Wednesday, January 10, 2001
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Wednesday, January 10, 2001 |
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Beware of PTC mayor's tinkering with city charter By CAL BEVERLY Happy New Year! For one who still hasn't fully embraced the 1990s, it seems strange to be living in 'aught-one,' as our grandchildren might refer to our olden times at the beginning of the new millennium. As a diehard anachronism of Peachtree City 22 years voting from the same subdivision, living on the same street, paying taxes on the same house I hear some of the old bells reverberating into the new year. Yep, my warning bells are alarming again, and again it's the good old Peachtree City Council. We hear that Mayor Bob Lenox and cohorts have assigned City Attorney Rick Lindsey to a search of the city's charter to see what things need to be changed or "updated."
Slap the submarine klaxon aah-ooga, aah-ooga, aah-ooga, DIVE, DIVE, DIVE! King Bob, he of the mayoral anointing, wants to tinker with the city's basic document of governance. A creature of the state legislature, a city any city must have a charter that begins as a legislative bill, proposed by the legislators who represent the district encompassing the proposed city. It is the charter that defines a city's initial geographic boundaries and sets up the city's form of government and outlines its powers and limitations. It is the charter that determines whether and how a city is governed by a mayor and council or a commission and chairman or a board of aldermen, etc. A charter is, in effect, the city's constitution. It is from the legislative charter that a city derives its authority to govern and to tax the people within its limits. It can be changed or amended only by an act of the state legislature.
And now the same guy who gave us a mid-1990s' secret-from-the-public million-dollar study about buying a private sewer system without any public council vote; the same guy whose lack of attention gave us 399 apartments in an area zoned for commercial uses; the same guy who pushed for an almost unanimously unwanted West Village annexation; the same guy who brokered a last-minute "compromise" with developers that will give us unimagined traffic congestion on Ga. Highway 54 West this same guy now has initiated a study to tinker with the guts of the city charter. Is anybody else nervous? By the way, note in an accompanying story that a 4-to-1 council vote last week stripped city clerk duties from Nancy Faulkner, who had just won a statewide award for clerk performance. The new city clerk is longtime City Manager Jim Basinger, who now has undisputed control of all city functions, a royal viceroy subject only to King Bob's executive command. Don't you feel better now? By the way, Councilman Dan Tennant voted in favor of consolidating King Bob's and Viceroy Basinger's power. We have to wonder, what was the self-proclaimed champion of the average citizen thinking? Or was that vote taken on a non-thinking night? To his credit, Tennant was on the right side of a 1-to-4 vote to televise council proceedings on the AT&T local channel, at AT&T's expense. Four other council members must have worried about their camera appeal, because they voted against letting cable viewers watch some of the goings-on during city council meetings. Their lame excuse: City cable viewers would be bored by the proceedings. Tell that to C-Span addicts. Noted in the taxpayer-supported city newsletter out this month: King Bob makes a defense of council's unpopular vote to open wide the development spigot on the city's west side. It's not the first time the King Bob-Viceroy Basinger duo has used taxpayer money to publish excuses for their actions. The last time, about four years ago, they used the city newsletter as a personal vehicle to criticize The Citizen and one of its reporters. If they want to defend their unpopular actions, let them do it on their dime, not the taxpayers'. Silly us, we voters and taxpayers of Peachtree City we thought the candidates we voted into office would listen to us on things that really matter to us. I wonder Will we do any better with the candidates who will offer for three posts later this year? And, just imagine, with nearly a full year before King Bob and his cohorts are forced into retirement, how much more can they squeeze into our fair city? How much after they tinker with the city charter? Contact your local legislators. Tell them to be wary of any local legislation to change any city charter unless it has gone through rigorous public review, including local public hearings before council. We will be watching. Legislators Lynn Westmoreland, Kathy Cox, Mitch Seabaugh, Greg Hecht please take note.
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