Having lived in Peachtree City for 34 years, been a councilman, mayor and state arbitrator, I am very concerned for the direction Peachtree City is heading.
Considering all the issues confronting PTC, I am declaring for mayor of Peachtree City.
Our priorities should be:
1. Police and fire: safety.
2. Streets and paths: everyday driving, golf carts, walking, running, cycling, and related activities.
3. Spending: what we spend, where the money comes from and is it being spent efficiently. Needs versus wants.
4. Village concept, not LCI.
5. Preservation of green space and city planning.
6. Restoration of the planning commission.
7. Removal of city employees from the CVB.
8. Rewrite the WASA charter and remove elected from the board.
9. Review and rewrite zoning ordinances to eliminate precedence that allows developers to force unwanted development.
10. Defend First Amendment rights.
11. Understand state law forbids city government from performing economic development.
12. Traffic: the unfortunate reality is that we have no real solution to traffic congestion. Tyrone wants nothing to do with routing traffic through their city. Coweta has never been willing to assist Peachtree City. They have always wanted to dump their traffic through us. GDOT is not going to take any measures for us.
Many changes to 74/54 have been proposed. But none of them do anything to reduce traffic through Peachtree City. In fact, they make it worse. One proposal that will help somewhat is to connect Fischer Road to 85, but Coweta is not interested, leaving building a skyway from the east side of the city into Coweta with no ramps. Ambitious yet unattainable.
After all the issues we have seen over the last eight years we can no longer afford apathy or more of the same. Peachtree City is not a resort city, it is our home. It is time to defend it and return it to the vision that made PTC such a success, not an extension of Atlanta.
Don Haddix
Peachtree City, Ga.
On the issue of keeping the city green, I do not support variances to protected areas except in the most extreme of situations. I support the protection of specimen trees and not allowing clearcutting in other zonings until the actual construction is going to begin, subject to zoning landscaping requirements.
I already covered my transition yard ordinance. As mayor I researched how detention ponds were being landscaped. All my research said instead of clearcutting they should have trees planted in them and left to natural growth. This is the most environmentally sound approach, providing noise barriers, more attractive landscaping, heat reduction,wildlife environments, more functional ponds and reduced maintenance costs.
In other areas landscaping should be perennials versus annuals.
Please don’t reinstate the opening prayer unless you allow various religious organizations to deliver the opening prayer. PTC is a diverse community, and there are many more religions than Christianity. Having a Christian prayer says we don’t count.
By definition everyone has a religion. Silence is celebrating atheism. A moment of silence is Unitarian/Universalist as is supporting what you suggest. A Christian prayer represents the majority of Peachtree City.
No one is forced to take part in any prayer, just respect the rights of others to take part.
Reinstate opening prayer.
Increase public comment to three minutes.
Include in the agenda who is responsible for the agenda item.
Reinstate planning commission. Encourage the use of sunset causes.
Remove city employees and elected from CVB.
WASA – require Council approval for activity outside the city and remove mayor and council from board.
Review in-house versus outsourcing from landscaping.
Resolve the money pit issues with the tennis center and Kedron pool.
Survey recreation for use by residents versus nonresidents and spending. Shift spending to the most beneficial.
Reinstate the city development authority.
Reinstate the three step annexation procedure.
Cease allowing city officials from introducing annexation requests.
Reinstate the moratorium on multifamily.
Review all changes to zoning and actions that created precedents.
Review ordinances for updating.
Contact GDOT about reversible lanes.
Discuss adding more police.
Add US flags to golf cart bridges.
Restore village monuments.
Remove $6000 for subdivision signage.
Establish benefit requirements for annexation and rezoning.
Looking at who has declared, if 2 of the 3 declared for council and myself are elected and keep promises, we will end and fix much of the actions and goals of the current council.
Updated June 3, 11 and 20 on don haddix .com
The survey results are in with no surprise to me. Here is a quick review.
In order the most important services are police, fire, and public works, meaning streets and paths. The least important service is recreation, meaning the sports fields because parks remain a high priority.
Facilities like the Kedron Pool and tennis center must be paid for by user fees in the main. The pool needs to be converted to a seasonal pool or privatized. The tennis center needs to be privatized or eliminated. Currently our tennis courts, mainly the tennis center, cost over $1 million a year.
People are willing to increase spending on police, fire, and public works. They are willing to reduce spending on recreation and the library. Spending on such things as the LCI and road studies must cease.
Tax increases must cease, which will require a priority review of our spending next year.
This all falls in line with what I have said for years and my platform, but not with the actions of this Council or three of the mayoral candidates.
http s://peachtree-city .org/566/Videos?fbclid= IwAR3kIPDsrFuBHP4efNzO14gnRutfc-_qpnqltk67JoXkoefuYIVG3U6Tqck
Remove spaces in link. Cal’s link rules.
Disagree entirely. The public recreation facilities are part and parcel of the promise of Peachtree City. Past governments incrementally scaled back services to the point where they were unusable, then shuttered them citing lack of use. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy which has gone a long way towards bleeding the charm out of this town. If these facilities can be privatized whereby a small part of the population can support them, then an efficient management could do the same while keeping them accessible to the general public.
People in this town aren’t as concerned with taxes as much as they’re concerned with the value they get for the taxes they pay. Fix the broken value proposition, and start having a customer service mindset.
The Tennis Center has less than 600 members and many are not PTC residents. Kedron Bubble 2-3% use by PTC residents but cost tax payers several $100K each a year on average. Rec does not drive PTC. Trees, paths and sign control do.
Rec does drive Peachtree City. You can drive by the rec facilities at Glenloch, Oak Grove, and PAC on any given Saturday and see that. Your notion about privatizing the Tennis Center ignores the fact that it’s already managed by a private company (as is The Fred). The City needs to do a better job of structuring those contracts to ensure profitability if not sustainability. As it stands, these private management companies are making bank while the city bears the burden of upkeep. There’s no incentive for them to manage the facilities to the public interest. Why are you surprised that the public isn’t interested in them?
As to Kedron, that facility is highly rated by residents. Address the handful of complaints people have about pool availability and poor oversight of groups at the pool if you want to increase usage. Just like my earlier point – you can’t make something difficult or unpleasant to use then claim that it should be shut down because nobody is using it.
Your ideas visa vie rec facilities overall were already tried. Shuttering of the pools at Pebble Pocket Park and Clover Reach were rammed through despite community outcry. Now people lament the fact that if they want to use a pool, they either have to drive to the other side of Peachtree City, or join a gym/country club. Repeating the same bad ideas is not going to suddenly work out well.
It was my proposal as a councilman that privatized management of the Fred and took it out of the red and into the black. It was my proposal that privatized management of the tennis center and reduced the red by over $200,000 a year. Neither proposal went far enough due to Council. And the management has every incentive to work within the public interest. It is called making a profit.
As for the Kedron facility you are mixing issues. The pool is not highly rated by the residents. The rest of the facility is, the pool being what drags the finances down. I am not talking about complaints, I am talking about total lack of usage of the pool by residents.
As for pebble pocket and clover reach there were no complaints. The residents actually told us they wanted rid of them because they were not being used and they did not want to pay their share of the maintenance.
In the resident survey about what brought people to the city recreation was not even mentioned. It was being green, not cluttered with signs, maintenance of the city and safety.
You are giving your opinion, not facts.
You’re going to have to do better if you expect to be taken seriously as a mayoral candidate. The field is getting crowded quick.
I will not go into the history of GeorgeJDienhart. Suffice to say after losing his bid for mayor he moved back to the Chicago area from whence he came. So it is obvious posting here is a personal attack.
I think there’s no greater endorsement of a Haddix candidacy than the peanut gallery herein.
Wing- while the extension is needed if I remember correctly, it was a matter of finances. As for Haddix’s latest declaration of failure, I would hardily endorse a jar of pickled turnips instead. The turnips are smarter, better respected, would be an infinitely more effective leader, and would surely leave less of a bad taste in the local citizenry’s mouth.
You don’t gain anything by making personal attacks, George. All you do is show your lack of class and civility. There’s no need for your sarcasm and attacks.
Mr Haddix – your ideas may have valor but I’m afraid you’ve lost your ability to influence and lead people here in PTC. There seems to be a lot of headwind against you, and unfortunately it seems like you’ve built up some distaste for yourself here in the community. I for one appreciate your efforts to serve our community but you may have more impact in a different role, especially a role where people won’t be so vitriolic against you. Just my 2 cents.
I’ll pass.
Traffic suggestions:
1. Make Hwy 74 a freeway (build it as an elevated viaduct), from Rockaway Rd all the way to I-85, with exits at TDK Blvd, Hwy 54, Peachtree Pkwy and a couple of other exits. Call it I-585, with a special connector to I-85 in Fairburn.
2. Build TDK Boulevard as a 4-lane road and connect it to Coweta.
3. Allow public transit to serve PTC (e.g. light rail or express buses to the airport)
The longest you persist in your denial that PTC needs to be integrated with the rest of the surrounding areas, counties and cities, the works is going to get. We are not a bubble anymore, that is in the past, for good. We need new ideas, and a Mayor to embrace them, not a trip to the past.
Public transit – there’s zero demand for it in PTC. If anything, maybe a commuter bus stop up at the parking lot in Fairburn by Pita, but there’s ZERO need for it in PTC.
Agreed on the TDK extension. Forget about all the naysayers, we need another way around the 54 West congestion and this is the most logical way to do it.
But it will never happen. Tyrone has made it quite clear no kind of bypass is allowed through their city. Coweta County in every conversation has refused to do anything of benefit for Peachtree City. In fact, they have continually pushed to dump more traffic via different entry points.There is no place in Peachtree City to even consider a bypass.
You can buy up the skinny strip of land off McDuff Parkway owned by the Everton HOA and the Pulte Home Corporation on the Fayette Side. Link that to the strip owned on the Coweta side by Gunby Land Company LLC. Bypass from McDuff Parkway to Fischer Rd. Minimal impact to space that is buildable, preserves green space on both sides of Line Creek, and gets most of that traffic a short-cut to Sharpsburg/East Coweta where they were already headed anyway. It’s a win for both sides.
And does nothing for the 74 and 54 coridors.
Where do you think all that traffic at 74 turning right onto 54 is going?
This is why we need new candidates with new ideas.
the_wing_t There is a Park and ride in Fairburn on 74 which is always empty.