Fayette County government wants to confiscate land from our neighbors to build a road to nowhere and waste millions of your tax dollars in the process. Why this should be an important concern to you?
1. If this can happen to these neighbors, it can happen to you. 2. It is your tax dollars and they should be spent wisely. 3. Your silence gives the government a blank check and the confidence to do whatever they want.
The short story is in 2003 leaders from all jurisdictions within Fayette county agreed that the number one project to be constructed with money from the 2004 SPLOST would be the East Fayetteville Bypass. That can be verified within The Citizen archives and the county commission meeting minutes.
Somehow in 2007 with no notice to the public, or any record of a vote at a Board of Commissioners meeting, the project was changed to the West Fayetteville Bypass (the same area area where the empty Rivers Elementary school was built). There is no statistical need for the West Fayetteville Bypass and the only parties that would benefit from this project would be developers and land speculators.
Three Commissioners, Mr. Frady, Mr. Hearn, and Mr. Horgan, compare the need for taking your neighbors’ property for the road to nowhere with the need they had to build Lake McIntosh.
But the need for an additional water supply was urgent, so the comparison with the road to nowhere is ridiculous.
This same group of commissioners, in another vote on something that wasn’t on an agenda, changed the name of the road from West Fayetteville Bypass to Veterans Parkway. What a terrible slur to our veterans who fought for freedom to have their name attached to a project that steals land from longtime property owners so developers will have better access to their land.
Our neighbors are suffering needlessly for a road we don’t need, having their lives turned upside down. I have heard that possibly they are being harassed by the county or agents of the county to sell their land or face court action, which could possibly include jail.
This is not right. Because they are small in number, I am assuming the commissioners believe that other than those people, no one else in the county will care. Let’s prove them wrong.
After what I witnessed at the Board of Commissioners meeting on Jan. 27, we all need to get active on this one, no matter where you live within the county. Write a letter protesting their harmful action. Come to the next commissioners meeting on Feb. 10. Tell them to stop Phase II and III of the West Bypass, do not take land for this project and to get our priorities back in order with the East Bypass.
This will only take a little of your time and you will do a lot of good. The commissioners are counting on your apathy. Show them that they are wrong. If you don’t, you may be next. Thanks for your help.
Ray Watt
Peachtree City, Ga.
