Peachtree City Mayor Bob Lenox made crystal clear his position on certain points regarding the city's sewer policy, specifically in response to questions raised in a recent editorial by the publisher of the Peachtree Citizen Review and the Coweta Citizen Review.

Publisher Cal Beverly stated in his column in the April 23 edition that the City Council, and Lenox in particular, made a "pledge" when the city acquired the sewer system never to extend its services beyond the city limits in the future.

The column was motivated in part by actions at the April 15 City Council meeting, where Water and Sewerage Authority director Larry Turner informed the council of Senoia's desire to discuss the possibility of purchasing sewer service from Peachtree City.

Councilwoman Annie McMenamin asked if the council had not promised its residents to never make such a move. Neither Lenox nor the other council members responded to that question during the meeting, and McMenamin asked that the minutes from the relevant meetings be checked out.

Lenox said last week in an interview with The Citizen that the minutes were pulled from the public meetings where the issue was discussed, and there was never any such commitment. He added that a copy of the minutes were being sent to Beverly so that he could review them.

"What we said was we'd have to be very careful about doing so, and that decision had to be reserved to the City Council and not the Water and Sewerage Authority, because it's essentially a political decision," said Lenox. "My only answer is, factually, I never said that, and secondarily, we're doing exactly what I said we'd do if the question ever came up."

On that point, some of Beverly's comments seem to back up what Lenox said. According to his column, in a press conference announcing the sewer service acquisition, "Lenox answered that he couldn't imagine a situation where the city would ever want to sell its sewer service beyond city residents. In fact, Lenox emphasized, the water and sewer authority couldn't even talk with anybody else about such a subject without getting permission first from the city council."

That statement, while not a firm commitment one way or the other, is one that Lenox acknowledges he could very well have said in a forum other than an actual City Council meeting.

"When we did the public hearings, those were of extreme importance a $27 million investment and we were being real careful what we said and promised people," said Lenox. "When Annie raised that question, I went, 'What? I never said that.' I couldn't imagine I ever would have said that.

"Whether I said at a press conference or in a conversation somewhere else, 'We'll probably never extend sewer service outside the city and I can't imagine why we'd want to' could I have said that? Yeah, I could have said it."

As for the issue of whether to make a deal with Senoia, Lenox said the city doesn't currently have a position either way, but that decision cannot be made without gathering all of the facts.

Senoia is requesting approximately 300,000 gallons of sewer capacity per day, which "in the cosmic scheme of things, is not an enormous amount," Lenox said. According to Turner's comments at the City Council meeting, Peachtree City will have a capacity of four or five million gallons in a few years.

"But they've [Senoia] got some serious problems in the downtown area," said Lenox. "They know they've got a little jewel there downtown if they treat it properly, so they would like to grow that downtown area a little bit. I thought that was worth talking about."