Santa’s checking local officials

Every year, the local kindergartners sing, “He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” So, what is going to be in some of our stockings this year?

We all know Scrooge lives on Wall Street. The mean people who put their personal greed over the interests of their investors, the taxpayers and the world economy should not get any presents for the remainder of their lifetime. Similarly, disgraced investor Bernard Madoff, the Palm Beach version of Wall Street, should receive no presents either for his $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Just as bad as Wall Street, the United States Congress showed us once again that actions, or lack of actions, speak louder than words. The Republicans kept talking about tax cuts, but they forgot to stop spending.

Yes, trillions of dollars in budget deficits are created with every appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by the President. Since the appropriations bills lack the revenue to fund them, Congress simply borrows more money, like from the communist Chinese government, to keep up with the massive spending increases.

The Asian economies produced lots of savings. (The United States used to be a banking nation back in the 1970s.) Our U.S. central bank lowered interest rates to prevent deflation following the bursting of the tech bubble and the attacks on 9-11.

These developments and others produced a glut of cash for investment firms. They had to put the pile of cash somewhere, a place that would make them money. So, Democrats like Representative Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd loosened all kinds of regulations so that even the people with the worst credit ratings could reel in the cash. The soaring housing market stabilized and you know the rest.

Santa knows you do not lend to people with bad credit. Santa would put coal in the stockings of those in Congress, but coal is not in vogue.

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has caught the deficit spending bug and wants to build large infrastructure projects to “stimulate” the state’s economy. But Santa wants to know what happens when the national economy is restored and Georgia is saddled with these huge debts? Do not ask Santa for a budget crisis bailout in 2010!

Fayette County Commission Chairman Jack Smith was gung-ho-ho-ho on pushing a defined benefit pension plan. But now a nervous pension committee is asking for more time to study things.

Santa knows many governments and corporations get in massive financial trouble with defined benefit pension plans because they begin a routine of slacking-off on making the appropriate annual payments.

Santa says a change in the county’s charter should be made, mandating full payment of pension and administration funds each year if a defined benefit program is adopted.

Chairman Smith is going to ruin everyone’s Christmas joy if he continues to defend the corrupt West Fayetteville Bypass. This developer freebie intent on creating more traffic in Fayette County was the result of the badly flawed model used by engineers hired by the county. Santa says, “Just say no!”

Santa is just appalled at Mayor Harold Logsdon’s attitude this past year. He created an ethical nightmare using the cash from a local Chinese company and boldly told a local reporter that he would do it again if he wanted. The mayor needs to look for some of those low-cost Chinese manufactured switches in his stocking.

Now the mayor is fussing over the City Council backing away from the harmful traffic signal he wants for the big box developer on Ga. Highway 54 West at Line Creek Drive.

Most anyone with common sense can see the traffic signal violates state and national guidelines and would cause the once choking (and still choked at certain times of day) highway to be eternally choked.

Santa wishes Councilwoman Cyndi Plunkett would stop being so wishy-washy and do the right thing. There are very valid reasons why the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) denied the traffic signal TWICE already. She has access to the Coweta County Transportation Plan and she knows what the horrendous future traffic load is going to look like, so why not actively stop the traffic signal?

The elves have told Santa if the traffic signal is not approved that Mayor Logsdon will not get his 175,000-square-foot, traffic-producing big box center built. The elves also said the talk about re-synchronizing traffic lights is a bunch of hooey and that is why the GDOT has the distance standards in the first place. Do not forget, Santa knows how many times the GDOT has re-synchronized the current traffic signals to get the flow where it is now.

Of course, Santa gets discouraged when three members of the Peachtree City’s council create such a mess by granting an exemption to the city’s big box ordinance, selling city property to the big box developer and applying pressure through state officials to get GDOT to disregard their engineering standards so as to cause a long-term traffic catastrophe on Hwy. 54 West.

If you care about the long term stability of the vital Hwy. 54 West corridor, email the mayor and council (council@peachtree-city.org), State Representative Matt Ramsey (matt.ramsey@house.ga.gov) and State Senator Ronnie Chance (ronnie.chance@senate.ga.gov) and TELL THEM TO STOP trying to influence GDOT to approve a disastrous traffic signal that has already been denied twice.

You can also call the office GDOT Commissioner Gena Evans at 404-631-1000 and let the Commissioner and your GDOT board representative know the traffic signal at Hwy. 54 and Line Creek Drive does not meet GDOT standards and is bad for our community, so they should deny it a third and final time.

I hope the rest of you were good. Merry Christmas!

[Steve Brown is the former mayor of Peachtree City. He can be reached at stevebrownptc@ureach.com.]