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The New Political Reality in PTCThe New Political Reality in PTC: Settled for the Future with Populist Control PTC started as a company town. Equitable Life Assurance acquired literally the entire town in a foreclosure. Equitable planned, developed and sold thousands of expensive homes in what was clearly a horizontal and vertical monopoly. There were no victims so no one cared. It was and is a great community. They then sold to PCDC of Georgia. Equitable (being an insurance company, conservative with investments) made the easy money, and then sold off the remainder. Development got a little more gritty and a little more abrasive to the residential homeowners. Big deals like the sewer sale were brutish examples of the new, PCDC/Georgia group sans Equitable. Political control was easy. Remarkably, elections were originally held the first Tuesday in December, a remarkable plan calculated to retain control. With a limited number of PCDC and City Hall employees, the Old Guard had no political risk. Like any residential development, ultimately control is intended to shift to the homeowners. The same is true for the planned community known as PTC. Predictably, populist candidates qualified for office and they either (a) failed at the polls or (b) were easily compromised once in office. Two notable example of the latter phenomenon were Carol Fritz and Dan Tennant. Fritz ran against Caroline Price, alleging her opponent’s complacency with developers. Shortly after election, she was rather easily compromised by Mayor Bob Lenox who essentially acquired her vote by proxy in any significant land development vote. In 1995, Dan Tennant expressed outrage over the fact that developer Jim Pace of Group VI was running for council. Although unsuccessful as a write-in candidate in an otherwise impressive write-in candidacy, it set the stage for Tennant’s victory to council in 1999. Ironically, it is Tennant who leads the movement to use taxpayer funds to voluntarily pay a Development Authority debt to Pace and Group VI (and other debts) that literally no attorney has opined is a binding obligation. Tennant parrots the justification that paying these debts is the “moral thing to do”. Again, a populist candidate is compromised. In the political shift from developer to homeowner control, it is not unusual that there are interim candidates that suggest a populist loyalty and fade from the standard. Ultimately, the political landscape settles and the populist control will establish roots. With the election of Mayor Steve Brown and Councilmember Steve Rapson, the voters made choices in 2001 to divert political control away from the strict developer interest crowd. As the Editor of the Citizen Newspaper suggested in his endorsement of Brown (and also of Rapson), Brown represents a pivotal “check” in the necessary system of checks and balances for local government. Interestingly, the Editor noted that the cardinal issue for elected candidates was independence from developer temptations, and the current Mayor has established a perfect grade on that score. Tuesday November 7 will reaffirm that the family, homeowner base of PTC has established a permanent interest in the future of the city when Brown, Rapson and Cynthia Plunkett (as the Citizen Editor predicts) are elected to the Council. Joan of Arc PTC's blog | login to post comments
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