To Mayor Ken Steele, Chairman Herb Frady, Commissioner Lee Hearn and Commissioner Robert Horgan I say, gentlemen, what we have here is a failure to communicate.
It’s become so obvious that the West Fayetteville Bypass is about nothing other than our tax dollars going to pay for increased development in the center of the county that any of us would be a complete fool to think otherwise. The excuses keep changing from month to month and it proves how government can’t be trusted to do the legitimate work of the people.
Commissioner Horgan and Chairman Frady kept saying at last Thursday’s Board of Commissioners meeting that we the people voted for the SPLOST back in 2004 and the West Fayetteville Bypass was on the project list. They are blaming their decision to abandon the top priority road project to start working on the lower West Fayetteville Bypass on us.
I think it’s pretty clear the “people” have been screaming to stop the West Fayetteville Bypass for the last couple of years.
What they’re not telling you is that in 2006 (a full two years after the SPLOST vote!) a few government officials working outside the best interest of the citizens began meeting to figure out how the land along the West Fayetteville Bypass route could best be exploited for real estate development.
Fayetteville Mayor Ken Steele is primarily responsible for this mess because he is an annexation-hungry, power-driven man who doesn’t give a hoot about what his actions will do to the future of our county.
If the mayor was not forcing his desire to keep stretching the borders of Fayetteville (while the interior of his city crumbles) with his sewer, allowing him to double or triple the numbers of homes, we would still be working on the top priority road project and not the West Fayetteville Bypass.
The article in the Oct. 12 Citizen proves beyond doubt what the large property owners and Mayor Steele are up to and none of it is good for us.
In 2008 (a full four years after the SPLOST vote!), Mayor Steele bought himself a study at the city taxpayers’ expense to show how the West Fayetteville Bypass land could be exploited with the use of Fayetteville’s sewer to build a huge number of homes and commercial shopping centers.
Does this sound like the West Fayetteville Bypass is being pulled up the priority list and constructed to relief traffic congestion to you? No way!
Please don’t forget that Commissioner Hearn’s relatives (Lester family) are going to rake in enormous profits off of the West Fayetteville Bypass deal with their land holdings near the road. Addison Lester III is also on Mayor Steele’s Fayetteville Downtown Development Authority.
Oh, yes, the SPLOST was approved in 2004 (just barely by 51 percent), but Mayor Steele, Chairman Frady, Commissioner Horgan and Commissioner Hearn are lying through their teeth by saying the voters approved the destruction around the West Fayetteville Bypass.
If anything, we are the victims of a political con game where we were duped into voting for a road list and the political manipulators like Mayor Steele changed the land plans afterward.
They want to pack Fayette County with houses and shopping centers from Fayetteville across to Peachtree City, from north Fayette down to Brooks.
I hope the voters in Fayetteville are paying attention because if Mayor Steele and Councilman Price are not voted out, count on those disgraceful annexation and overdevelopment plans to occur. The election is Tuesday, Nov. 8.
It’s bad enough these political swindlers are behaving like this, but it’s insulting and appalling when they blame their contemptible behavior on the voters.
See the video on the discussion of West Fayetteville Bypass at last Thursday’s Board of Commissioners meeting on Youtube.com at www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXxsK4XKYo4.
I shoot the video footage and upload it so that our working moms and dads and senior citizens can see what is going on with their government and the dangers we face regarding our future quality of life in the hope you will get out and vote to save the greatest county in metro Atlanta.
David Barlow
Tyrone, Ga.
