Sports fields, Gathering Place expansion shot down by voters

Peachtree City voters will have to head back to the polls Tuesday, Dec. 4 to nail down the final open seat on the City Council.

Don Haddix was declared the winner of the post 1 seat Tuesday night, handily defeating incumbent Mike Harmon and challenger Tom O’Toole. Haddix, who has said he is “semi-retired,” took 57 percent of the nearly 3,000 votes cast in the race.

The Post 2 seat, meanwhile, remains somewhat up in the air because none of the four candidates won 50 percent of the vote. The runoff for the seat will feature top vote-getters Mike King, who got 34 percent of the vote and Doug Sturbaum, who got 31 percent.

Voters also sent a strong message on both referendum questions, sinking proposals to add several astroturfed sports fields and expand the Gathering Place senior citizen’s center. The sports fields would have cost $4.04 million and would have been shared by the city’s soccer and football programs. The Gathering Place expansion would have cost $2.88 million and would have led to additional open hours in the evenings and weekends.

The sports fields were defeated with 71 percent of voters casting ‘no’ ballots. The Gathering Place was closer, but still not close enough, with 58 percent voting ‘no.’

The voters’ dismissal of Harmon may be a surprise to some as he was appointed in August to fill the remainder of the term left on Judi-ann Rutherford’s seat. She resigned to move overseas with her husband, who was transferred to a new job.

Ironically, both Haddix and Harmon competed for the appointment, interviewing with the City Council in a public meeting after which council selected Harmon because he got the highest aggregate score among council members.

Haddix has campaigned that the city needs to be tough on developers and he also wants to see the city host an open forum on its web site for citizens to ask questions and get answers.