Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Like kudzu, annexation crawls up again

By CAL BEVERLY
editor@thecitizennews.com

A slow-motion betrayal dressed in pretty clothing is about to sully the reputation of the Peachtree City Council, already not topping the charts in public admiration.

Its formal name is annexation, and the folks about to undergo yet another betrayal are those who live in Wynnmeade subdivision, west of the Wal-Mart-Home-Depot debacle.

The council is about to go wobbly on its annexation and multifamily housing moratoriums, enticed by the siren song of a developer-paid rail crossing and new soccer fields.

The charge toward traffic disaster is being led by a most unlikely advocate of shoehorning more people into the traffic-choked Westside. Mayor Steve Brown, who only three years ago was elected on his opposition to Westside annexation, now has turned into just another politician seduced by developer money.

John Wieland Homes wants to annex the island of county-zoned land behind and south of the Comcast cable TV complex. Wieland promises to build four new soccer fields and pay for the at-grade rail crossing at the cable TV tower.

McDuff Parkway will then extend northward to the new crossing, providing an instant Peachtree City Bypass for all Coweta-based traffic through town, now building into the tens of thousands of vehicles daily.

Brown is right about one aspect: Such a bypass will provide instant relief for gridlock at the intersection of Ga. highways 54 and 74.

What he is not telling you is that all that Coweta traffic will be shifted onto a two-lane road never intended or planned for that volume of traffic.

What’s more, those two lanes of McDuff Parkway are constrained for much of its current length by Oglethorpe Power transmission lines, a continually giving gift to us from nearly two decades ago by the very founders of Peachtree City, for whom the city’s two major thoroughfares are named.

In other words, for much of its length, McDuff can’t be widened without condemning a lot of long-established homes.

As a former resident of Wynnmeade (as well as a current owner of residential property directly adjacent to McDuff Parkway and thus directly affected by any change to its current traffic patterns), I can attest that residents of that neighborhood have always been treated as the quarters across the tracks by city government.

But even now, many don’t expect that they will be sacrificed just to build an unsafe rail crossing and unneeded soccer fields.

McDuff Parkway was built to lesser standards than are required for any other comparable roadway in Peachtree City. It has less buffering than any other comparable road in the city.

And under the annexation proposal, McDuff will carry traffic nearly equal to what is already clogging well-built Hwy. 54.

Nobody on that side of town ever imagined their city council would screw them this boldly and this badly. For the betrayal to come from a slightly better-located Westside resident (the mayor lives on the heights of Planterra Ridge) is doubly painful.

There will be a lot of rhetoric Thursday about the city being forced to “serve” the unannexed area should it not be brought into the city. Council members will wax at length on how much money the new development will bring into the city coffers.

These are false issues arising from a politically liberal mindset that believes that government should be a growth business and solve everybody’s “problems,” even those problems outside the city’s current jurisdiction. Lord, deliver us from this kind of “Republicans.”

Other issues for later comment include the addition of yet more commercial and apartment rezoning to a city we all thought was nearly built out, as well as the continuing lure of developer money which supplants a city government’s responsibility to govern within its limits and its financial means.

What happens to otherwise intelligent people when they get elected to public office? Why do they get so grandiose and so blown up about themselves and their “visions”? Now, that is a story that never gets told.

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