Who would of thunk it? Tina Fey leading the cheers at all those Tea Party tax protests. That chick is a dead-ringer for Sarah Palin.
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The state of Georgia is in dire financial straits and I think I see why. A mid-level state executive is retiring after 32 years of service. She is cashing out her unused vacation time of nine weeks for $64,523. How many people out there are paid $7,500 a week? Am I dreaming or just stupid? Her salary is $372,800 dollars a year? I must be losing my mind because this cannot be true. That’s mine and your money that we sweated for, folks. I retired from the federal government in 1999 after serving for 40 years and rising to the top of the pay scale as the director of a division with more than 5,000 employees under my supervision. My salary was just under $125,000. Ten years cannot make that kind of difference. Something is terribly wrong here. How can a state employee be paid more than the president of the United States? No one, including the governor of the state, is worth that kind of salary. No wonder Georgia is going bankrupt.
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I cannot believe I opened The Citizen and saw yet another complaint about the trains blowing their horns. I too moved to Peachtree City in 2008 and the main reason we did not buy a house in that area was because of the train tracks. But the kicker here is that you knew the train tracks were there and you assumed they would be no horn blowing. Give me a break. This is not an issue for the city to resolve. They have more pressing issues like budget cuts and layoffs. You should get together with the rest of your complaining neighbors and deal with it on your own. You bought your house near a train track — end of story. If you hate it so much, then put your house up for sale. And good luck with that because nobody really wants to buy a house near a train track. In case you haven’t heard, they tend to blow their horns at all hours of the night. You should have spoken with the people in the neighborhood to see if this was an issue. Judging from all the complaining in Free Speech, I’m sure someone would have given you the 411 on the train noise. You should be more upset with yourself for not doing your homework, not the city of Peachtree City.
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Looking around me during the funeral procession of Lt. Robert Collins, I was proud to be a citizen of Tyrone. The crowds of men, women and children who showed up to honor the fallen soldier were amazing. Special thanks to Gloria and Gordon Furr for painstakingly putting out the flags that lined the streets of our town. And if not for Councilman Tracy Young, there would not have been any flags. You did us proud.
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I’d like to open a dialogue on a subject that impacts every taxpayer in Fayette County, yet never seems to be addressed by FCBOE. It is the “elephant in the room” that they hope no one ever sees. The subject is the policy of allowing out-of-county employees to enroll their children in our schools. Please be clear, I am not alleging any wrong-doing, but rather the systemic, institutionalized, legalized fleecing of the taxpayers of Fayette County. The Citizen has reported numerous times that we spend in excess of $2,000 beyond what the state reimburses to educate a student in Fayette County. It would appear FCBOE has no problem, in general, attracting qualified employees, despite salaries lower than our neighboring counties, due to the purportedly better working conditions. If an employee lives in Senoia but works at Starr’s Mill and thereby has children enrolled in Fayette schools, they are essentially receiving $2,000 more in salary per child than other employees. Why are we not hearing an outcry from the other in-county employees regarding this? How many furloughed teachers might still have a job if it were not for these subsidized students? I fully appreciate that there is a shortage of teachers in some critical specialties: math, science, special ed, for example, and would argue that these teachers should perhaps be paid a bonus — the laws of supply and demand in action. But why should we be subsidizing the education of the children of an out-of-county bookkeeper? I’m sorry, but I find it hard to believe that FCBOE couldn’t find a bookkeeper that didn’t cost the taxpayers of Fayette County an extra $2,000 per child. I am aware of a number of employees who used to live in Fayette, but moved to Senoia as soon as their students were old enough to drive. This intentional avoidance of Fayette taxes creates an additional tax burden on the rest of us. On a different but related subject: For about the past year, the FCBOE has not allowed qualified individuals (with a few grandfathered exceptions) to sign up to be substitute teachers. Given the state of the economy and the unemployment rate, would it not be in the best interest of the county (and its taxpayers) to give preference for these part-time positions to Fayette residents?
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I was just listening to a financial expert on CNN explain where the working people’s money is going in this country. In 2004 the average pay for CEOs and top corporate executives was 40 times that of the workers in the company. Today the average pay for these executives is 450 times the average pay of the employees. Many CEOs are now looking for a billion dollars where a few years ago they were satisfied with a few hundred million. Greed is destroying this country while the average American is breaking his back working to supply these pigs with their lavish lifestyle.
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To the person who found my Bushnell range finder at Whitewater Creek Golf Course and turned it in to the pro shop: thank you. I did not have $300 to replace it so it thrilled me to get it back. It’s gratifying to know that there are still people of character and integrity in our community.
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I was really enjoying watching the various golfers on TV. Now that the Tiger show is back, I guess we can forget about watching any other golfers.
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(Quick out of the gate but just no stamina) R.I.P. C-TRAN.
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Did I miss the news? Thursday after running errands in Fayetteville, I stopped by The Malt Shoppe for lunch only to see that it had closed. Any reasons known? I can imagine running a restaurant day in and day out for 17 years does take its toll. Just wish there was someone to pass the place on to or to buy it. You couldn’t find a better hamburger anywhere in the area. And most reasonably priced. Sorry to see it close down.
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Regarding the pay raise for the mayor, especially the statement about how much harder the city employees are having to work now that there is a deficit in the budget: this is how it works. If you are a city employee, you show up almost on time, you spend about an hour or so checking personal emails, then you need to decide where to eat lunch and whom to eat lunch with. After lunch you once again check personal emails, then coffee break — oops — now it’s time to go home. So if you figure in all of the downtime, maybe there are about three hours of productive work being performed in a day. Seems to me that doing the numbers, the city can get rid of at least 26 percent of its employees without skipping a beat in how the city is run. I agree the mayor should get a raise, but he should take it from the city manager’s pay. After all, the city manager’s mismanagement of the city has placed the citizens (taxpayers) of Peachtree City in this awful financial position. P.S.: Who does the city manager report to and who evaluates whether he is performing up to established standards?
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I thought the TDK Connector was dead. When I drove down the road they are building where TDK used to end, I got all the way to a bridge (actually more like a causeway) over the creek. What’s the deal?
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I think it’s time to stop bowing down to liberal thinking that causes us to feel guilty if we don’t include tributes to all nationalities. I am a Fayette County school middle grades English teacher. A recent sentence we encountered in county-distributed materials included a foreign name that neither I nor my students had ever seen or heard. None of us knew how to pronounce it. After three periods of asking if anyone knew how to read the sentence correctly, I finally blurted out to fourth period, “This is America. Why don’t they use American names?” The class immediately broke into applause! I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe our 12-year-olds are sick of catering to culturally-polite textbooks, just as I am.
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“The government is saying that people are fat. I’ll tell you why they are fat. There are no jobs.” Are you confused yet? I am. This is part of a conversation I overheard in front of a local bank this week between two rather large men of different ethnic backgrounds. I’ve traveled and resided in poor countries all over the world and I don’t recall seeing many fat people. Were most Americans obese during the Great Depression? What has changed between then and now? Pinto beans, cornbread and iced tea used to be the staple with hours of hard field work in between. I’ve done it. The big-time job was working in a sweltering cotton mill 16 hours a day for a buck an hour. I’ve done it. This was outstanding pay compared to the pittance I received after being kidnapped by LBJ and held for ransom until I completed a tour of duty in Vietnam. Then the villain Bush came along and forced the lazy masses to gorge themselves on candy, fried lard cakes and all things above 90 percent in saturated fat. What an evil man he was! Jimmy Carter said he saw space aliens. I wonder if they resembled the M&M characters? Why doesn’t Jimmy get any credit for our mountains of blubber? Since I don’t have a job, I’m going to rest on my laurels all day and munch on fried cheese balls and wash these delicious gut bombs down my gullet with gallons of high-fructose soda. Dang you, Bush, it’s all your fault.
