I hope everyone got a chance to read the recent AJC article on gang activity in the MARTA system. A group of young gang thugs assaulted two male Delta employees on a MARTA train.
The fact that violence has been associated with MARTA is nothing new. Several people were shot dead at MARTA stations recently and a woman was kidnapped.
What should shock all of us right down to the bone is a majority of our Fayette Board of Commissioners have voted in favor of keeping our county linked into the regional transit plan with MARTA. I guess it’s a supply chain issue with the gangs needing more Delta employees to beat and rob. It’s tougher for the gangs to meet their quota, so they need Fayette County tied into the system.
It should also be said the same AJC article quoted long-time users of MARTA as saying the security on the system is pitiful. Is anyone else wondering why Chairman Herb Frady, Commissioner Lee Hearn, Commissioner Robert Horgan and Fayetteville Mayor Ken Steele want to keep us in that kind of disastrous plan? Their votes in the official meeting minutes speak much louder than their false rhetoric.
I was part of a large Fayette County contingent who attended the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Plan 2040 public meeting in Tyrone. A senior transportation planner named David Haynes gave an attention-grabbing presentation on regional transportation. One of the first sentences to come out of Mr. Haynes’ mouth was he didn’t think mass transit was needed in Fayette County because of the low population.
Something is bad wrong when the regional transportation planner says it’s not necessary and majorities of our Board of Commissioners say we are staying in it anyway.
The mass transit situation is just like the West Fayetteville Bypass deal. We obviously don’t need that bypass. But as you know, Chairman Frady, Commissioner Hearn and Commissioner Horgan say they’re building it anyway.
Then you have the appointment of Commissioner Hearn’s relative to the Board of Elections to oversee the reelection bid of the three holdovers from the previous commission. Even though the problems with the appointment were exposed, the three commissioners are saying they’re going to keep Hearn’s relative on the Board of Elections anyway.
Ask yourself what the motive could possibly be for their audacious actions? Why would any group of three commissioners and the mayor of Fayetteville act so counter to the will of the people?
Commissioner Allen McCarty, Commissioner Steve Brown, Mayor Don Haddix and Mayor Don Rehwaldt have all stated the case quite well as to why we don’t need to be in the regional mass transit plan.
Fayette County’s two representatives to the Atlanta Regional Commission, Chairman Frady and Mayor Steele, are leading us to the gallows with this new regional SPLOST referendum, trying to tell us it’s a great deal.
However, you have to keep in mind these are the same two who are pro-mass transit, pro-West Fayetteville Bypass and were pro-2009 SPLOST. Personally, I haven’t the slightest reason to believe anything the two of them say.
Fayetteville Mayor Steele is up for reelection this year. We need someone to run against the mass transit mayor and stand up for Fayette County values. I can assure you the support from voters will be significant. Fayetteville has never needed a change in leadership so badly.
Let’s not lose focus that the three holdovers on the Board of Commissioners are up for reelection in 2012 either.
It’s time to support candidates who support us and not the current guys who want to bring Clayton County farther south.
David Barlow
Tyrone, Ga.
