Wednesday, June 6, 2001

One of the main reasons I decided to run for the County Commission was because of my desire to increase the level of cooperation and to lower the level of rhetoric between the County Government and the City Government in the county. I talked about this issue in the press release that announced my candidacy and I have talked about it in the literature I have been giving out.

I am learning, during this campaign, that many others share this concern; most of the elected officials, County and City, and many of the citizens. There is general recognition that since we all live in the same county, we all use the same roads and we are all dependent on each other to maintain the Fayette way of life that we need to communicate before small issues becoming big confrontations.

I'm going to make several pledges regarding this issue that I will follow through on if I am elected to this office. First, I will make myself available to listen to what any other elected official in this county has to say. I will respect the fact that they have been elected to their office by citizens of Fayette County. No offense to this newspaper or any other but, I will not conduct conversations with these officials through the newspapers. This is a two way street. While City officials don't want to have to read the newspaper to hear what a Commissioner thinks about them, Commissioners don't want to read about surprises from the cities in the newspaper either. This helps no one.

The other pledge that is that, at least once a month, I will attend a meeting of at least one other governmental body in the country. I will do this to keep current with the issues and problems of that government and, most importantly, to keep up a personal relationship with those elected officials. What's past is past and we can't fix that but this will be my contribution to moving on in a more positive direction.

None of us can guarantee that we will agree on any specific issues, now or in the future, and I make no promises about any here. I am sure that sometimes I will support the position of the critics and sometimes I will not. Sometimes I will vote with the majority on the Commission and sometimes I will not. I do think that we all owe it to the citizens of this county, unincorporated and in the cities, our best effort to work out issues and differences in a spirit of cooperation. I will do that.

Now, anyone can tell you that they believe this or that or that they will do this or that. What counts is what they actually do. Although this campaign started with no notice and is much shorter than a normal campaign season, I have been making an effort to put my presence where my mouth is. Working around schedule conflicts, I have so far managed to get to a couple of Peachtree City Council meetings, a work session of the Tyrone City Council and Brooks Town Council meeting. If at all possible, I will get to others before this election is over.

Peter Pfeifer

Peachtree City

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