I moved to Peachtree City from Portland, Ore., in February 2009 and this has got to be one of the best communities I have lived in. However, there are several things the city has got to address. Two big ones are aesthetics and traffic around the intersection of Ga. highways 54 and 74.
Since we bought our house in 2009, I have seen our city’s aesthetics deteriorate. If you ask people who have lived here 10 years or more, they all say things are looking much worse than before.
Instead of the center medians of our highways being cut regularly and treated for weeds, it appears the grass is now cut monthly and the weeds are tall and plentiful.
Our village entrances or gateways are deteriorating and, if you look, many of the city’s street signs are leaning. I have even seen some of the familiar brown street name signs have a lean of up to 30 degrees or more. There is really no excuse for this.
Peachtree City and Fayette County have many exciting prospects ahead of us. One coming to mind is the new Pinewood Studios. With these new prospects comes an opportunity for our city to shine. We will have all sorts of new folks coming to take a look to see what we have to offer and first impressions are everything!
We cannot accept the deteriorating conditions and we have got to make aesthetics a priority. I say let’s put our best foot forward and change some priorities by investing the money to clean things up.
Councilman George Dienhart made an excellent request at the last City Council meeting and I support it. The councilman wanted the City Council to publicly agree to cancel any proposed traffic signal at Hwy. 54 and Line Creek Drive to not make traffic even worse on Hwy. 54 West.
There are already five traffic signals between Hwy. 74 and the Coweta County line in a very short span. Why make more congestion?
Another good idea from Councilman Dienhart is to close the median at Hwy. 54 and Line Creek Drive to prevent the dangerous sweeping left-hand turns. Accidents cause major traffic congestion.
I also agree with Councilman Dienhart’s last point to not allow a connection road from Line Creek Drive to Planterra Way. The Planterra Ridge and Cardiff Park subdivisions have already paid a huge price with the long traffic signal times and huge delays. Again, don’t make things worse.
I announced at the City Council meeting my intentions to run for Peachtree City Council, Post 4, and these are just two of the many issues that I think are important to the city. We have to make an excellent first impression like we use to in order to attract high-paying jobs.
If we make the traffic more congested and more aggravating, we will lose some of our best citizens along with the high-paying jobs. This just makes sense.
Josh Bloom
PTC Council Candidate, Post 4
Peachtree City, Ga.
