You guys are nuts. No one can get in your craw like Steve Brown. You just hate it.

Reply to the Birdman: I put your words in italics with my reply below.

I read your usual "every city council but my city council is corrupt" letter…

REPLY: I have never said every city council but mine was corrupt. If you have a reference, please cite it. Your ploy to exaggerate everything comes off looking like a weak attempt at appearing as you want everyone to think you know more than you actually do. No one is going to believe you if you persist with such wild statements.

You state "Had the City Council opposed TDK Boulevard two years ago when the negative consequences were abundantly clear, we, most likely, would have avoided the court ruling in the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority lawsuit altogether." Why didn't your council, in four years, oppose and stop TDK?

REPLY: Was the TDK extension built while I was in office? No. Dan Tennant, Bob Lenox, the Chamber of Commerce, Greg Dunn, Mitch Seabaugh, Direct PAC and many others publicly stated I was killing the project. So here we ask again, were the aforementioned people lying?

In the same vein, could you explain your quote from your letter dated Oct.5 2005 where you stated: "Our current council was the only one that actually programmed funds in the city’s budget for TDK....Brown said there was not a person on Council against TDK."

REPLY: Those words, which you cut and fitted together, are part of a statement I made on TDK. Bob Lenox and Dan Tennant pushed to go with TDK and quietly moved the funds (around $350,000) out of the reserve funds further exacerbating the budget crisis they left us. My council paid for some further planning; however, Coweta Commission V. Mutt Hunter refused to tell us what they planned to do on the other side of TDK, a definite red flag. None of us had anything against TDK as a road concept per se; instead, it was the rapid fire land speculation and the threat of ultra-high growth that turned us off to it. Coweta failed to comply with revealing their plans. Hence, we cut off the funding and stopped it. When Mayor Logsdon entered office they felt he would be receptive, and he was, to their plans. There are a significant number of quotes from me in the newspapers saying TDK being a "traffic reliever" as advertised was a hoax and that proved to be true.

Steve, you discuss the Building Moratorium. Would you please explain how when you first became mayor you instituted a Building Moratorium that was deemed illegal and thrown out in court. Could you please tell us how much of our city tax money was wasted in defending that lawsuit AFTER our city attorney advised against it?

REPLY: The local ruling was a bad one, but there was not enough confidence on the new council to appeal. I wanted to appeal. The City Attorney was Rick Lindsey who later lost the trust of the council completely and was replaced. A few months after the local ruling, case number 00-1167 in the Supreme Court of the United States, TAHOE-SIERRA PRESERVATION COUNCIL, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v. TAHOE REGIONAL PLANNING AGENCY, ET AL, was released confirming we were well within the law to implement a moratorium. Later, Fayetteville, Tyrone, Senoia, Coweta County all implemented moratoriums with no problems.

Could you explain how the SPLOST is fraudulent? Could you mention the status of your Ethics Violation when you illegally went on TV to have the SPLOST defeated?

REPLY: Start with the State Ethics charge filed against me by the developer driven Direct PAC. The Direct PAC guys did not even have the courage to appear at the hearing. The State Ethics Commission threw it out as completely frivolous (this is on the state record). The SPLOST was created based upon what? A model. Was the data in the model correct? Not even close. In fact, the intersection of Highways 74 and 54 which I strongly advocated for in the SPLOST talks was completely omitted. Go back and look since the SPLOST vote and you will see that every DRI filed in our sub-region (East Coweta too) lists that 74/54 intersection and vitally needed improvement. The data was tainted to justify other projects and it cost Peachtree City and Tyrone millions upon millions of dollars.

Could you tell us how much our taxes went down under your administration? It seems to me that actually the millage rate increased!

REPLY: The millage rate increased the first two years and remained the same the last two years. Keep in mind we inherited the worst budget crisis in the city’s history. In addition, we were in one of the worst economies (Post 911) in the city’s history. We made major cuts and eliminate certain projects. Eventually, we restored the city’s reserves which had nearly disappeared before we took over. We were later rewarded with an increase in our city bond rating which put us in the top five for all cities and counties in Georgia.

Could you please explain how adding an Assistant City Manager doesn't count as "new employees?" Also please address the other new jobs you created.

REPLY: The Assistant City Manager was indeed a new job position. We added some firefighters and police throughout the four years. We budgeted for them.

I enjoy the debate. Thank you for your questions.
Steve Brown

Except for leaving out the big push to rezone the Lutheran church at 54 and the Parkway into a 24hr drug store, that pretty much hit all the highlights/lowlights.

I get sick having to listen to Brown over and over harp on TDK when his own words and actions as Mayor say the exact opposite.

NUK

Steve Brown's clay pigeon just exploded before my eyes. Your aim is true. Truth be told though, a BB gun could have blasted that one to smithereens.

Stevie just can't seem to accept defeat, or the fact that his self-serving, sour grapes, revisionist history diatribes have absolutley no credibility. Obviously an ego thing. Just hope Steve is smart enough to keep plenty of cheese in the house to go with the whine . . .

From the other side of the tracks

How dare you question King Stevie...

That being said, look for lots of junk "blogs" to be posted to roll this off the page ASAP.