Qualifying for our municipal elections in Peachtree City will be conducted Monday, August 16 to Friday, August 20 at City Hall. Three posts are up for grabs: mayor, council post 3, council post 4. We will know what our options are on August 21.
While we await the final slate of candidates, it is certainly worth looking at some of the more telling details leading up to qualifying.
Three former city elected officials have announced an interest in running for mayor, each has a voting record.
Current council member Terry Ernst has expressed that he will also quality to run for mayor. Likewise, first term current council member Kevin Madden is eligible to run again for council post 3.
Both Ernst and Madden are affable fellas that I have known for well over a decade. Even though I appreciate their courteous, easy ways, their actions as city council members have me running in the opposite direction, offering zero support.
We have had previous administrations who showed a disregard for the city’s celebrated land plan and zoning strategy. A couple of administrations, including the current one, have simply thrown the land plans of our award-winning “master planned community” to the ground, stomped on it and lit them on fire.
Council Member Ernst was part of the complot to wedge a massive Great Wolf Lodge water park adjacent to several subdivisions. Obviously, the will of the people was not to build such behemoth developments to the detriment of our subdivisions. Undeterred, Council Members Ernst and Mike King along with Mayor Vanessa Fleisch pressed hard to ram the project through. Council Members Eric Imker and Kim Learnard were solid “no” votes.
The citizens rose up, stormed the City Council meeting and here is The Citizen Editor Cal Beverly’s firsthand observation of our response on the Great Wolf Lodge and its City Council supporters, “Well-prepared and unemotional residents schooled the council on what city zoning ordinances actually say. Ordinary citizens shredded the city planner’s rationalization for approving a variance.” Beverly continued, “Had not the citizens risen up in protest, the final vote would have been a victory for GWL, 3-to-2,” (https://thecitizen.com/2015/04/21/trail-wolf/).
Council Member Kevin Madden joined the City Council in 2018. Unfortunately, the new council members did not alter the wayward direction of the elected body and the attempted land use carnage persisted.
Ernst, Madden and colleagues found that the way to solve any problem is to keep raising taxes and fees. They proceeded to move on a list of non-essential projects, creating more long-term maintenance costs, and added a hefty pay raise for themselves, only taking a serious look at taming the city budget this year (surprise, surprise an election year).
Other City Councils in the past would try to sneak exceptions to our vaulted land plan through without anyone looking. However, this current council is content to cram it down our throats. First came the over-built Aberdeen Center plan that met riotous opposition. It was their first attempt at force-feeding the citizens more apartment complexes.
Mayor Fleisch complained we were “being stuck in our ways,” and our planning efforts that have kept us in the top-tier of cities in the southeastern United States for the past 20 years was no longer viable (https://thecitizen.com/2020/08/23/mayor-fleisch-peachtree-citys-village-concept-is-changing/). The City Council was determined to replace retail and industrial developments with apartment complexes, the antithesis of what the city needs.
Next Ernst, Madden and colleagues pushed the Calistoa project, converting prized industrial land to apartments and retail shops, all at the end of the airport runway. A filled council chamber shouted that one down (https://thecitizen.com/2019/05/21/council-was-correct-to-deny-calistoa-rezoning/).
Recently, Ernst, Madden and colleagues defended the shocking and contemptible Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) plans that calls for thousands of apartment units built in each quadrant surrounding the ever-clogged intersection at Highways 74 and 54. Even worse, some of those multi-family complexes were planned to be build over city parks, playgrounds and protected greenspaces, how shamefully anti-Peachtree City (https://thecitizen.com/2020/11/01/lci-meeting-insult-to-peachtree-city-residents/).
Ernst, Madden and colleagues approved a hotel to be built on prized industrial land that the Planning Commission voted down. The Planning Commission also disapproved of 308 apartment units going in next the approved hotel (https://thecitizen.com/2021/02/24/planning-commission-seems-to-dislike-rezoning-for-308-apartments-in-south-peachtree-city/).
Tired of a volunteer citizen commission looking out for the taxpayers, the City Council stripped our long-standing Planning Commission of all its authority (https://thecitizen.com/2021/02/25/demoted-planning-commission-can-no-longer-protect-residents-from-bait-and-switch-apartment-rezonings/).
If you think that retaliating against the citizen volunteer Planning Commission was disgraceful, Ernst, Madden and colleagues also officially limited the number of citizens who took their valuable time to be at the council meeting to only five citizens who get only two minutes each. That’s right out of 39,000 citizens only five are allowed to speak at the meeting. Obviously, they are not “public servants” and silencing the constituents has become their forte. The taxpayers get a whopping 10 minutes!
The council members have reminded us that if they feel like deeming someone worthy of speaking, if they want to make the time, they can allow additional serfs to speak for two minutes, but only if they feel like it as they are under no obligation to do so.
Both Ernst and Madden were also part of one of the most atrocious acts ever taken by a local government in Georgia. This current City Council attempted to pass a resolution allowing them to use taxpayer funds to sue local citizens who complained about their unsavory actions, so appalling it takes your breath away.
Editor Cal Beverly laid it out quite well, the resolution “would allow a thin-skinned elected council member or a self-important city official to turn the money, power and legal apparatus of a local government like a loaded gun into the faces of ordinary citizens and haul them at great expense into Fayette Superior Court and sue them for ‘defamation,’” (https://thecitizen.com/2019/04/17/a-dangerous-ordinance-in-the-service-of-self-important-egos/).
As you can imagine, we all rallied at the City Council meeting, young and old, and lambasted our elected officials for their brazen, arrogant and self-centered conduct. The motion failed.
So for the average observer who can digest the facts and review the linked articles enclosed, why on earth would anyone vote for candidates who constantly push massive projects that the citizens have to pack the council chamber to fight on a consistent basis?
The flawed logic that somehow building large apartment complexes on prized industrial and city park land is of any value to us is reprehensible. Likewise, the audacity of demolishing the Planning Commission and showing a total disregard for the constituents deserves no support on Election Day.
Don’t tolerate the disrespect. Early voting begins in October, please make it a point to vote.
Steve Brown
Peachtree City, Ga.
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Commission.]
Time for a new broom to sweep clean the current dictatorship and return to the people some voice and reason. No more end-around s designed to benefit developers and realtors at the expense of our village concept and green space.
See donhaddix dot com for a reality check.
actual quotes from four years ago when current council member ernst was running for office and now wants to run for mayor.
reference youtube video september 27, 2017 in his own words
“we have a traffic problem in ptc. i will work hard with arc and dot and my fellow council members to find the right solution.”
the result 4 years later:
voted to add another traffic light on west ga54.
of course the additional light made matters worse.
nothing else has been done to help the situation.
“i’ll work for better connectivity in the cart path system. we need to find a way to get people on the south side of the city to cross highway 74 in the vicinity of crosstown drive so they can get to the recreation area at lake mcintosh.”
the result 4 years later:
there are no plans to make that happen.
the idea of a cart path bridge over ga74 at crosstown road is out of the
question. not only must you go over ga74 but also the railroad track.
its not going to happen in our lifetime.
given the now known cost of the cart path bridge over ga54 at macduff
parkway, estimated at under $2m but now nearing $5m, the bridge concept
at crosstown road cost prohibitive.
“i will work to make sure that the use of the splost funds that the citizens have entrusted us with are used to the maximum ability and for the right purposes.”
the result 4 years later:
splost fund receipts and expenditures are nearly impossible to obtain
without open records requests.
many of the projects are experiencing cost overruns but they are buried
in cost reports not easily available to the public.
the new cart path bridge over ga54 at macduff was supposed to cost us
less than $2m and is now approaching $5m and still not finished.
the fact that peachtree city is getting over $1m per year more than
expected from splost is only known if you do an open records request.
what is city council is doing with that extra $1m per year? it’s a mystery.
“want to work with fcda (fayette county development authority) to attract new businesses and industries. our residential areas are pretty full.”
the result 4 years later:
attracting new business and industry to our city has been changed to
rezoning most of the remaining industrial land to residential.
apparently we needed more homes for our citizens.
selling our tennis center and transforming our city center into more
commercial and apartments (the lci initiative) didn’t work out as planned.
“we will keep working to bring a trade school into town.”
the result 4 years later:
sorry, the trade school hasn’t happened yet.
maybe in the next 4 years we can get one.
“i will work with the city staff on the budget to make sure that we keep the budget in line and do the things our citizens have demanded of us.”
the result 4 years later:
ptc already has one of the highest tax rates around but that didn’t stop
taxes from being raised each of the last 3 years.
businesses and industry notice how easily peachtree city raises taxes.
they have all but stopped investing in ptc.
home owners are told they are small tax increases but planning right
now includes 4 more years of tax increases in the future.
these are not the results of working in the best interests of the citizens.
a new mayor and city council are needed now!
it’s easy to spend tax payer’s money and take credit for getting things done, but good grief.
for a better picture, see eric imker’s website page, “unkept promises”