Citizens of Fayette County, if you are proud of this county and enjoy living here and the services provided, it is time to become involved in its future financial stability.
As most of you know we ousted two of the former commissioners in a landslide vote during the last election because the commission was not governing according to the will of the people.
What many of you do not know is that the three remaining commissioners have banded together and continue to make decisions that they support rather than those supported by the citizens.
Since the new session began, every major vote has been decided with the 3-to 2 vote of the old guard with total disregard to opposition by the people and the two newly elected commissioners.
During the public meeting on June 23, 2011, they voted to accept the Fiscal Year 2012 budget against strong opposition from commissioners Brown, McCarty and the citizens that spoke out during the public meeting.
Opposition to the budget was centered on the fact that Georgia House Bill 240 would enable the Fayette County government to reallocate funds from the ill-conceived, politically motivated, 2004 SPLOST which provided funding for roads that were supposed to ease traffic congestion.
The facts, however, are that a large percentage of those funds have been allocated to the West Fayette Bypass, the sole purpose of which is to enable developers to gain access to a public road system at taxpayer expense.
Huge development companies including ARC Enterprises LLC (Bob Rolader developer), Austin Builders, Green Development (Ed Wyatt owner/developer), John Wieland Homes, Driven Development and Fayette Builders (Ed Wyatt owner/developer) have large tracts of land along the route of the West Fayette Bypass.
These powerful developers one way or another convinced our five former commissioners to plan and build this road using the citizens’ acceptance of the 2004 SPLOST as justification.
We have thousands of vacant homes in the county falling into disrepair, which will eventually lead to vandalism and an increase in crime. Instead of making Fayette County attractive to new home buyers by improving our quality of life, our commissioners are coddling their developer and business friends to build new homes and businesses that will remain vacant.
The truth, however, is that vacant land cannot be used as a significant tax write-off. However, developed land with homes and businesses can and will be used as a huge tax write-off for these corporations, who will wait until the housing market improves to sell.
Meanwhile, we are plagued with unsightly vacant homes and the probability of increased crime activity.
Our commissioners claim that the roads are necessary to relieve traffic congestion in downtown Fayetteville. However, allowing development of these properties will negate any of the gains that they claim will be achieved.
The contentious West Fayetteville Bypass that caused two commissioners to be defeated in the last election will only move the congestion further into the county.
The plan is to have the bypass cross Ga. Highway 92 in the northwestern part of the county. Those of you that travel on Hwy. 92 to reach Interstate 85 are already aware of the heavy traffic flow along that road. The reason that it flows relatively well is because the traffic lights are timed for a long duration along Hwy. 92 and for short durations along the secondary surface streets.
Now imagine a second major road flowing into Hwy. 92 with equal or more traffic flow. It does not take a traffic engineer to understand that the flow on both Hwy. 92 and the bypass will be adversely impacted.
Compounding this situation is the fact that the designers’ intent is to flow traffic across Hwy. 92 onto Westbridge Road.
However, citizens that travel Hwy. 92 to reach I-85 know that the route traveling down Westbridge is much further than the alternate routes further northwest on Hwy. 92 and will instead turn left onto Hwy. 92. We all know that heavy left-turn traffic exacerbates congestion.
Now consider the fact that the bypass will enable citizens from the Southern and Eastern Peachtree City area to avoid the congestion of the Ga. Highway 54 and 74 interchange by entering a major road off of Hwy. 54 and up to Hwy. 92, thus avoiding the bottleneck where Sandy Creek meets Hwy. 74.
Fellow citizens, this project will cost us millions and create a traffic nightmare in the northwest part of the county.
Our commissioners approved a contract with a traffic engineering firm to develop a plan to relieve traffic congestion in the county that resulted in hundreds of thousands of our money wasted on a plan that will never work.
As you have probably guessed by now, this elaborate deception was just a smokescreen to justify a road that would enable developers to build homes on currently inaccessible land.
Fellow citizens, we have an opportunity to reallocate the 2004 SPLOST funds to capital improvement projects that will actually benefit us, or to demand that the money be returned in the form of a millage rate reduction.
There is an old saying that is appropriate: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” If we let our three incumbent commissioners get away with this charade, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Unless the citizens of this county become actively involved in the expenditure of your tax dollars, they will win and walk out of office with Fayette County in complete financial chaos.
The only logical explanation for the actions of the three incumbent commissioners, considering widespread public disgust in their actions, is that they have a score to settle with the citizens of Fayette County for having the audacity to vote their cronies out of office.
In retaliation, it appears that they have entered into a crusade to waste our money on unnecessary projects that benefit their developer and business friends. They are determined to destroy the financial stability of this county and thrust us into the same financial chaos that the United States government is in.
The difference, however, is that the county cannot print money, and when we overspend our financial resources, we fall into default. The outcome of which is the complete collapse of the public infrastructure that will affect every aspect of our county government to include first responders that we depend on to protect and assist us.
Our two newly elected commissioners are totally ineffective without our help and support. We can either sit on our hands as $57.8 million (as of May 11) of our hard-earned tax money is wasted on unnecessary roads or stand up and take back our government.
Fellow citizens, I do not know about your financial status, but $58 million is a fortune to me, and we should not allow three despicable public servants to waste it as punishment to the citizens for voting their fellow conspirators out of office.
With the help of every citizen of Fayette County, we can recall these corrupt officials who continue to blatantly disregard the will of the people and regain control of our county government before it is too late.
Please attend the public meetings and voice your will and reach out to the various organizations within the county that are trying in vain to change our county government.
Paul D. Parchert
Fayetteville, Ga.
