Friday, May 27, 2005

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Brown ready to run again

Wants to see ‘vital’ road projects, others finished

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

It’s official: Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown will run for re-election.

Brown made the announcement Wednesday, saying he ultimately decided against running for a seat on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners because it would have required him to “take a year off” due to the difference in election cycles.

Plus, Brown added, there’s still much to be done in Peachtree City, and he’d like to help facilitate that, he said in an interview Thursday morning. The two biggest transportation projects, as Brown sees it, are the realignment of Rockaway Road, which leads into Senoia, and the extension of MacDuff Parkway all the way to Ga. Highway 74.

“Those are vital projects,” Brown said.

But instead of using city funds, Brown is hoping to lure developers to the table — such as John Wieland Homes in the case of the proposed annexation plan for the west side of the city — who can develop vacant land and make the projects happen. Brown wants to make sure, however, that those developments won’t have a significant impact on the county’s school system.

Brown’s goal is to take the city funds that would be used for those road projects and divert them to other important projects such as the construction of restrooms at city parks.

Brown said the city has more money allocated for road and cart path improvements over the next 10 years than all government agencies have had put together. The $77 million includes funds from the county-wide Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for transportation projects approved back in November.

Although Brown and the current council have been criticized for the handling of the project to extend TDK Boulevard into Coweta County, he noted that there were problems with the initial road alignment that happened before he took office in 2002. The road had to be realigned to accommodate the spillway for the proposed Lake McIntosh reservoir, and most of the project with the exception of the bridge over Line Creek has been engineered “since before I took office,” Brown said.

TDK and the bridge over Line Creek will feature room for golf carts, and the developer who owns land on the other side in Coweta has committed to using multi-use paths, virtually extending the city’s expansive golf cart path system across the county line, Brown said. That gives the path system more of a regional feel ... which could help reel in grant funds for the path system, he added.

Brown pointed out the financial difficulties faced by council when he first took office Jan. 1, 2002. The economy was having a high degree of difficulty due to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. It was made tougher by the 12 new employees added the previous year and an additional $754,000 in raises and benefits while rolling back the millage rate to avoid a tax increase.

The result? “We had to slash the budget,” Brown said.

Out was the $350,000 expansion of The Gathering Place, the city’s senior citizens center. Gone was the paving of the parking lot at the Meade softball complex. The council contingency fund was cut from $750,000 to $150,000.

Now, with the economy back on an upturn and the city’s financial reserves being healthy, some of those projects are going to get done, Brown said.

Brown is quite proud of his track record in running council meetings, making sure that the issues are well discussed, even if that means the meetings run a bit longer than they might have. He specifically pointed to the end result on the Target development, with changes to accommodate the wishes of area neighborhoods, and the meetings to develop the city’s current indoor smoking ban as specific examples of hot button issues that were resolved well in the end after hashing out the issues.

On most all occasions, the mayor has tended to be quite lenient and at times inviting when it comes to allowing citizen input during council meetings ... even when the matter is not during a “public hearing,” Brown said.

The one diversion from that informal policy of Brown’s came after a council meeting that featured numerous complaints from members and users of the city’s tennis center. Brown cut off then-Chamber Mike Hofrichter, noting that the ground he wanted to cover was done so in the previous council meeting.

The mayor also makes a significant effort not to turn down any meeting requests from groups or individuals unless he has a previous scheduling conflict, he said. Doing that has made the job full-time, Brown acknowledges, even though the pay of $9,000 a year is certainly part-time.

“I’ve had a lot of people tell me they feel they actually have somebody who represents them,” Brown noted.

Brown is also pleased with the city’s track record on getting youths and senior citizens involved, along with everyone in-between. He specifically pointed to the good work of the city’s senior adult council and youth council. The youth council has done a variety of community projects and recently hosted an enjoyable dodgeball tournament, Brown noted. The senior adult council was instrumental in getting state legislation passed for a homestead property tax exemption for low-income seniors, legislation recently signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, Brown added.

State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh also helped Brown and the city when Panasonic, the county’s largest employer, complained that it needed a traffic light at its employee entrance on Ga. Highway 74. It took about six months or more, but the project got done, Brown noted.

Although Brown has been criticized about annexation issues, he noted that he was the one who fought strongly for language in a bill passed last year that allows counties to file objections if they want to oppose cities’ annexation attempts.