Wednesday, June 1, 2005 | ||
Bad Links? | Fville, Tyrone councils roll over for developersBy CAL BEVERLY For sale: Council members. Wave road-paving money in front of all Fayetteville and some Tyrone and Peachtree City elected officials, and they lie down and roll over for the developers. (This is a family newspaper. You take that analogy to whatever lengths or depths you think may be warranted.) That is precisely what has happened in Fayettevilles recent annexation and rezoning. Tyrones 3-to-2 rollover for John Wieland Homes last month also initially involved a Sandy Creek Road extension, later omitted. Fayetteville sold out their constituents for some developer-laid blacktop. Tyrone just sold out. In Peachtree City, Mayor Steve Brown seems predisposed to lie down and roll over for whatever developer comes along who promises to pave a road or realign an intersection. Thats happened at least twice in the past year or so. In Fayetteville, the southside annexation request came wrapped in a road ribbon: The developer will pay for a fifth of a mile of a proposed East Fayetteville bypass. That was enough to buy the Fayetteville Council, never known to say No to many developers. In Tyrone, Mayor Sheryl Lee just flat reversed her election platform of last fall. She and Mike Smola and Paul Letourneau (forever after to be known as the turnover) voted for half-acre lots and expanded the use of the Fairburn sewer line. This was after election promises of lower density and hometown conservation. All that road paving could (or should) be paid for with SPLOST funds now being collected. Does this for-sale-to-developer process stink, or is that just my hyper-extended nose? Whats ahead in Peachtree City is no prettier. The current mayor and one of his announced contenders, Harold Logsdon, both agree that annexing the West Village is necessary to get MacDuff Parkway paved. At the developers expense. Leave aside the firmly fixed fact that Peachtree Citians have historically abhorred big annexations (check back five years for the most recent overwhelming negative). The goodies offered by developers come at a high price to the residents, long after the developer has made his profit and moved on. Whatever happened to the American notion that one of governments primary reasons for existence is to pay for paving and maintaining good roads? Thats a large part of what we pay taxes for. Roads come before ball fields and tennis courts and flamingo amphitheaters. Public safety, then roads. Its really that simple. Annexing and rezoning mean buying all the added grief of denser residential and commercial development with the added traffic and school crowding issues that come with it. If we want an extended MacDuff Parkway, let the PTC Council have the guts to sell the idea to the taxpayers and then levy a tax to pay for it. Up or down, yes or no. Fayetteville, with its arrogant, autocratic board of ruling royals, its thunderous silence in the face of police department scandals, and its practice of after-hours drinking with the developers, is way overdue for a housecleaning. Three slots are up this summer. No council makes a better case for term limits than the Fayetteville Council. Wake up, Fayetteville voters. Tyrone will have to wait another year to tell its mayor and rollover councilmen what the voters think of developer welfare. Peachtree City faces poor choices in the mayors race. Where are the candidates who will speak for the 10-year resident of Peachtree City, the 15-year resident, the 20-year resident? They all either got here yesterday or act like it. Where is the mayoral candidate who will stand strong and tall for the average Peachtree City homeowner and against the rollovers favoring developer welfare, higher density, unwanted annexations? Who will protect our neighborhoods from encroaching redevelopment and get-along-go-along approaches to developers? Where is somebody with both guts and grace to stand firm as mayor on behalf of the silent majority of Peachtree City, who is neither a rollover nor an attack dog? He or she hasnt announced yet. |
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