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State of Peachtree City AddressPeachtree City Mayor Harold Logsdon recently gave his State of the City Address before a crowded room. Many observers viewed this speech as an opportunity for the mayor to counter the criticisms thrust upon him in his first year in office. Although Mayor Logsdon’s State of the City Address was rather brief, it was informative and offered some finely honed insights into his decision making ability. [ENTER MAYOR LOGSDON] Our great city had a wonderful year in 2006. There were a lot of pluses: the Dow-Jones was up; crime was up; taxes went up; big box stores are going up; traffic is rising; the salaries of the city council went way up and; discontentment is at an all time high. We’ve been off the charts in most categories. My job in this great city is full of tough decisions. I believe that when life gives you a fork in the road, you should choose the straight and narrow path. This is especially true with economic development. Ask not what the city can do for the local company, but ask what the local company can do for me. As any book on servant leadership will tell you, and I don’t read many of them, it’s darn tough getting people to be willing to serve you. I’m for progress in our great city. Hey, sometimes you’ve got to compromise half-way down the middle in order to get 50 percent of a majority. A lot of people don’t want progress. They just want to lock the gate. I think we need to aim to be the very best in our great city. We need to be an Amstel Light in a gooseneck bottle and not a common Bud Light. We need to have the appeal of a Bass Ale and not be a Pabst Blue Ribbon. We need to be creative and special like Mikes Hard Lemonade. Most beers should be stored upright to minimize oxidation and metal or plastic contamination from the cap, and that’s what I’m trying to do in our great city. By having everything in our great city in the upright and locked position, we are more capable of preventing damage to the things we enjoy the most. [APPLAUSE FOR THE BEER REFERENCES] Controversy, oh yeah, we’ve had some. I think the Westside annexation is important to us all. I think it’s important to have a Westside. Having a Westside is a perfect complement to our existing Eastside. In a city as great as ours, opportunity only knocks so many times. The cynics think the opportunity knocking this time is just some Mexican guy trying to sell us pine straw at $6.50 a bale, but it’s not. This annexation is like Ed McMahon knocking on your door with a check for $1 million. I’m not telling Ed to get out of my driveway. No, I’m taking the check. Heck, even if it was just the Mexican guy, you could probably still talk him down to $3.00 a bale, and that’s pretty good deal too. [LIGHT APPLAUSE] I’ll admit that TDK is a hot button issue right now. Our great city is full of cynics wanting to destroy the progress we’ve made in helping our friends across the border, but I’m still optimistic. It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side. Sometimes you have to venture into those areas where the evidence of community success and public good is not so clear. I’ve created a little acronym for TDK which is already an acronym, but this acronym is more appropriate than the other acronym for the future of our great city. TDK equals Total Development Kapacity. My developer friends have helped me see that we in our great city have not realized our true TDK. Let me remind you that failure will not be a success. The nasty cynics say a lot of the good people are going to move away when we face the major traffic snarls and jumps in crime from all the big boxes and TDK development. Look, this is not out of line with the history of our great city. The indigenous peoples who once inhabited our community where known as the McIntosh Indians. An early version of what we now know as the real estate developer showed up on the scene and forced those Indians to sell their property at way below average prices. The McIntosh Indians were sent to this wonderful emerging community better suited to their needs in Oklahoma. Our great city then prospered as a home to poor farmers and bootleggers. Next, a new generation of real estate developer came along and bought the acreage from the poor farmers and bootleggers for just pennies on the dollar. Once we ran the poor beggars off, we created our current great city. I desire to expand the vision of our great city and add more warehouse stores. Lowe’s, Sam’s Club and Bob’s Liquor Warehouse Emporium are the next chapter in our city’s wonderful history, and get the trees out of the way so you can see the buildings how bout it. So you see we’ve been running people out of town for over a century. These cynics are really just the next bunch of McIntosh Indians. Everyone knows what goes around stays around. I’ll go ahead and say it; the city increased your taxes. Yes, indeed, our great city is in a hole, and I’ve ordered the city staff to stop digging. I still think local tax reform is a good idea. I don’t really have too much more to say about that other than I still think it’s a good idea. Competence is the root of all evil. I tend to think of myself as a very good person. I can’t ignore the city’s Comprehensive Plan, no matter how much I’d like to. Radical changes are needed to the plan to make it more up to date. We still don’t have a Hooters. With the help of my closest friends, I will knock together the changes that will affect our future. [LIGHT APPLAUSE] The buck stops here with me in our great city. As Mayor of our great city, I took it upon myself to pay a couple of million dollars we didn’t have and relieved the Development Authority of their bad credit. Paying the Development Authority’s loans was the right thing to do. There are times when such actions are necessary to get on with life, it’s like stool softeners getting the bad stuff out of our system. There’s a mess and foul odor, but we all feel better in the end. Thank you for allowing me opportunity to drag our city in a new direction. I’ll be glad to take questions from the audience as long as they’re favorable to me. [QUESTION #1 FROM THE AUDIENCE] “Mayor Logsdon, how do you define ‘quality of life’ in Peachtree City?” Any day you can get out of the bed in the morning is a good day. And the Y Knot is still open, so life is good in Peachtree City. [QUESTION #2 FROM THE AUDIENCE] “Mayor Logsdon, you have a reputation of being unresponsive or not accountable to the citizens, what is your take on that?” [QUESTION #3 FROM THE AUDIENCE] “Yes sir, the Police Department recently unionized and criticized your efforts to give yourself a substantial pay raise at the same time cuts were made for city employees.” That’s a statement, not a question. I’ve got run now, thanks. Got a tee time is in 30 minutes. [AUDIENCE APPLAUDS] [EXIT MAYOR LOGSDON] Young Lover O Freedom's blog | login to post comments
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