What's wrong with you people? Don't you know Mitch only has the interests of PTC at heart? Has he not demostrated that to you by supporting PTC'S best Mayor ever and his undying support of the TDK Autobahn? He isn't beholding to any special interests, he's the peoples senator.

Thank God for Steve Brown or the stinking road would have been built by now. Notice Steve being called the "unwilling partner" and at the end saying he just wouldn't cooperate to get the road from hell built.

Project funding remains in limbo
Published 12/15/04

By SARAH FAY CAMPBELL

sarah@newnan.com

Is Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown sending a message to the residents of Coweta County?

State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh thinks he might be, after a meeting of all the parties involved in the extension of TDK Boulevard to Coweta County produced no results.

"Basically everybody put it on the line that they were willing to partner, but there was one unwilling partner, who was unwilling to work for solutions for this road -- and that was the mayor of Peachtree City," said State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh, who organized the meeting.

And with Brown's stand, Seabaugh poses this question -- "Is the mayor trying to send a message that he doesn't want people in Coweta County shopping in his shops, eating in his restaurants, or working in his businesses?"

At the meeting held Tuesday, Commission Chairman Vernon "Mutt" Hunter and Commissioner-elect Tim Higgins represented Coweta. Also on hand were Greg Dunn of the Fayette Commission, Congressman-elect Lynn Westmoreland, representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Peachtree City's Falcon Field, Brown, and PTC City Administrator Bernie McMullen.

"There were a lot of ideas floated, a lot of positions stated," said Hunter. "It became apparent that everybody was in one accord, except in one instance."

But the meeting wasn't a total loss.

"Several of us got some things off our chest. Maybe it will be better now," Hunter said. "I think that meeting and talking did some good -- I'm talking about direct talking."

"I felt like we made a lot of progress," Seabaugh said. "We just couldn't push it over the goal line."

The sticking point at the moment is over the funding for the redesign of the road. Part of the road was changed to get it out of the safety zone for Falcon Field. Fayette County says Peachtree City should pay, and Brown says his city is not paying anymore money and the county ought to pay it. Neither seems close to budging.

The airport actually owns the property in the safety zone, said Seabaugh.

"The FAA right now is trying to do what they can to correct situations of cars in the flight safety zone," Seabaugh said. "If they're spending a lot of money trying to correct it, why would they allow that somewhere, when they're trying to correct it?"

About a year ago, when Brown first brought up the issue of problems with the airport, he told several newspapers that the airport would lose all federal funding if the road were built in the safety zone.

The folks from the FAA "confirmed that was absolutely incorrect," Seabaugh said.

Nobody was asking for monetary commitments or anything like that at the meeting, Seabaugh said.

"Everybody was willing to keep walking down the road and keep working together. We asked the question if the mayor would be a part of partnering," Seabaugh said.

"Nobody put any requirements, commitments or anything, just the willingness to work together. All anybody asked from the mayor was to partner with everybody to work for viable solutions, so we could explore all possible solutions and viable resources, in order to build that road," he said.

"Nobody asked the mayor to commit to anything but cooperation and working with everybody. But he wouldn't."

There was a sense of frustration, Seabaugh said. But he found it encouraging that there were some people at the meeting who had traded barbs with each other in the press, but that did not hinder cooperation among the group, Seabaugh said.

Well, obviously if our state taxes need reform it means they are currently incorrect or wrong for some of us!
Now I think both of these politicians are republican--they have to be.
I think most of the tax money currently collected on property comes from people's homes, paid for or not, and on business people's inventory, which usually mostly disappears between December 31 and January 2!
I'm not going to get into the business inventory stuff as it is really complicated--just one example: a jeweler on December 31 physically takes his inventory to Tennessee for a couple of days, and goes and gets it on January 2. Law says: tax is on inventory in place in Georgia on January 1. Enough said about that.
Now as to people's homes: do the math on people with $100,000 homes, $200,000 homes, $500,000 homes,$1,000,000 homes, and above.
At about $300,000 homes the owner will spend about as much on taxes (sales) as he previously paid for property taxes.
At a million dollars the owner will save $5,000. And so forth!
Now who will pay the $5,000 savings for the expensive homeowners under the "tax reform?" Those with homes under a million all the way down to $300,000, that is who.
A wealthy person can only eat so much better than the average person; he can buy more, and more expensive, jewelry; he can travel more; etc., but I figured reasonable numbers in for that sort of thing!
Anybody want to guess how about 13% sales tax instead of 7% will affect the poor and lower middle wage earners?
Do grocery stores, doctors, services, etc., charge them less to make up for the added sales tax? No!
What if the Feds do the same thing instead of income taxes?
Now we will have 13% plus 30% federal tax on sales on nearly everything!
Wow! $4.50 gas might be $6.00 per gallon. $100 worth of groceries could be $145.00. Five dollar Starbucks= $7.50. Local Bonds for schools, libraries, etc., will still be paid by locals as usual!
OK, so exceptions will be made---who will get them?
What this sounds like to me is sending spending authority to the state instead of to the city and counties, and perpetuating the civil jobs paid with tax dollars!
We ain't got nobody smart enough to even do this right.

Don't businesses now pay property tax on office buildings and stores, large and small?

Won't the plan to abolish property taxes lift their burden completely?

What will businesses pay sales and service tax on? What does a bank or a store consume?

Won't it be the little people who'll end up paying the great bulk of the sales and service tax?

Who's really behind the GREAT plan? Business?

so why does this guy Seabaugh keep writing in Fayette County instead of Coweta County?