Wednesday, October 2, 2002

After reading about the attack on my favorite Golden Boy (he's called Golden Boy because everything's always coming up golden for him), I decided to do this condensed exposé because "I just wanted the public to know." This exposé is especially dedicated to that one-man crusader and the greatest PTC Mayor of all time, Mr. Bob Lenox NOT! It will also be dedicated to outgoing cry-baby City Manager Jim Basinger. Also, how could I forget, it is dedicated to all the fire-breathin' PTC establishment crowd that I now see at the Council meetings.

I saw in the paper in past weeks how my current PTC mayor had to suffer this vicious attack and also being under threat of jail time. I could do nothing but ask myself (referring to these events) what manner of man could do this? Then there was this disgusting quote in the paper (in part) attributed to Mr. Lenox: "I just wanted the public to know." It was also discussed in the paper how Mr. Lenox drew parallels to convicted former sheriff Sid Dorsey with our fine mayor, the Golden Boy. What an outrage. I say to you, former Mayor Bob, PTC saw your true colors that day (Friday, Sept. 6).

A word about the establishment crowd: I increasingly now believe that the PTC establishment crowd is full of ruthless, megalomaniac prima donna fat cats that will stop at nothing to seek out their revenge and destroy people.

Our Cowboy Engineer memoirs will begin as follows: It was a very contentious meeting between one Cowboy Engineer, then PTC superstar Mayor Bob Lenox, another member of WSA and other city officials, back on Aug. 22, 1995. Me and Mr. Lenox did not agree on much that day (in my opinion). So much so that, in fact, former City Manager Jim Basinger was so distressed at the time that he asked me that day: Do you know who this man (referring to Mr. Lenox) is? Nah, I didn't know at the time but I bet he was referring to Mr. Lenox's millionaire superstar status back then.

In my own mind the negotiations were not going too well. In fact I believed that the sewer negotiations stunk to high heaven. So much so that I wanted to try to take matters into my own hands.

I thought that I would ask then-Mayor Lenox to let me be the point guy. Not a chance, was the answer that I received. For you see, the WSA was not receiving much funding from council (even though I asked for it) and thus as you could imagine we were not a very effective negotiating force. Yeah, Mr. Lenox strong-armed the whole show and the then-marshmallow City Council went right along with it.

One may ask: why did this Cowboy Engineer began to feel that way? The answer is that I felt that these negotiations did not appear to me to have the public's best interest in mind (from a taxpayer's standpoint). You see, they would have these meetings in which they would call the various bodies together without a quorum. That way they did not have to advertise for a meeting or record or document the meeting.

A statement in the Jan. 8, 1997 Citizen newspaper said: (Steve) Black was a member of the City Development Authority when it refused to use its power as the (sewer) utility's franchising entity to inspect (sewer) company financial records. Instead of seeking proof that GU (Georgia Utilities) was justified in making rate increases through the franchise authority, the city council commissioned a $1.1 million study of GU that is being withheld from the public, which was not bid out publicly, and for which funds were authorized on several dates in which the council did not meet publicly to vote on the funding, according to city records.

There was also the problem that even though our city's consultant determined that the sewer was worth some $16.3 million, they did not factor in that the sewer was initially handed over [from the county] for $1. Also look at this: when PCDC bought the sewer from The Equitable, that purchase was estimated at only about $4 million buckos (The Citizen, Nov. 30, 1994). Also when a developer sells you a home you pay for the sewer by paying a sewer connection fee included in the price of that home, etc.

So why were the above factors not included with the negotiations in light of the $16.3 million dollar value, I asked? It was stated (by you know who) that it was not likely that the city could get the price lower than what our own consultants came up with. I disagreed wholeheartedly.

Other questions that I pondered in regards to the then-Mayor Lenox and his negotiating skills were: Isn't it true that you once stated in regards to PCDC that you could make it hard for them to sell land? Isn't it true that you once put up $5,000 of your own money telling Applebee's that you could get them approved here in 30 days or they could keep your money (The Citizen, Oct. 10, 1997)? Isn't it true that you just love developer fat-cats and the making rich of them?

Then there were other ways that the wool was pulled over the public's eyes. We had several law firms that were involved in the negotiations. There was this one law firm that came up with what I will refer to as the dirty lawyer tricks scheme. What they decided to do was advise us to use the lawyer-client privilege trick. The way it worked was that we would funnel all our transactions between the city and authority and our paid consultants though the law firm such that if anybody was ever taken to task on it (in front of a judge) that we couldn't be compelled to testify because of lawyer-client privilege. Tricky, ain't it?

Another trick that was used to hide activities from the public was that they didn't let the roughly $1 million that was spent on the valuation study show up as a budget line item via the use of the city's self-insurance fund. That's why the public didn't have a clue as to how much was being spent or why or for what reason until after it was already spent. The sad thing is that if the public could have been included, maybe some part of the PTC citizenry could have come up with an novel idea to help us lower the cost that we paid for the sewer, who knows?

Our favorite number cruncher on City Council (affectionately "Captain Crunch") stated in part in the PTC Board of Ethics hearing minutes dated June 11, 2002 (page 22): "There were plenty of times when Rapson was Finance Director and Lenox was authorized to do something, that Lenox did so in a vacuum to the point that they got contracts from Mr. Lindsey after they were actually signed ..."

Do you non-PTC establishment readers think it legal for the city to spend money like that without council ever taking a vote? In any event, I would say that the public needed to be told.

Before there was a Dan Tennant (Our Man), there was the "real" Our Man (of all time) my very good friend, Dan Lakly. Now there was a trailblazer for you, and a real role model too.

Dan Lakly was the one who set the example for me on how to look the PTC establishment crowd in the eye and to stand strong on an issue. Thanks, Dan, for showing me the right way. Dan Lakly was also the one who saw early on that the purchase of the sewer would be a big waste of taxpayers' money (how right you were, Dan). In fact, he came up with the idea to seek Public Service Commission regulation instead. Problem: he got no support from those that mattered.

The amazing thing to me is that our Trailblazer and Citizen News Publisher almost had it all figured out back then (as to what was being done under the table).

Mr. Lenox was even quoted as saying (in the city's legal organ on Feb. 1, 1997), "We didn't do a good job of informing the citizens on the issues involved." Yeah, right.

Yeah, ex-Mayor Bob, you can deny all you want to about the Development Authority contracts being valid; but, something you can never deny is what you said on the Aug. 22, 1995 tape recording that day. Ha, Ha. Hey Bob, this Bud's for you.

Well, I gotta jet. If you enjoyed my memoirs, I would be happy to come out with the expanded version (there are some other juicy tidbits that I held back on, just to leave you guys hanging on for more). Alls you have to do is just ask the editor to let the Cowboy Engineer be a guess columnist one day. Or, for these and other exploits of the Cowboy Engineer, check out the historical annals of The Citizen newspapers. Peace and out.

James Melvin Ewing

Peachtree City

[Ewing served on the Peachtree City Water and Sewer Authority during the 1990s.]