Wednesday, January 8, 2003

It was interesting to read Mayor Brown's letter to the editor over the Christmas holidays. At our house we assumed it was a parody and derived a good deal of laughter and enjoyment from it. However, I have since learned that our mayor was serious. On that basis the community deserves some accurate information about several of the topics the mayor addressed.

The Chamber of Commerce Mr. [Mike] Hofrichter is the Chairman of the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce. He wrote the letter to the media at the direction of the Board of Directors on behalf of the members of the Chamber. The Chamber has over 750 businesses as members, of which about one-third are in Peachtree City.

The Chamber, not Mr. Hofrichter, gave Mayor Brown a failing grade. Mr. Brown may have a business person here and there who supports him but 95 percent of us and 99.9 percent of those who have actually had to deal with him think he is completely untrustworthy and has pretty much single-handedly destroyed the reputation of Peachtree City as a good place to do business and to locate a business.

Wal-mart/Home Depot The design of these stores, the layout of the site, the trees and landscaping, the absence of outdoor goods storage, the state of the art runoff and pollution control system all of these things were the result of hard work and tough negotiating by Jim Williams and David Rast of the city development staff as directed by the members of the Peachtree City Planning Commission. All of these things were planned and agreed to long before Mayor Brown ever took office. Perhaps if Mr. Brown had some accomplishments of his own he would not have to expend so much effort taking credit for the hard work of others.

The TDK Extension Many people, including me, can share in the blame for the traffic situation on Ga. Highway 54 West. One man can take the blame for not getting it fixed as soon as humanly possible. That man is Mayor Brown.

The Fayette County Commission, the Coweta County Commission, the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, the Fayette County and Peachtree City Development authorities, all the businesses in the industrial park, and the Peachtree City Council have all been in favor of and worked mightily to make this road a reality. One man is stopping it Mayor Brown.

He says we have no money. We did, in fact, have it set aside for this purpose but Mayor Brown squandered almost $1 million buying a small piece of land at the entrance to the Wynnmeade subdivision on Hwy. 54 for reasons unknown to most of us.

If that money had not been wasted and if Mayor Brown was doing his job, TDK Boulevard would be opening in 2003 and much of the pressure would be off Hwy. 54 while it is being widened. The next time you're sitting in traffic there, going nowhere, call the mayor and ask him about his sense of priorities.

I could continue on other topics but this letter is long enough. Just keep in mind when reading Mr. Brown's letters that our mayor is self-delusional on a cosmic scale and, that while he's not very good at the job of mayor, he is truly an artist when it comes to self-aggrandizement and personal PR. He is, as the saying goes, a legend in his own mind.

Bob Lenox

Peachtree City

[Bob Lenox is the former mayor of Peachtree City.]