Wednesday, Mar. 2, 2005 | ||
Bad Links? | Teacher calendars, Filenes Basement annexationBy CAL BEVERLY So, all us parents are jumping through hoops on vacation schedules so a few teachers can conveniently schedule post-graduate college courses that lead to automatic pay raises? At least the real reason is out in the open now. Early school starts are not primarily for the good of the students. The calendar is being gamed so teachers can get raises. All the other stuff is just rationalizations and smokescreens. Since local control works against taxpayers and parents in calendar matters, no wonder the state legislature feels compelled to slap the school boards up-side the head to get their attention. Some school boards worry more about keeping the help happy than about keeping the taxpayers, the customers, happy. Youve got it backwards, guys. Attention, Fayette County Board of Education: 20,000 kids and double that many parents and caregivers and grandparents deserve a little more of your calendar consideration, since we pay the bills. Lets talk profit in the Peachtree City West Village annexation. John Wieland Homes will make a tidy profit if it builds one house on every two acres it owns in the unincorporated area north of Peachtree City. It will make, oh, so much more profit on the 360 or so houses it now proposes to build in the revised annexation request. But, the revised request knocks out amenities and limits its attention to building a MacDuff Parkway extension, probably two lanes only, across an at-grade crossing at the cable TV tower in Kedron. Far from being handed a treasure, Peachtree City would be getting ripped off by this economy-sized annexation. One knowledgeable source estimates a Peachtree City address would add at least $30,000 net profit to each Wieland house. Thats in addition to an already tidy profit built in to Wielands projects for each home. Lets see: Thats an extra nearly $11 million in profit just for being inside the city limits. And the developer now wants to bring in this prime land in a Filenes Basement annexation? With no developer-built fire station? No developer-built senior center? A two-lane street to carry tens of thousands of vehicles daily cutting through residential neighborhoods to and from Coweta County? The PTC Council would have to be barnyard rubes stumbling down the carnival midway to fall for this Mayor Steve Brown-sponsored shell game. Residential annexation almost always is a losing proposition for the annexing city. The rule of thumb is for every one dollar in taxes collected from homeowners, a city will spend three dollars in services. Development fees only disguise the long-term pain. An industrial development reverses those figures: three dollars collected in taxes for every dollar spent on city services. The conclusion is plain: PTC goes into the hole by bringing into the city any more houses. Leave them out in the county, a lot fewer of them on two-acre lots, where the developer will still make money and all county taxpayers, not just those inside Peachtree City, will pick up the tab for the new services required.
Lets talk profit in the Peachtree City West Village annexation. John Wieland Homes will make a tidy profit if it builds one house on every two acres it owns in the unincorporated area north of Peachtree City. It will make, oh, so much more profit on the 360 or so houses it now proposes to build in the revised annexation request. But, the revised request knocks out amenities and limits its attention to building a MacDuff Parkway extension, probably two lanes only, across an at-grade crossing at the cable TV tower in Kedron. Far from being handed a treasure, Peachtree City would be getting ripped off by this economy-sized annexation. One knowledgeable source estimates a Peachtree City address would add at least $30,000 net profit to each Wieland house. Thats in addition to an already tidy profit built in to Wielands projects for each home. Lets see: Thats an extra nearly $11 million in profit just for being inside the city limits. And the developer now wants to bring in this prime land in a Filenes Basement annexation? With no developer-built fire station? No developer-built senior center? A two-lane street to carry tens of thousands of vehicles daily cutting through residential neighborhoods to and from Coweta County? The PTC Council would have to be barnyard rubes stumbling down the carnival midway to fall for this Mayor Steve Brown-sponsored shell game. Residential annexation almost always is a losing proposition for the annexing city. The rule of thumb is for every one dollar in taxes collected from homeowners, a city will spend three dollars in services. Development fees only disguise the long-term pain. An industrial development reverses those figures: three dollars collected in taxes for every dollar spent on city services. The conclusion is plain: PTC goes into the hole by bringing into the city any more houses. Leave them out in the county, a lot fewer of them on two-acre lots, where the developer will still make money and all county taxpayers, not just those inside Peachtree City, will pick up the tab for the new services required. |
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