Here’s how I would vote next Tuesday

I live in Peachtree City, work in Fayetteville and buy lime slushes in Tyrone. If I could vote in each of these two cities and one town, here’s how I would cast my ballots.

Fayetteville: Paul Oddo

Tyrone Council Post 4: Gloria Furr.
Tyrone Post 3: David Nebergall or Grace Caldwell.

Peachtree City Post 3: Incumbent Steve Rapson.
PTC Post 4: Cyndi Plunkett.
PTC Mayor: Incumbent Steve Brown.

Some reasons why:

If ever a governing body needed new blood, Fayetteville is it. The current council has a philosophy that almost always says YES to developers bringing more dense and more commercial projects but turns tough on existing businesses.

Oddo, an accountant and businessman, is an outsider to the ruling clique. That’s a very good thing. Vote for the outsider against the entrenched power, just for the sake of checks and balances.

That applies in Tyrone as well. Homeowners there are involved in a grassroots uprising against the current mayor, council and town manager for what the residents see as the council’s eagerness to roll out the red carpet for developers and to make over the place that still prides itself in being called a “town.”

Nebergall has been serving on the town’s planning commission and has been a voice of moderation in the town’s rush toward getting bigger. Caldwell, once a county commissioner, has been speaking up for the town’s forgotten residents.

In the other race, political novice Gloria Furr is part of that uprising. Her opponent, Cary Dial, competent and business-minded, designs sewer systems and new developments for a living. Nothing wrong with that, but that pro-developer mindset runs counter to the Tyrone grassroots.

In Peachtree City Post 3, Steve Rapson is the choice for his steadfast conservative vision of protecting the homeowners of Peachtree City. His opponent, Stephen Boone, supports, apparently without reservation, the West Village annexation, a recipe of horror for most current PTC residents.

In Post 4, Cyndi Plunkett gets the nod for her involvement in the city’s youth programs, but not for her pro-annexation stance. I worry that she is lopsided for all things recreation without balancing concerns for public safety and how much city services cost. On the other hand, the next-best choice, Dan Gibbs, is overloaded on the business/developer side, a stance homeowners have to be wary of.

For mayor, outsider Steve Brown causes gnashing of teeth and lip frothing from his dedicated enemies, many of whom were themselves the power brokers and decision-makers in the old company town that was PTC.

I dislike Brown’s support of a smaller Westside annexation and his push to rezone the Lutheran church property for an all-night Walgreens.

But he represents a populist viewpoint that naturally finds itself at odds with the old ruling clique, the ultimate good ol’ boys’ club that manifested its power in the publicly financed Tennis Taj Mahal for 600 members and a police headquarters built on a former sewerage sludge pit and trash dump. Neither got the scrutiny that a bond referendum balloting would have produced.

The Old Guard did some good things, did some big bad things and were used to their privileges in a spirit of noblesse oblige.

Brown represents a big check in the checks and balances arrangement that local government always needs.

Thus despite my disagreements with him, I’ll be voting for a second and final term for Steve Brown as mayor.

About the others: Dan Tennant is anti-annexation, but he cozied up to the Old Guard with some shameless pandering before getting beat for another term two years ago. I just don’t trust him not to shift his council positions to try to impress the money guys.

Candidate Dar Thompson just as shamelessly builds his platform on a new tax for every property transfer in Peachtree City.

A big new tax: Now that’s a breath-taking proposal in a majority Republican enclave. He should export that idea to Atlanta, where Democrats love new ways to tax folks.

Harold Logsdon is the Old Guard in a recent arrival, a former BellSouth man. He’s got good ol’ boy money behind him, and the fear is that he has good ol’ boy strings coming out of his head to be manipulated from behind closed doors.

Anybody who raises that much money (expected to be well over $30,000 by the time all reports are filed) for a part-time elected position has to be viewed with some suspicion, at least by this old political observer.

Phil Boswell needs to brush up on the actual issues facing the city and come up with some actual ideas to fix the problems. Maybe next time.

The other candidate has been busy making pizzas. His day job is not in danger from this election.
A week from now, we’ll know the winners, the losers and the runoff candidates in the Nov. 8 municipal elections here in Fayette County.

Here’s hoping the cities’ registered voters are not themselves the biggest losers.

How do voters lose? By not showing up at the polls.

Going out of our way and spending 15 to 20 minutes at our voting precinct once or twice a year is not too heavy a civic burden for most to bear. We all do a lot less important things that take a lot more of our time and trouble than casting a ballot.

In the most recent Fayetteville election, fewer than 10 percent of the city’s registered voters bothered to show up. Folks, that’s just shameful. Such voter apathy works against representative democracy by allowing small power cliques to control the outcome for the rest of us.

Fill up the polls next week.