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Elections and intersections and annexations

By CAL BEVERLY
editor@TheCitizenNews.com

Local thoughts:

I’m writing before the election results are known, but I have a few thoughts about the runoff candidates.

We are fortunate to have had such strong conservative challengers for the state senate and 8th District Congressional races.

Bill Bonner and Lynn Westmoreland are both very fine men whose votes on the big issues of our time would please most of the conservatives in this county, including me, most of the time.

I voted (early) for Ronnie Chance and Dylan Glenn because I think they represent the GOP’s future. I still do.

In the all-Fayette House race, I am just gray-haired enough to believe that a never-married, under-30, never-elected-to-any-public-office young lady cannot possibly have enough life experience and wisdom to be making laws for the whole state of Georgia.

That’s why I deferred to experience and — yes — age in supporting Dan Lakly. I still believe that, no matter how the runoff turned out.

*** In the debate about the future of the Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church site, one item may have been overlooked.

The church was the beneficiary, many years ago, of a virtual gift of that land from the city’s major developer. That was in keeping with the planned aspect of Peachtree City: Church sites on two of the four corners of what was then expected to be the city’s major intersection.

Church members who want to cash in on the value of that corner two decades later should recognize the debt the church owes to the founding vision of Peachtree City.

My opinion: Sell the church and property to a needful church if you must move.

That would be proper stewardship of that long-ago gift to a then-needful little church. And it would sustain the original vision that the city’s pioneers gave as a gift to all of us who live there.

*** Looks like the city councils of Fayetteville and Peachtree City are hell-bent on chewing up more low-density unincorporated land and spitting it out as high-density townhouses and commercial traffic-producers.

PTC just tabled a bad idea just to dress it up in nicer clothes later this month. They’re about to undo a ban on bringing in more undeveloped land into the city just so a developer can make more money off the parcels with PTC’s higher density zoning and coveted sewer service.

An annexation moratorium has been in place for many years. As bad as PTC traffic is, annexation would have made it so much worse.

Now, they are hungrily eyeing higher density and commercial development for west-side land that can never be more dense than a house on every two acres if the parcel remains in the unincorporated county. A court case has already decided that.

And, Mayor Steve Brown is pushing to turn little two-lane McDuff Parkway into an autobahn bypass for Coweta drivers, sending them by the tens of thousands through what are now sleepy residential neighborhoods in order to let the out-of-county drivers skip the 54-74 intersection.

Brown, once an opponent of annexation except through a citizen referendum, has gone over to the dark side and sees only higher tax dollar signs flashing from the developer.

At what price, mayor and council? At what price are you so willing to sell out your constituents?

Fayetteville, meanwhile, just keeps annexing and chomping away at the county. This time, it’s southwest of town on rural Redwine Road.

I think if the Fayetteville Council had its way, they would take it all, all the way to Peachtree City, all the way to Tyrone, all the way to Coweta County, all the way to Clayton County, all the way to Spalding County, all the way to Fulton County.

All for the greater glory of the Fayetteville Council and higher tax collections to pay for their visions of Greater Fayetteville.

We’re going to wake up one day and discover there’s no “county” left.

Is that what you want, folks?

Then why aren’t you doing something about it?