Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Last week contained only one attack letter from our opponent's campaign. So we are making progress in changing the tone from attacks to issues. Now if we can just get our opponent to begin addressing the issues! Our issue this week is cooperation.

One of the top three goals of Mike Wheat's campaign is to create a "win-win approach" to government here in Fayette County. Mike plans to bring parties together in the interest of all Fayette County voters and believes our strength lies in our differences.

Peachtree City is a premier, planned community; Fayetteville is the historic center and "Main Street" of the county; the south county area is rural and bucolic; Tyrone and North Fayette are the entrance to our county. Our system of local government includes both city governments and a county government who represent the same voters. This creates natural tensions at times. But, we all can see that taking a win-lose approach pits Fayette Countian against Fayette Countian and only hurts our citizens. We need to take advantage of our strengths, not fight over them.

The current environment is anything but cordial. Mike's opponent led the latest round of lawsuits and forced mediation by the county government against the city governments, which is counterproductive and expensive. While the county government was fighting with the city's last year, our county lost 800 jobs and 1,000 people applied for unemployment benefits. Also, our property taxes continued going up and the idea of impact fees got shelved. We must not take our eye off the ball this way.

In the past, our cooperative efforts have led to savings for our taxpayers. Consolidated buying and shared maintenance programs across our various governments were successfully initiated by the Futures Committee about four or five years ago. We can do it again.

The Mike Wheat campaign believes Fayette County is greater than we know. We will work to see that elected officials in our county will not have to resort to doing business through attorneys, newspaper articles, forced mediation and lawsuits at the expense of the county taxpayers. We will personally interact with the other elected officials across the county. This personal interaction is critical to rebuilding the personal trust necessary for the creation of a "win-win" environment for our citizens, rather than the current "win-lose" environment.

We will support any vehicle to bring elected officials together. This includes reconstituting the former Futures Committee, the Fayette County Association of Governments or any other mechanism that will help bring the governing bodies together in the interest of taxpayers.

Meredith Wynn

Communications Director

Mike Wheat Campaign Committee

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