Friday, June 10, 2005

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Second round of applicants sought

PTC needs to fill DAPC, Planning Commission vacancies

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Apparently, volunteers in Peachtree City are getting a little harder to come by.

With just one application received for the city’s Development Authority and none for its Planning Commission, city officials were forced to extend the due date for applications recently.

This is an odd occurrence for Peachtree City, as many council members have previously noted how difficult it can be to choose from the number of well-qualified persons who normally apply for such positions.

City spokeswoman Betsy Tyler said she didn’t know why there were so few applicants for these positions.

“I don’t know, because we have a large number of very talented people in our community,” Tyler said.

The deadline to apply for the Development Authority position is now 5 p.m. Friday, June 17, and the deadline for the Planning Commission position is now 5 p.m. Friday, June 24. The positions are non-paying and applicants must have lived in Peachtree City for at least six months.

Applications are available at City Hall.

Typically, the council relies on the recommendation of the selection committee, which consists of the city manager, Mayor Steve Brown, another council member and the chairman of the particular commission or authority with the pending vacant seat.

Because these appointments routinely lack contention, they are placed on the council’s consent agenda for action, meaning they are lumped in with other “slam dunk” items that will need little if any explanation from staff. But at a March council meeting, councilman Steve Rapson had the appointment to the Airport Authority pulled off the agenda because he felt the committee was short-sighted in passing over Hollis Harris, the founder of World Airways, for a seat on the authority.

Brown explained that Harris had other obligations which would cause difficulty with meeting attendance, but Rapson said someone with Harris’ experience deserved further consideration. Councilman Murray Weed noted at the time that he concurred with Rapson’s opinion on the issue.

Some may be skittish to serve on the Development Authority simply because of its legal difficulties. The authority has been sued by Peachtree National Bank for unpaid loans and by Group VI and Foley Design Group for unpaid bills from the latest expansion of the tennis center.

None of the current authority members were on board when those loans and obligations were incurred, but they are now fighting those legal battles that were the result of the authority relinquishing its management of the tennis center and amphitheater in January 2003. The city is also named as a defendant in both of those lawsuits.