The citizens of Tyrone have a decision to make. Four years ago Grace Caldwell was elected to the Tyrone Town Council after waging a campaign of misinformation, half-truths, and outright fabrications. Grace Caldwell promised: "strategic planning and thoughtful decisions with citizen input" (Citizen 11/01/05); "Enforce the land use plan", "Balance the growth of Tyrone", and "insure the citizens have input on important issues" (Citizen 10/18/05); "We’ve got to have a traffic plan", and "We need a planner to help our staff"(Citizen 11/14/05). The major rallying cry of Grace’s 2005 election campaign was "Save Shamrock Park". She promised the citizens that if elected Shamrock Park would be a priority for improvements. For two years Grace kept up this rallying cry claiming that although she wanted to make improvements to Shamrock Park she was being blocked by the Mayor and other two council members. In 2007 the voters of Tyrone gave Grace what she wanted and elected the majority of the candidates Grace backed to the position of Mayor and Council member (a 4-1 majority).

Now that the new council has one year under their belt (they started holding secrete meetings in November and offering jobs to their hand selected applicants before January, yes there is proof of it, the mayor wrote letters) lets look at the “improvement” the voters got:

Tyrone’s Council apparently is afraid of the citizens they represent. Why else would they refuse to post minutes of their meetings.

Don Rehwald is still missing, where did he go?
Last year to council meetings he certainly did go
He would get up and always would vent

Don Rehwaldt is missing, where did he go?
Last year to council meetings he certainly did go
Always with a tale of woe.

Now that Grace Caldwell has gotten rid of all the old management staff you can bet her and her henchman Mary Sterm will discover a “secrete” cache of money (reserve fund) to balance the budget and not have to raise taxes.

Councilwoman Grace Caldwell apparently wants Tyrone to be the resting place for discards from Fayette County. First she masterminded the ouster of the previous town manager to be replace with the discarded former county manager Chris Venice at a much higher salary.

If you have not heard Grace “the wicked witch of the west” Caldwell now has the Mayors ruby red slippers. Don “the if I had a brain scarecrow” Rehwaldt quickly handed them over during a council meeting (one of the public ones) when Grace lit her broomstick and waved it in his face (he now trembles in fear at the sight of her).

Driving through Tyrone on 74 this weekend it was apparent that the new council has repealed their sign ordinance (must have been at one of their secret meetings); it looked awful.

According to the Tyrone web site there was a major upgrade on April 11. Now you can not download anything. Guess that

Chris Venice, Town manager is quoted in this newspaper that “the Council gave its approval to have the soil at nearby Shamrock Park tested … for septic drain lines.” However, if you check the Council Agenda’s and Minutes that are available for the “citizens” to see there is no mention of this subject or the council approval.

It is very disheartening to have someone as immature as Grace Caldwell representing Tyrone citizens. At the last Council meeting one of the Town Attorney’s, Dennis Davenport informed the Council about an advertising issue with the proposed charter changes.

In the Saturday edition of The Citizen John Munford reports that Peachtree City has experienced an 8.5% decline in sales tax revenue so far this year; Ben Nelms reports that in Tyrone Chris Venice stated that the SPLOST (special purpose local option sales tax) revenue is only down 3%. How can one municipality experience almost a three-fold decrease in their share of the total sales tax revenue over the other when their respective shares of sales tax revenue is a fixed percentage of the same total revenue amount? It appears that someone is trying to paint a rosy financial picture to their council, wonder why? Or is it simply that they are not smarter than a fifth grader.

In January a new Mayor and Council took over in Tyrone. The first order of business was to fire the Town Manager and hire their person as manager.

For the past several years Tyrone has been referred to as Mayberry complete with Aunt Bee as Mayor, Barney as Manager, and Thelma Lou as his assistant.

The new council has made their choices for Planning Commission:
Gordon Shenkle – the council candidate that the citizens rejected (Gloria thought you just wanted to do what the people wanted)