Friday, April 9, 2004
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Friday, April 9, 2004 |
| Westside annexation on retreat agenda By J. FRANK LYNCH Talk of annexing the Westside — the entire Westside — will likely be the only topic that matters when members of the Peachtree City Council and city staffers finally gather next weekend for their annual two-day retreat to plan for the coming year. Traditionally, the marathon session, held this year at the Wyndham Conference Center, is conducted earlier in the year. Scheduling concerns for several on the council, which includes newcomers Stuart Kourajian and Judi-ann Rutherford, kept pushing the available weekends into the spring, and this week’s spring break and Holy Week events delayed still more. Kourajian brough the issue to the table at the April 1 council meeting. He was following up on an earlier formal request made by Rick Schlosser of Direct PAC that didn’t meet a dealine for agenda items. Rutherford, who put it on the retreat schedule, expressed strong desires last week to quit tiptoeing around the issue and address it openly, something that the city’s moratorium against annexation discourages. Specifically, the councilmembers want to know what Mayor Steve Brown and developer John Wieland Homes are up to, and why all of the available 1,000 acres is not being considered. Working behind the scenes with Wieland planners, Brown had hoped to come up with an acceptable project for about half the land located in the area, which would provide perks like an extension of McDuff Parkway to Ga. Highway 74 and a grade-level crossing of the CSX railway tracks. Wieland has submitted plans to the county planning staff that show McDuff as a dead-end if the land remains unincorporated. That drew concerns at last week’s council meeting, when Rutherford asked why a grade-level crossing of the busy tracks was being considered there, to meet south Kedron Drive. Brown suggested delays for trains would be minimal. “I’ve sat and waited for trains to pass in this town,” Rutherford said. “I know how long it takes a train to pass.” Just north of there, where Kedron Drive circles around and crosses Ga. Highway 74 again, it ends west of the highway and at the tracks in a steep incline, designed to provice access to a railroad overpass, Rutherford points out. But that section of the property isn’t part of Wieland’s design, and most of the tracts from there north to Tyrone are owned by multiple individuals. Wieland already owns a large section of the property in question, with Pathway Communities holding the rest. “I just think that if we look at this we need to look at all of it and not just half,” said Rutherford. “Whatever Mayor Brown has done to this point doesn’t matter to me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no project on the table.” Rutherford made the motion to table the topic and bring it up for discussion again at the retreat. “We agree that we want the proper people in place to discuss the issue in a workshop session,” said Rutherford said. Councilman Steve Rapson pointed out that Brown’s role in the latest round of annexation talk wasn’t void of irony, since Brown ran opposed to annexation in 2001. “The irony is not lost on me because Mayor Brown and Mayor (Bob) Lenox were both saying the same thing,” said Rapson. “They want the same thing. “Ultimately, this council will decide how we want to proceed.”
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