, Oct. 16) and take a glimpse at what the future holds.

Why is Council member Dan Tennant the only council member in favor of truly restricting all big box stores in Peachtree City?

Steve Brown

Peachtree City

steve_ptc@juno.com

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