I just wanted to let the Fayette County High School Marching Tigers know what an honor it was to see them in the Rose Bowl Parade. You make the city proud!

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In defense of the Bard: Oh, indeed the yeoman editor and publisher of the Fayette Citizen is indeed merely mortal. However, his use of the term “X-mas” to denote the birthday of Jesus Christ (in connection with the Tyrone parade (“Tyrone X-mas Parade: Idea not the brightest”) is entirely justifiable. The term X-mas adorns and cherishes the memory of Christ. It simply uses the letter X from the Greek alphabet and not the X from our alphabet. The Greek letter “chi” is shown by a letter similar to the letter X in the modern Roman alphabet. In fact, “Xian” is also sometimes used as an abbreviation of the word Christian. The use of Xmas actually predates the Bard’s dictionary date of 1551 since uses by the Gnostic Christians (Greek influenced) can be found at the turn of the 11th century. Don’t believe me? Check out “Urban Legends,” etc. As to the parade, well, I must agree with the observations of Ms. Baldwin. I cannot imagine that the very competent police department of Tyrone enjoyed this night. And when you consider the success that Tyrone enjoys each year with its Founders Day parade, one would think that the successful script would be deployed. Light a Christmas tree after dark, yes, but I agree with Ms. Baldwin — unless it’s the Electric City parade at Disney, a nighttime parade is of questionable judgment.

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To the residents of North Coven neighborhood in Peachtree City: Thank you for your beautiful Christmas decorations. There were delightfully enjoyable.

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Thanks to all that were so generous to their lawn service provider this Christmas season. Greatly appreciated!

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To some of the ladies who have recently moved to Tyrone: You might want to save those fluffy bedroom slippers for your “at home” wear, NOT the local Publix.

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Wife to husband: “Did you see what Jane’s husband gave her for Christmas?” Husband to wife: “Did you see that I did not give you a big credit card bill that will take a year of scrimping to pay?” Wife to husband: “Thank you!”

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I would like to thank the person who found my credit card in the parking lot of the Fayette Presbyterian Church and notified the credit card company. What a wonderful Christmas present you gave me. May God bless you for that act of kindness and honesty.

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Free Speech without responsibility, ethics, honesty? “The Citizen” encourages people to sound off, but says nothing about free speech being responsible speech. “No signature required. No personal attacks on private persons, but just about any aspect of public life is fair game.” Fayette County High School is my high school. No, I don’t attend, but a member of my family recently graduated from FCHS, and another member of my family teaches and coaches there. I live in Fayette County, I live in FCHS district. I am proud of the school, all its programs, its ranking scholastically in the state and nation. The football program has been less then hoped for the past four years; heck, for the last 47 years. FCHS is NOT a football powerhouse. Won/loss record since 1960 is 210-257-9. But I know a staff of people who believe FCHS can and will become “all that it can be,” and are committed to making that a reality. Head Coach Tommy Webb came to FCHS with a 25 to 16 won/loss record as head coach; his offensive coordinator this year, Allen Duff, brings a career record of 80 wins against 27 losses. Other members of the coaching staff have similar records. Agreed, the past four years have been disappointing, at best; but Coach Webb has added Coach Duff and Coach Prosser to his already able staff. A strong football program is more then coaches alone. It is school and community, parents, teachers, students,coaches, school staff. It is hard work, honor, integrity; character traits you won’t find amongst anonymous back-biters attacking the school, the principal and the coaches; unnamed sources quoting unnamed sources in media encouraging just such behavior.

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To the parents of FCHS football program and the players. Remember, your parental predecessors pressured FCHS and FCBOE into getting rid of Coach Burton, an excellent coach. The same staff and board went outside the county and hired a coach from another county. They overlooked a very good defensive coordinator who is now successful at a south Fayette County school and an excellent offensive coordinator who is now over in another county and others to give job to someone from outside our system. Same scenario for McIntosh High School. How is that working out? SCHS, SMHS and WHS all have excellent head coaches and very sound assistant coaches on their staffs. Check the records and playoff accomplishments and see how that is working out.

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If you cut out Peachtree City from the map and then attached arms, legs and a head the last school redistricting would resemble a lobotomy.

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Can you feel the desperation from the Direct PAC guys? You gotta love the way they are abandoning their Mayor Logsdon, still trying desperately to justify TDK, and doing everything humanly possible to get the townsfolk not to believe Steve Brown. Their argument is it’s hopeless and there’s nothing we can do. It appears that killing the road does, in fact, give us some control. Steve Brown’s points are very good. Not surprisingly, none of the DirectPAC guys try to counter any of his arguments. They’re hedging now by saying Steve Brown has had some good ideas. Forget it guys, you couldn’t look objective if tried with all your might. It now appears the traffic model for the SPLOST was broken really bad. Steve Brown was right about the road being advertised as a traffic reliever being a huge lie. The only counter the DirectPAC crowd has is “build it anyway” and their famous line “roads are good” so who cares what we promised before. I’d like to know why Doug Warner’s name comes up in nearly every scandal. Many on the Web site are saying that Doug Warner planted the clause in the contract without anyone knowing it. This reminds me of our dirty Congress sneaking graft into omnibus bills. The DirectPAC keeps lifting the DAPC guys up on his homemade pedestal. They keep talking about the DAPC guys taking great “risks” on behalf of the city. Please tell us exactly what those risks were? We would all love to know! The one million dollar payoff seems to have put all the risk on taxpayers. We are getting shafted in a big way, and the developer crowd is trying to eke out a victory against the facts, traffic engineering reports and our wishes.

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So the avalanche continues to fall on our heads. The questionable developments of the Logsdon era vs. our quality of life debate continue. More big box stores on Hwy. 54 west? A new big box on Hwy. 74 south? TDK, the road to gridlock, is moving right along too. Peachtree City now has the reputation of the community that will do anything for a fast buck. Oh, yeah, the DirectPAC developer crowd says Mayor Logsdon is doing nothing illegal, and he has a free hand to do as he pleases with these destructive proposals. What about the good of the community? What about our quality of life? Mayor Logsdon and his city council’s legacy will be remembered as the time we reached the tipping point and fell to the other side of fence. His questionable, massive developments bring all their woes. Serious crime rises to new levels and never goes down. Employee morale falls and unions follow. Traffic begins to squeeze the life out of our families and our activities. The smooth Mayor Logsdon has shown us his jagged edges. Lies and deceit are the rule of the day. Promises are made in passing and dismissed on a whim. Secret meetings are announced on a moment’s notice. We are like the snow ball rolling down the hill heading to hell. I’m not sure if there’s any turning back at this point.

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How do we impeach our mayor? I think it is time to do some serious investigation into the actions of Mayor Logsdon and other Peachtree City Council members. There is more than enough evidence to suggest some very serious improprieties actions being taken by Mayor Logsdon and other council members. How do we impeach a mayor? The back room politics revolving around the TDK Extension must be stopped. Come on, Peachtree City, let’s get rid of this guy before it is too late.

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Look over the Logsdon/DirectPAC claims and see how really lame they are compared to reality. First, they always say there’s nothing we can do about the new oversized developments and big box stores. Foolishly, they try to convince the intelligent people here that there’s some force, greater than gravity itself, which we can’t resist, pushing us to rezone property to dramatically higher densities, add more and more big box stores and build roads to encourage development and traffic in the neighboring county. They have no control. Second, they want you to believe all massive development is good. Forget about the previous 50 years of turning an 80,000 population plan into a population of 32,000, less dense community that works well. No, they say our previous decades of experience were totally wrong. The mayor and his PAC friends want you to believe we have no options and that the planned community model is completely obsolete. They are trying to convince a community full of good people who know better that doubling the number of cars on the our roads won’t have a negative influence on our city.

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I nearly hit the floor when someone told me the Peachtree City Council did not perform a professional audit before shelling out nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer funds for the development authority fiasco. How could any sane human being agree to blindly pay that kind of money without an audit? You have to know the whole deal was crooked if they were afraid to see what an audit would turn up. The year 2006 was cruel joke in Peachtree City.

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Good litmus test for the leadership of Peachtree City coming up. What can only be described as a mammoth big box project planned for Hwy. 74 south. Two huge stores and 1,300 parking spaces literally across the street from a residential area. In addition, it’s a stone’s throw from three schools, a day care center, and our soccer/baseball complex. As this paper reported, the gang at City Hall has already begun breathlessly pretending to put up token traffic impact studies (did I mention 1,300 parking spaces?) resistance before pulling out their overused rubber stamp. We’ll need to widen Holly Grove Road to four lanes if this is approved and further endanger the citizens living there. Mayor and City Council, you all know where your constituents stand, so for once during this administration do the right thing and deny the rezoning. The only possible good to come of this is with all that pavement maybe they will knock a dollar off our “stormwater” bills, but then again...

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Greenbelts are important to all of us on many levels. After all, who wants to stare at traffic racing past our backdoor when these simple solutions work so well and help make PTC so pleasant? A little common sense would have prevented the local resident from building his fence across the greenbelt. It’s pretty simple: mark the property lines, use some string and make sure to check where the greenbelt lies. Build your fence with confidence you won’t need to request a variance. Of course, giving the variance might be viewed as another use of common sense. After all, it’s just a fence and “accidents happen.” That IS what a variance is intended to do: provide a remedy to an unintended mistake. I hardly think that “setting a precedent,” as Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford so states, really applies here. Take for comparison how PTC and Fayette County officials justify the stripping of all vegetation and the former greenbelt along the expanded Hwy. 74 corridor and behind homes which now are all too visible to drivers racing along Hwy. 74. What about “setting a precedent”? I wonder how the fence builder feels when denied a variance, but realizes that numerous homeowners along Hwy. 74 that will now have to build their own fences to avoid seeing a constant stream of cars right out their back doors! Imagine, protecting the greenbelt along what may be the busiest highway in this part of the county! (And this being prior to the onslaught of traffic expected with the two- or four-lane TDK expansion!) What an idea! It’s a shame our officials were too busy worrying about one fence and “setting a precedent” to notice the loss of an entire stretch of greenbelt! Perhaps all those unfortunate homeowners will build a fence. Be very, very careful! Judi-ann Rutherford may deny your fence because it could set a precedent! Talk about common sense! It sure seems lacking every time I drive up Hwy. 74. I guess I should consider myself lucky I have people like Judi-ann Rutherford watching out that we don’t set a precedent and lose a little section of a greenbelt.

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I finally figured what GRTA really stands for: Gradually Ruining The Area.

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Nice job, Heritage Christian Church. Construction work starting at 5:30 a.m. on a weekday for your latest project sure is a nice wake-up call for hundreds of neighbors within a half-mile radius.

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Here is something to make south Fayette County residents and taxpayers happy. I am learning that two young boys can ride their motorbikes, four-wheel cycles and go-cart in the middle of street and that is OK. They can ride on your right of way and there is no law against it. They can go into a garage and pick up and handle expensive tools. They can ride aforementioned vehicles on back of our five-acre lots and that is acceptable. They can even scale or climb a protective fence and go swim in a pool and parents are not responsible. Gut-wrenching part is if they so much as get a scratch, the caring and supervising parents can sue. Get it? We pay taxes and homeowners’ insurance and these kids and their parents are not liable. We are, if one of the “boys just being boys” are injured. Hey, lawmakers, law enforcement officers, what is wrong with this picture? Bottom line is we cannot enjoy our privacy and property but the boys can and allow their parents some peace and quiet that we are not privy to enjoy.

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I must live in the poor section of Peachtree City. I bet if Huddleston Pond was in the high rent district of PTC or behind the mayor’s house, it would be full of water now. Poor me.

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After three years, we have one dead deposed dictator and 3,000 soldiers killed in Iraq. Is this a great country or what? Happy New Year.

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It says a lot about our glorious leaders’ true agenda that an instant background check can be made when someone buys a firearm, but an employer can’t check on applicants to see if their Social Security number is valid.

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Immigration may have at one time been good for America but the past is not the future and is no justification for unsustainable levels. We were the strongest country in the world 50 years ago when our population was half of current levels.

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Don’t think local police should check for illegal immigration? Then they shouldn’t check for any federal crime that is committed in their jurisdiction. So if a child rapist and killer from California is arrested for soliciting a prostitute in another state, it’s not a local cop’s business. He should just plead guilty, pay his fine and be on his way to kill again in some other state.