My family and I went to the Fayetteville Tree Lighting Ceremony last Saturday, and I wanted to say how much we enjoyed it. The Dickens characters were such a nice treat as they offered up Georgia “Chestnuts,” hot chocolate, etc. My daughters were especially smitten by Henry, the chimney sweep man, with his Cockney accent and his mischievous antics throughout the evening, such as pulling shillings from their ears. The weather was perfect, the acts were enjoyable, and the new Christmas tree is beautiful. A great way to start off the holiday season for us.

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To the actor who played “Henry” the Chimney Sweep at the Fayetteville Tree Lighting Festival on Saturday. You are very talented. And I appreciated how you entertained the kids while they waited in line for the carriage ride with Santa. It definitely made the time go by much quicker and with much more fun. I think my kids enjoyed watching you and all your trickery more than the carriage ride itself. You were so believable and adorable as an old-time Dickens character. My children thought you came straight from the Mary Poppins movie. Thank you for making a great time even greater.

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[About] the ex-mayor’s ridiculous letter last Wednesday regarding the DAPC/Tennis Center debacle: 1. People who commit “illegal” acts in the public eye involving serious amounts of money are typically either arrested or charged with a crime by the authorities. The fact is that not even one individual was ever criminally charged or arrested with anything in connection with this case. 2. If loans are taken out to improve a property which you and you alone own, and you allow those improvements to be made to your property, then you have to pay the money back. People don’t typically go around taking out loans to improve property which they don’t own, now do they? This would be rather pointless. 3. One may ask, “How much were these DAPC shysters being paid for their positions in this shady organization?” Answer: absolutely nothing; they were all volunteers doing their civic duty for their community, or so they thought. 4. The ex-mayor told us that the loans did not have to be paid back as they were illegal? Final result: PNB will be paid back in full on the outstanding balance of the loans minus about $100,000 to avoid litigation, according to the front page Citizen article. Not to mention the Group 6 and Foley settlement payments which will be made. How can this be? These are facts, not political rhetoric. This episode has finally been exposed for what it really was: A trumped up, unfounded smear campaign to take control of two public facilities by the consummate gadfly. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: as for the two primary culprits who were run out of town on a rail, where are they now? Reidsville? No, as a matter of fact, Virgil Christian is now one of the most prominent senior executives in the USTA nationally and Tate Godfrey is VP of a major development company in Alabama. Imagine that? Please do us all a favor from here on in: Just save it, please. Better yet, tell the story to your kids; they will believe you. Moral of the story: Never follow a blind fool into battle.

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My husband and I are completely baffled as to why the Peachtree City Council would settle on what looks to be a very bad deal for the taxpayers. We have a situation where the mayor says he did not know if he made the right decision. The decision to settle was not even a unanimous vote. You would think with so much indecision on paying back bad debts, the best choice would be to press on with the lawsuit. Ms. Rutherford came right out and said those loans were wrong and the city did nothing to stop them. The word “puppet” has been used in this section of the newspaper a lot, and until now we have always dismissed the term as a bad joke. However, when you look at who keeps winning on every big issue, it’s hard to be dismissive anymore. The cost of a million dollars combined with a great deal of indecision would normally lead most people to go back and do some more research. At the very least, they could have waited another week and thought about it. Not to sound sarcastic, but the mayor saying a million debt would not produce a tax increase down the road is kind of strange. We could not find in the newspaper where the money was coming from. It would be nice if we could get some answers. And while I do not have a clear understanding of the changes Steve Brown said the Peachtree City Council made early in the year, it sounds like things need to be changed back. For goodness sake, we do not need to find ourselves in another disaster like this one ever again. Maybe the Peachtree City Council should have another vote on the settlement.

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When I read in the paper that Mayor Logsdon made a bunch of concessions to Pathway for their TDK land, it made me really angry. Now we’ve got another payoff for the old development authority guys. These guys have no more integrity and decency than Bill Campbell did in Atlanta. They can’t tell the truth and they don’t care about the little homeowners. They ought to try living in PTC on a fixed income and reading articles in the newspaper every week about how the local government is wasting money. Steve Brown brought up an excellent point on guaranteeing accountability from authorities. The City Council removed the accountability. Mayor Logsdon dodged the accountability issue at the meeting by saying, “There is heightened awareness right now.” Personally, I’ve got a heightened awareness that things went terribly wrong in the past. I’ve also got a heightened awareness that things can go horribly wrong in the future. Wise up and put a member of council on the authorities already.

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While I might not employ the incendiary rhetoric that has elevated online blogger Git Real to near pop icon status, I agree with his conclusions over the PTC Tennis debacle, resulting in a budget hike of more than $1 million. The facts back up what he said. Congratulations on your first foray into PTC politics. What we have witnessed is a fairly substantial abdication of duty by the mayor and Council. They chose not to submit the dispute to a referendum. They chose not to submit the dispute to a jury. If you examine the four-paragraph press release sent by PTC mayor to the newspaper the afternoon before Thanksgiving (as I did) you will see that City Hall attached 142 pages of complicated legal documents apparently fully negotiated and resolved in advance. Years of negotiation, stacks of legal documents and no public input and no public hearings. All the taxpayer got was a special called dinner-hour meeting to tell us, “You will now be paying $10,000 a month for 10 years.” The City Hall documents (withheld until Thanksgiving eve) included full construction contracts (p. 21); negotiated dollar amount settlements (Group VI, $180,195, p.7; Peachtree National Bank, $714,000 p. 45, etc.); a bond financing company pre-approved, p. 133 and yet nothing to the public until the last-minute deal was announced. How can it be that separate law firms from Newnan, Peachtree City, Stockbridge, Union City and two from Atlanta know all about this deal and the taxpayers be told nothing until the day before Thanksgiving for a special meeting? And no, Skyspy, this is not the end. We can expect much more of the same. When Mayor Logsdon said that “Thanksgiving got in the way,” what he meant was that nothing — not public service or honor or values of any kind — would get in the way of his serving special interests.

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The city council’s brilliant solution was to sell our tennis center and amphitheater for a pittance to the development authority and then buy it back for one million bucks to reimburse the advances from Peachtree National Bank. We’re paying for the same assets twice. What a terrific rip-off for the local taxpayers. Why didn’t they just pursue the lawsuit and save us a fortune? Who is the city council working for anyway?

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No tax increase, my fanny. Harold Logsdon’s promise of no tax increase for the $950,000 bailout for the development authority bums is pure smoke. Does anybody really believe that? Does anyone believe anything the guy says anymore? Where is that money going to come from? Get real.

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The Peachtree National Bank had no lien on the amphitheater or the Tennis Center in Peachtree City, for the million-plus dollars it loaned them. They had a pledge from a development authority, who was independent of the city council, for some taxes the authority was supposed to collect from the city. This authority, by state law, could not run such a venture legally. Local lawyers must have told them it would be all right, I suppose, I don’t know. This has been pointed out here before but it hasn’t seemed to matter, due to a “moral obligation” to bail out the bank’s bad loan. The bank being loaded with interested parties from all participants. Banks take cars and homes every day for lack of payment on property, without a lawsuit. The bank knew all that and so did its officers and board members. After all, it was over a million dollars. I don’t know why bank examiners didn’t catch such a loan earlier. These types of deals between men, and lately women, is a matter of course. The city wisely distanced itself from the illegal business dealings of the authority, not to avoid payment, but as the right thing to do. The city was not responsible. Why the current mayor and council, less one, would say if they could see it and feel it they owed it. They didn’t, it wasn’t their money.

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The growing number of irrational decisions coming out of City Hall is absolutely mind-numbing. Homeowners and businesses are going to be beaten into paying back Peachtree National Bank for someone else’s bad debt. I am tired of the excuses for why things can’t get done because, supposedly, there aren’t enough funds, but they decide to spend a million bucks on the authority’s outrageous antics. Harold Logsdon needs to grow a backbone and get the four mindless councilmen to put that debt up for a vote of the citizens on a public referendum. The mismanagement of our tax dollars has gone far enough. Let the taxpayers decide. Let us vote!

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Seems there’s a local high school teacher from New York City/Who of late has gotten things all in a tizzy./She came here to help teach our kids to sing,/But brought disharmony, an awful ring. She has turned out downright mean!/She calls our kids Georgia hicks/I wonder what gives her such tics?/She should be cautioned about her wails/For some Georgians still know how to ride Yanks out on rails./Oh, how we long for the days of Green!

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To the person who wrote to “Free Speech” about the new runway at Hartsfield International Airport causing departing planes to fly over Peachtree City: Where have you been? I have lived in Peachtree City since 1989 and when I moved here flights departing Hartsfield and heading south have always flown over the city. They follow Ga. Highway 85 south for some distance before being turned on their final heading to their destination. I am retired from a major airline and worked at Hartsfield and the planes sure don’t bother me or anyone else I know. This is the normal pattern for flights departing Hartsfield.

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To the family suing PTC over their son’s accident on the pathways: Sad to say, but this tragedy probably wouldn’t have happened had your son had followed the rules of “stop, look and listen.” The fact that he was injured but, thank heavens, not killed, indicates that the driver was at a safe speed and that your son would have had plenty of time to see this car coming had he looked before crossing. There’s plenty of straight road around that intersection to clear for cars before crossing. I also hope that your son was walking his bike across the intersection as you should have taught him. The individual must ultimately take responsibility for his actions although greedy trial lawyers have absolved accident victims of this fundamental. Realize that a suit against our city will cost us all with restrictions and even higher taxes so that your lawyer can stuff close to half of the settlement into his pockets. As for our city: One of my neighbor’s children wrote PTC about placing a stop sign on a new pathway near my neighborhood where it spills into a street. The city responded immediately by installing not only a stop sign but a painted “stop” warning in the pavement. Accidents will happen and the city can only do so much to prevent them. Nothing can be made 100 percent safe, ever. Your son has fortunately survived to learn a valuable lesson. Don’t sue your neighbors to line your pockets and those of your attorney.

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I see that law enforcement officials still do not believe they should adhere to the posted speed limits. Tuesday afternoon we were driving on Tyrone Road east of Ga. Highway 74. The posted speed limit is 35 mph until you exit Tyrone and then it is 40 mph. I noticed an unmarked law enforcement vehicle behind me so I made sure I did not exceed the posted limit. All of a sudden the blue lights came on so I looked for a safe shoulder to pull over. As I moved to the right, he passed me and turned off his blue lights. He did not appear to be going anywhere special, he just did not want to poke along at the 35 or 40 mph posted speed limit. Same ol’ same ol’ “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is another reason why people do not trust or respect law enforcement and/or public officials.

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A word of advice and caution to the good citizens of Fayette County. If you approach an officer of either the Peachtree City or Fayetteville police department for advice or assistance, be prepared to defend yourself. I did and to my dismay they turned on me and attempted to fabricate a reason to charge me with something. I had heard similar stories from others and I didn’t believe it until it happened to me. As a retired law enforcement officer myself with 40 years of service, I am disgusted with this bully boy attitude displayed by our local police. That is not professional law enforcement, folks.

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I do not understand why certain people feel the need to refer to the residents of Peachtree City as being snobs. We must be doing something right because PTC does maintain the highest test scores in the state of Georgia, we have very low crime rates, and the schools here are always filled with parents that volunteer their time. Many of the residents here work very hard to maintain their homes. We are not a bunch of snobs as so many may think. I live here because I like the golf cart paths, excellent schools, and this is a family-oriented city. People live here because they do not have to worry about being flooded by crime, or because they feel it is a great city to raise children. There are not too many Confederate flags flying or two to three cars in a driveway that do not work, but because I chose not to live in a community that might have those things doesn’t mean I am a snob. I would like to know how many people that write these opinions about PTC have actually lived here. It is sad that because the families that live here take pride in their homes, schools, and city that it is looked down upon. Residents that live here work hard, care for their homes, and are involved with their children’s schools. They are also involved with their city and decisions that are made regarding it. It is unfortunate that some people cannot realize what PTC has to offer, instead hold so much hostility toward it.

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I’m amazed at the number of people who missed school on the days when contractions were taught. “They are” is “They’re,” not “There” or even “Their.” “You are” is “You’re,” not “Your.” If schools still do rainy/snow-day indoors energy activities, how about the students gathering the two words and team-racing to the appropriate matching contraction?

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Gift idea that is low in cost and priceless in value. Make a sandpaper alphabet (pattern in “Teaching Montessori In The Home”) and give it to your pre-school family member. Helping a child crack the code to reading will resonate throughout that child’s life.

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Let’s get this straight. Yes, immigrants do serve in the military, and many thanks to all who serve. But only about 5 percent of the military is immigrant and immigrants are 11.5 percent of our total population, so they are under-represented, not over-represented, as most news stories imply.

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Massive illegal immigration is the major *social issue of our time (*Substitute educational, environmental, economic, political and you will still be correct.).

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The Victorian era primly replaced references to arms and legs with “limbs.” Today’s prim opinion-cleansers replace illegal alien with “undocumented workers.” ”Limb” didn’t fool anyone back then, and neither does “undocumented” today.

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Patrick Henry’s famous “Liberty or Death” speech should rattle each of us out of our comfortable complacency: “The battle is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

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How humbling. How comforting. How inspiring to know that the intellect that created a world so complex that our greatest minds must specialize in order to barely understand a tiny part of His creation is combined with an ability to love and forgive that transcends human understanding.