All of the challengers in the mayor’s race insist on taking $1.5 million out of our budget and giving it to Peachtree National Bank to repay some illegal loans from the Development Authority. The only person to say that he would obey the law and would not sacrifice taxpayer dollars for the illegal loans was the incumbent, Mayor Steve Brown. In fact, at the October 18 Rotary Forum Mayor Brown’s challengers went as far as saying they are willing to “look past the legal issues” and pay the bank back.

We live in an era when both corporate and political corruption is rampant. “Fixing the books” is almost commonplace and the interests of the shareholders or the citizens means very little. In an age that celebrates compromise and deems concession the better part of valor, the pressure is on to hold up a finger to the prevailing breeze and acquiesce to government dishonesty and rapidly declining standards. The theme of the day is, “Don’t let the law get in the way.” Is this what we want to teach our children in Peachtree City?

There are very good reasons why ALL FIVE of the current City Council Members unanimously agree that they will not repay the Development Authority loans from Peachtree National Bank. Please know that authority-style governments are completely autonomous bodies. Authorities are self-governing bodies created by the State of Georgia. Authorities were formed as independent governments so that counties and municipalities (and their tax paying citizens) could not be held responsible for their actions. Every Development Authority Member is required by state law to take the Development Authority Board Member Training Course. One of the state’s foremost experts on such authorities, Jim Finch (Dept. of Community Affairs), is also an instructor of the state mandated course. The course work as written by Mr. Finch in the text clearly states that according to Georgia law the debts of local Development Authorities are “not considered to be debt of the local government,” (Training Manual, Chapter “What is a Development Authority” by Jim Finch, p. 11).

City councils and county commissions have no control of the decision making of authorities and the only way that a Development Authority of Peachtree City (DAPC) Member can be removed is if he fails to maintain at least an 80 percent attendance record. Thus, city councils and county commissions are neither accountable nor responsible in any way for the actions of Development Authorities.

Our City Attorney has officially informed the City Council that it would be illegal to pay the loans back. We also have one of the foremost municipal attorneys in the state, Andrew Whalen, to assist us in this matter and his conclusion is also that it would be illegal to pay the loans back. Even the bonding attorney from the previous Lenox administration has officially stated that the authority was acting outside the bounds of state law and that the city is not responsible for the authority’s debt.

In his January 8, 2003 editorial entitled, “Turns out, Mayor Brown was right . . .” newspaper Publisher Cal Beverly said the following:

[begin quote] The new city attorneys and the city's bond attorney [of the past decade] have issued an opinion that in effect says, Steve Brown was right.
Turns out the city's autonomous development authority is operating both the new tennis center and the Fred Brown Amphitheater in violation of state law and a Georgia Supreme Court ruling.
Further, state law prohibits the city from picking up the authority's $1.456 million debt, according to the Jan. 3 opinion from Theodore P. Meeker, III, the city attorney, and Earle R. Taylor, III, the city's attorney for borrowing issues.
In addition to state law against a city assuming debt of an authority, the state's constitution "also prohibits the city from 'assuming' or 'paying' the authority's debts without the assent of a majority of the city's qualified voters," the attorneys wrote.
The attorneys said even an intergovernmental agreement between the two parties can't get around the rules. "In summary, it is doubtful that the development authority is authorized by law to operate or manage either the tennis center or amphitheater on behalf of the city," the city's attorneys wrote.
So, the grand experiment fashioned under the reign of Mayor Bob Lenox in the early 1990s of having an industrial development authority run an entertainment venue and later an exclusive tennis center however successful or unsuccessful that role may be adjudged today is just simply unlawful. [end quote]

Beverly also arrived at the obvious conclusion, “The laws and cases cited in the Jan. 3 memo to the city seem overwhelmingly to shout, ‘You can't do this!’” Beverly next asked the key question that is deeply seeded in Peachtree City’s history, “Were the previous rulers and authorities so insulated from reality outside Peachtree City that they either ignored the laws and rulings or did they suppose regally that they could get away with it just because of who they were?”

The Development Authority was incurring debt for a purpose that was outside their legal authority as granted by state law. Furthermore, there was no public vote nor public disclosure on a vast majority of the debt as state law requires. It was later discovered that several of the Development Authority Members were also on the Board of Directors of Peachtree National Bank who issued the loans. The bank actually issued over one million dollars of collateral-free debt to the Development Authority.

One of the largest falsehoods regarding the Peachtree City Development Authority during the previous Lenox administration is that the authority’s $1.5 million debt was used to make capital improvements to both the city owned amphitheater and the tennis center. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, only $300,000 of the entire debt can be connected to enhancing the structure of either facility. It was the city government that paid for the structural improvements to both facilities and not the authority and we have the cancelled checks to prove it. The city government issued $2.5 million in checks to pay for the recent tennis center expansion and we guaranteed that we will use a portion of the hotel/motel tax to repay the city’s Bricks and Mortar loan taken out by the previous council. Unfortunately, the contractor did not construct the expansion to the approved plan specifications and we have experienced consistent, severe flooding problems in the new building. The city is going after the contractor, Group VI, to pay for resolving the problems.

Okay, then where did all of the debt go? We know that some of the debt was used to float the overhead expenses of the bloated tennis center. Unfortunately, both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and our auditors pointed out that the authority’s accounting records were extremely poor. To this day, we do not know where a lot of the debt went. We know that in addition to the $1.5 million illegal debt, the authority received over $3 million in hotel/motel taxes and collected fees from amphitheater and tennis center sponsors and patrons. They were in receipt of a significant amount of money that cannot be traced. Do we really want to engage in repaying loans that were illegal and used for purposes that we cannot identify?

The City Council Retreat Minutes, Friday, March 23, 2001, show that the previous Lenox administration proposed to place the Development Authority debt ($600,000 at the time) on a voter referendum for November of 2001. However, the referendum item was later taken off of the ballot by then-Mayor Lenox because the city’s bonding attorney was unwilling to participate in bonding the debt that was used for “ultra vires” purposes.

Candidates Logsdon, Boswell, Tennant and Thompson want to get around our state law on this matter. Do we really want our local government promoting lawlessness? Mayor Steve Brown will not violate state law and raise our taxes or severely cut our city services in order to repay illegal debt for which the city is in no way responsible. We need to show our children that obeying the law is the right thing to do.

This article written above is about how the good old boy leadership caused these disasters with the Development Authority. Harold Logsdon talks about leadership and financial accountability skills but he is simply a return to the past. How can you expect us to believe a word you say when you continually violate something as simple as the city's sign ordinance? I'm sure there has to be a reason why. Is it: (1) you have not taken the time to read the sign ordinance, (2) you have read the sign ordinance and choose to ignore the rules, or (3) your leadership skills are so profound that you can't even lead your own people well enough to obey these simple rules. The city code enforcement is spending much of their time monitoring your sign infractions instead of focusing on their job, which creates more work, ultimately meaning additional cost to the taxpayers. You do not respond to emails on your website. And your political manipulation of the airshow with the good old boys was blatant. Is this what you really mean when you say you are going to bring new leadership and financial accountability to the office? No, that’s the type of leadership (or lack thereof) that led to the Dev Auth Crisis. Sorry, Harold. Please try another endeavor.

Good article here. I agree with Indirectpac. These guys got away with murder and their "I'm sorry" is a day late and a whole lot of dollars short.

Oh, my word...Did I cause all that ?

You sir are correct. Saying I'm sorry isn't enough.

Thank you for the forum.