My question is this: Is it really going to take a fatal traffic accident before the powers to be, in this case probably the DOT, install the much-needed traffic light on Ga. Highway 54 in front of Piedmont Fayette Hospital? We pass through this area frequently and have personally witnessed several fender-benders. A more serious accident is sure to follow. How come the traffic lights were installed so quickly in the area of the new Target shopping center in Peachtree City? Does it depend on who pays for the lights or does it depend on how great a need there is? Many people leaving the hospital parking lot are distraught and maybe not as alert as they should be. Please install a light to protect us all.

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To the person who wrote about needing a traffic light at the hospital and Highway 54, I couldn’t agree with you more. Traffic lights are appearing over night around the new Kedron shopping center to accommodate shoppers, but what about this major intersection? The hospital is expanding rapidly, adding maternity services. There is a new subdivision across the street, with a shopping center in the works. Lanes, turn lanes and traffic come at you non-stop during the day. It’s extremely dangerous. May I also mention that I recently suffered from cancer and received chemotherapy at Georgia Cancer Specialists across the street from the hospital? Trying to make a left-hand turn after treatment is daunting. Yes, a traffic light is needed immediately, overnight like Kedron Village.

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The call for a traffic light on Hwy. 54 and the hospital exit is redundant. All Fayetteville-bound traffic should take the rear hospital exit onto Sandy Creek Road, which is traffic-light-regulated at its intersection with Hwy. 54.

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It sounds like Fayette County deputies need some education on dog behavior from the front page story last week concerning “Jasper”, a 12-year-old Catahoula that was shot in the face as they attempted to serve a warrant at a home in Fayetteville. (The fact that the man they were seeking was already in jail is another story.) Deputy Phillips said the dog was “growling and charging me from the back porch of the home.” Let me tell you something: If growling and charging by a dog on its own property warranted shooting, my dogs would have been dead long ago at the hand of the FedEx delivery person, my yardman, and a few of my neighbors. For heavens sake, the dog exhibited normal behavior. And it certainly sounds as if you had other officers there, as well as the homeowner in the case that the dog had attacked you. I really don’t think you were in danger and I find it disgusting that you shot the dog in the face. Where was your pepper spray? I’d also like to add here that it’s no crime that as you stated, “The dog was unsecured by fence or leash.” He was on HIS porch on HIS own property and thank goodness he was not one of those dogs that live their lives chained up. To the Tilton family, we dog owners grieve with you and do hope you have sought out legal counsel. You deserve your vet bill paid as well as some “pain and suffering” money for yourself and your dog. To Jasper, I want to say that you’re a good and brave dog. I wish you many more days enjoying your back porch in peace and quiet.

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Why in the heck isn’t the City Council of Peachtree City doing anything to stop the TDK Extension? The mayor gives useless excuses and the others run and hide. Please somebody stop the extra 15,000 cars that Coweta County wants to put on our roads.

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Oh, this is hilarious. Harold Logsdon’s fifth big lie in only eight months: TDK will be a traffic reliever. Go look at how many cars are in the parking lots at the Pavilion and picture them going in and out on TDK and Ga. Highway 74. Don’t forget to throw in another 6,000 cars from the new homeowners and another 5,000 cars from the proposed Pathway development next door. Even worse, TDK, in Coweta, will be in a school zone for the new elementary school planned; yes, that’s 25 mph during the morning drive. All of that dumps onto Hwy. 74 in Peachtree City. Wow, what a traffic reliever. Oh, what a whopping lie.

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Mike Hofrichter, the mean-spirited leader of the Chamber of Commerce, who was famous for beating elected officials into submission on the TDK Extension, is now babbling that he didn’t know anything about Jim Pace’s intentions for the road. Yeah, right, Mike. He gave our citizens and our businesses the shaft. It’s no surprise that Pace wants to keep going with the road.

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Jim Pace, the self-serving chairman, is a traitor to Fayette County businesses. Thanks to Pace, the mayor and the TDK development, the Braelinn Shopping Center is dead. We will never be able to compete with a million-square-foot power center less than a mile down the road in Coweta County. Pace doesn’t care about the damage caused to Peachtree City because Coweta is his next frontier.

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Great. We get the traffic from the 6,000 cars from the homes, the 12,000 cars from the huge shopping center and the 250 cars from the new school and Coweta County gets all the taxes. And Group VI’s Jim Pace says we ought to be grateful. What a deal. Thank you so much, Fayette Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Logsdon.

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The Fayette Chamber sold out its own people. The backbone of any local chamber is the small business, the retailer. The husband and wife team that works day and night, sweeps the floor, writes the checks and makes it work. They are same people that wear the red coats for the Chamber and do the dirty work while people like Pace and Hofrichter work the Chamber for their own personal goals. It was shameful to suggest that TDK, with the large commercial development, would help the retailers at Braelinn. Utter nonsense. The sad thing is, the leadership of the Chamber planned exactly what is happening now. The fact that they nailed us residents is one thing, but they sold their own membership down the river for the sake of a few.

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Let’s see: Mayor Brown was correct on the development authority corruption, right on the Pathway landfill debacle and dead accurate about the TDK catastrophe. Since he had to endure so much grief fighting for the average citizens and our quality of life, we need to stop TDK. A historical marker needs to be placed on the site of the dead-end road commemorating the act as a symbol against the self-indulgent few who tried to take advantage of everyone else in the name of excessive greed. Justly, the small section of the road from Dividend Drive to the termination point west should be named “Steve Brown Cul-de-sac.”

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I’ve got to say I’m very angry that the city council hasn’t done anything to stop TDK. Mayor Logsdon is finding a ton of excuses for doing absolutely nothing. Councilmen Kourajian and Rutherford have their heads stuck in the sand. The other two are clueless. Aren’t the problems with this road extremely apparent? This has been a really bad year for government and civic leadership and it’s getting much worse.

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Yes, I agree we should address our concerns to the mayor and City Council. I have done so on many occasions, and stated my concerns factually and politely. Not once were my e-mails responded to. These officials have been elected to represent us, yet do not have the common courtesy to communicate with the citizens of Peachtree City. Is it because they’re feeling a little guilty about the mess they have gotten us into, or is it because they have all gotten too big for their proverbial britches? No matter if I agreed with Steve Brown’s politics or not, he always communicated with me promptly and politely any time I ever contacted him. The citizens of Peachtree City need to insist on a town meeting where we can voice our concerns to our elected officials and hold them accountable for their questionable actions concerning the present and future state of affairs.

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All critics of the PTC mayor and council: Boone soundly defeated and incumbent some said was “unbeatable”; Kourajian absolutely destroyed an incumbent; Cindy Plunkett won 60 percent to 40 percent over the spouse of the director of the Chamber of Commerce; Rutherford won easily; and Logsdon almost won without a run-off in a six person race and beat an incumbent mayor by a 2-to-1 margin once the four dwarfs were eliminated. This is a very popular mayor and council based on their success and vote counts in their respective attempts at office. Hang in there, PTC mayor and council; you are doing a good job and the voters clearly selected each one of you.

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Jim Pace, Group VI Construction, is the big money behind a lot of the developer-oriented elected officials. He normally doesn’t pay them directly. He works behind the scenes and rallies their financial support for them. The claims are Councilman Stuart Kourajian, Mayor Harold Logsdon, state Senator Mitch Seabaugh, U.S. Rep Lynn Westmoreland and Tyrone Mayor Sheryl Lee. The TDK Extension will go through because Pace has told his elected officials that it’s going to happen, wait and see.

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One of two things is happening here in Peachtree City that concerns all of us, but I’m not sure at this point which it is. Among surprise railroad sidings, whole cities showing up next door using our roads, making the Wal-Mart area look like downtown Hong Kong, moving Levittown, N.Y., into the railroad area with no way out, and raising taxes at every opportunity, it seems we have no long range plans here, and if by chance we do, they are secret. What else don’t we know?

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Yell, scream, stomp your feet and tear your hair over what the evil developers are doing to our quality of life. But as long as our leaders in D.C. encourage rapid population growth through legal and illegal immigration at historically high numbers for an historically long period, that expanding population needs, housing and all the infrastructures of our society. By all means jump on local officials who appear not to understand what those thousands of homes will mean to quality of life factors like schools, traffic, etc. But don’t let those local and state officials off the hook when they claim there is nothing they can do about illegal immigration. Ditto for federal officials. When President Eisenhower ordered illegals deported, many more ”self-deported.” All it takes is the political will to do what must be done. Political will starts with each alert and determined citizen. You do know how to use the phone, don’t you? So what if you have to call or write once for each of those new housing units coming down the pike toward your quality of life.

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To the pseudonymous, puerile, pitiful, pedantic, paranoid, prejudiced, pointless, pretentious, pedomorphic Pleasance Grove “pretty police,” we must postulate that you are nothing but a petty and pusillanimous poltroon.

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No one said you had to quit your job to mow your grass. You don’t work 24/7, do you? Why did you buy the house if you can’t keep up the normal maintenance of homeownership? You’re only talking about an hour a week out of your “busy” schedule.

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If the writer can make a statement that 90 percent of illegal students are black, then he already has his statistics. Why risk the Board of Education furnishing with daily reports and busting his bubble and his facts. The first task of these elected people he (and others) voted for is providing a good educational environment for students, not providing him with racist fodder. I know the card the writer is referencing, but where is it being played? Oh, I know, in his stacked deck that says, “Whites can do no wrong, blacks can do no right.”

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Where are all the McIntosh football practice pictures? Why not ask the new head coach or better yet, ask the AD. Of late, it seems that any information concerning the football team comes from the official office of the athletic director and not the head coach like it does from the other high schools. Perhaps the administration is trying to put a muzzle on the new coach, especially after his pond water comment in one of the papers. Oh, if you are thinking of e-mailing this new head coach, don’t bother. Apparently he doesn’t do e-mail.

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I have two solutions to the parking problem at McIntosh. 1. Make parking available only to upperclassmen (sorry, freshmen). 2 Or make parking a privilege contingent on good grades. If you want to park your wheels on campus, you have to earn it.

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The city attorney and engineer were quoted in the newspaper stating that parking on Petrol Point “created a safety hazard” whereby the city” could be liable.” However, the two business owners interviewed made absolutely no mention of safety concerns but were more concerned with tractor-trailer deliveries. My solution is to limit parking to just one side of the street and provide no-parking buffers for entries and exits to the businesses along Petrol Point. There is at least one good reason to drive your cart/car. If a student has an after-school job or other after-school sports and activities, riding the bus isn’t a good option. The school principal did mention that there were still parking places available for carts in the school lot. Good idea, but $50. Contrary to popular opinion, not all families with children that attend McIntosh High School have $50 to plunk down for a permit. The principal said there were 388 cars and 301 carts at the school and the school has collected $34,450 in fees, “most of which is used to pay the parking attendant.” That is about the same amount of money Fayette County pays a beginning teacher. Where is all this money going? Over 700 student vehicles are driven and parked at MHS on any given day, and some have more than one occupant. If all 1,000 vehicle occupants decided to take the big yellow school buses, I think the bus schedules would collapse in this part of the city.

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Again I hear the same whining about the PTO and their current fund-raiser. As a parent you are not forced to buy or sell anything that comes home. You pick and choose what you what to participate in and you learn to say to your child, “Sorry, honey, but we can’t do everything, we may have to pass on this one.” The flip side of your complaint is why should the children who work hard and sell 15-plus items get the same prize as the child who sits back sells only one item? What does that teach? Entitlement. Guess what, life is not always fair, things are not always equal and you better start preparing your children now.

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As I watched the US Open last night, largest annually attended sporting event in the world, I became sad. Two featured athletes were playing simultaneously on different courts and I recalled the times I had met them both here in Peachtree City while playing in tournaments at the Peachtree City Tennis Center: Maria Sharapova, winner of the 2002 $25,000 USTA Women’s Professional Challenger and Robby Ginepri, winner of the 1999 Peach State National Junior Tournament. What do we have here now? This is what happens when people with no vision and small minds come into power. Poor Peachtree City.

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Are the county school board members really as dumb as they sound? After deciding on the new school start date for next year, one of them was quoted as saying, “There seemed to be some concern about the early August start date.” Seemed to be? Where have you been the past couple of years, in a cave? Yes, the majority of parents, as well as many other folks, have been very vocal about the early school start. This year was the earliest yet, Aug. 7. We have also vocally questioned about the logic of having a week-long vacation in February, about six weeks after the Christmas vacation, and about six weeks before the spring vacation. It would have been so simple and made so much sense to just eliminate that February vacation to move back the school start date a week. I guess that would have been too easy for our school board members. Instead they supposedly conducted a survey to get feedback on four proposed school calendars for next year. Incredibly, not one of the calendars eliminated, or even shortened the February vacation. So now, the board members have selected a calendar that starts school a week later, but ends school a week later, as well as taking away a couple of days from both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Essentially, they took away about eight days of prime vacation time, including the week after Memorial Day, and let us keep the four days after President’s Day, in the middle of the winter. Even our school superintendent was quoted as saying he would have preferred a calendar that kept the Thanksgiving break a full week. I’m convinced that there is someone with authority on the school board that has a time share in Aspen or Vail during that week in February. How else can you explain placing so much importance on a week’s vacation in the middle of the winter? The new calendar stinks, school board. Thanks for nothing.

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For the past four years one of the most entertaining events in PTC has been the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Last year over 1,000 people came to Picnic Park, where a live salsa band played for over two hours, free food from different parts of Latin America was freely given out to the participants, activities for the children, and even the participation of a PTC high school marching band brought glee to the event. Not only were there hundreds of Spanish-speaking people, but many Anglos as well. There were guidelines, which included no soliciting and nothing for sale. Last year, Mayor Logdson paraded himself through the park wearing a campaign shirt. According to one of the organizers, this year the mayor was not even aware that this grandiose event was being scaled down to just story time in Spanish at the public library. Mayor Logsdon, do you not realize the tremendous contribution the Hispanic community is giving to Peachtree City? Is there no continuity in the concerns a mayor should have in regard to the needs of certain groups of people, regardless of his political beliefs and agendas? Many citizens, Latinos and Anglos, are very disappointed that this celebration will not take place this year. Many are even more disappointed that our mayor was oblivious and totally uninvolved. This sends out a very loud and clear message to the Hispanics that work so hard to make PTC a more beautiful and better place to live.

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McDonald’s needs to hire people that can make change. Even when the register shows them the change, they make mistakes and I’m speaking from experience, as it’s happened more than once to me, and I had to ask for my right change. And lately when I was in Walgreens and Wal-Mart Vision, I have seen people with jackets, shirts, etc., on that were actually dirty. Is looking nice a thing of my era, or what is happening to these young folks?

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I have been seeing signs in both Fayetteville and Peachtree City posted below stop signs that read “No jake brakes.” What am I missing here?

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I’m shocked, shocked that U.S. poverty is increasing in spite of all those millionaires crossing our borders. That’s a real puzzler.

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Is the President determined to regularize the status of 11 to 20 million illegals because he is beholden to big business who want cheap labor, or because he is a globalist and nationhood and borders are passe, or because he wants Hispanics to flock to the Republican Party, or because he simply doesn’t understand the consequences of what he is so determined to get? Will the motives matter in a decade or two? ¿Quien sabe?

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Illegals disregard our laws, so we should disregard their protests.

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Many immigrants come to this country from nations awash with corruption. If the first lesson we give them is that the rule of law is meaningless in this country as well, why should they ever have any respect for our culture?

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I am citizen of a European country which offers the dual citizenship with the U.S. I am not a US citizen at this time for several reasons. As a French citizen, I love my country of birth, I am very proud of it and I am not ashamed of claiming my citizenship which is displayed both on my car and my house. I love the U.S. but I will never forget my country of birth. The only reason why I am working and living in this country is because my wife is American and when we got married it was easier for me to move here than for her to move there. Just like I would never ask her to give up her citizenship, I don’t see why I should give mine up. Also, my French citizenship allows me to travel freely between the two countries and stay in either one for the amount of time I want. A greater benefit for me is having the chance to give my European Union citizenship to my children, which will give them a great advantage when they will get older. Companies are enthusiastic when they can hire people with dual citizenship because it makes their international business much easier, especially when the,employee is bilingual from birth. They don’t have travel and work permit restrictions. Lastly, the two other reasons why I have not become a citizen are the only two benefits that I would get from being a citizen compared to being a permanent resident. They are voting and jury duty. By reading the Free Speech sections and watching the news, I am very proud of not being part of the American political arena. It is not very successful but very entertaining. About jury duty, most of the people that I know drag their feet when they have jury duty and miss work. I am glad I don’t have to miss work for this. So next time, instead of “raising your hand,” cover your mouth and be quiet. I love my country of birth and I don’t see any reason why I should turn my back on it. In order for me to become American, I want to make sure it would be an addition to my citizenship and not swapping one for the other.

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Any candidate who claims to champion working men and women, but also rewards illegal immigration with a guest program, is lying through his/her teeth.