Wednesday, January 17, 2001
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Wednesday, January 17, 2001 |
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Why are lame ducks tinkering with PTC's charter? This Thursday the Peachtree City Council will begin discussions on making changes to our city charter. I believe that our charter does need some changes. However, I want to see changes that give the citizenry more power like the ability to have a popular vote on annexation requests. Unfortunately, Mayor Lenox made a charter proposal that will consolidate the power of our local bureaucracy and will tighten the noose on open government. He wants to effectively eliminate the position of city clerk. The woman who was our city clerk, Nancy Faulkner, was our advocate for open records and open government in Peachtree City. Her job and title was stripped in the last city council meeting and given to City Manager Jim Basinger. Since the position of city clerk is an appointed position, the mayor and the city manger could only terminate her with cause. If the city clerk's position was relegated to "employee" status, the clerk could be fired on the spot at the whim of the city manager. For example, say a local citizen made an open records request regarding some private behind the scenes meetings between certain city officials and certain private parties. If the city clerk turned over an abundance of information that the city officials would rather not have the public see (which is the essence of open government) she could, under the mayor's proposal, be fired by the city manager with no reason given. Now the mayor will tell you that this is strictly a business methodology applied to local government that will provide "structure." Perhaps such Machiavellian gestures provide some type of benefit in the private business sector but federal and state law promotes openness and balance to insure that government is functioning properly. A major question is why would our mayor and several of our council members who are lame ducks want to be changing our charter at this stage in their term of office? They have been in office for nearly a decade and they now decide to amend the main governing document of our city on their way out. After reading the mayor's "big box decision" editorial in the Update newsletter with all of its inaccuracies and misinformation, the last thing that I want is his tinkering with the city's charter. Please contact your council members and local state representatives and let them know that this is not the appropriate time to make changes to the charter. Their e-mail addresses are: Mayor Bob Lenox blenox@cfcmail.com; Annie McMenamin annie@peachtree-city.org; Bob Brooks rbr403@aol.com; Carol Fritz cfritz@peachtree-city.org; Dan Tennant dantennant@aol.com. Steve Brown Peachtree City Steve_ptc@juno.com
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