Election time is upon us as early voting has begun for Fayette County’s municipalities.
The Peachtree City mayoral election has an interesting cast of characters worthy of a Netflix series. If you will allow the parody, with our cast of candidate characters in Peachtree City, let’s call this drama “House of Carts.”
I have known Terry Ernst (a current city councilman) for over 15 years. Like many others, I have been totally shocked by his actions on the City Council.
Ernst supported building more apartment complexes and the public backlash forced his retreat. He removed all authority from the citizens on the city’s Planning Commission. New developments are now ‘smoke and mirror’ presentations with details subject to change at a moment’s notice.
Furthermore, Ernst’s voting record consistently supports creating higher taxes and fees. Likewise, angry citizens filed into the council chambers when Ernst supported using taxpayer funds to file lawsuits against citizens who criticized the acts and conduct of the City Council. (His rating is one golf cart out of five.)
The antagonist in our “House of Carts” drama is the far-left Nick Ferrante. This young avid Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jon Ossoff, and Stacey Abrams devotee wants to bring the far-left change to Georgia and Peachtree City.
Ferrante has received a glowing endorsement from the political group Down Ballot Dems and their “change starts locally” campaign that includes voting with no identification, ballot harvesting, and voting rights for illegal aliens.
Peachtree City is a top-tier city and we do not need woke safe-spaces and left-leaning politicians constantly reprimanding the micro-aggressions of the Baby Boomers who appreciate the U.S. Constitution, law enforcement, and refuse to kneel for the National Anthem.
The rallying cry against Ferrante is, “Don’t California our Peachtree City!” (His rating is one golf cart out of five.)
A hard-wearing character actor in “House of Carts” is the well-informed curmudgeon Don Haddix. Out of all the mayoral candidates, Haddix supplies the deepest knowledge of the issues and provides the most definitive responses.
Love him or hate him, Haddix’s Achilles heel has always been coalition building. You cannot get anything accomplished without three votes of the City Council. (His rating is three golf carts out of five.)
The hot-blooded rivalry on “House of Carts” is between two former Peachtree City Council Members, Kim Learnard and Eric Imker.
Democrat Kim Learnard spent a great deal of her time on City Council pursuing Board of Education matters.
Learnard spent nearly two full years of a four-year City Council term chasing and exploring the creation of an educational facility she called the Fayette College and Career Academy. The problem was the Fayette County Board of Education was not interested in the proposal and it would be their responsibility to facilitate the project.
It was awkward as Learnard circumvented the Board of Education and led the creation of a local corporation, making herself the CEO, to pursue a very expensive educational project that the Board of Education had no desire to build. The Board of Education decided it was better to create some in-house programming on student career development.
The inability of Learnard to coalesce with other Fayette jurisdictions and her taking the focus off important issues facing the city to chase a project where the city had no responsibility is troubling.
Learnard raised traffic concerns as an issue in the platform section of her website, but her eight years on the City Council was devoid of any real movement on creating a solution for the highways 74 and 54 intersection. In fact, she voted on rezoning and development that intensified the traffic debacle on highway 54-West. Her website says we need to talk about it some more.
A major concern with Learnard is her failure to address governmental finance issues, including increasing expenditures without generating enough revenue. Her voting record shows continual support for higher taxes and fees, drawing deep from reserves to balance budgets some years.
Learnard’s attempt at budget cuts was suspect with the wholesale gutting of the Public Works ground/facilities maintenance, leaving the city’s appearance to deteriorate rapidly. Future City Councils spent huge sums of tax dollars re-purchasing grounds equipment and hiring new employees to compensate for the fiasco.
The alarm bells go off when reading Learnard’s position on rezoning and adopting what appears to be the disgraced Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) plans for Huddleston Road right in the epicenter of our massive traffic dilemma on highway 54-West. Pouring gasoline on that traffic fire would be an absolute disaster! (She gets three carts out of five.)
The other real contender in the “House of Carts” series is former City Council Member Eric Imker. He might be the only candidate in any of the races who have taken serious positions on the traffic crisis at the intersection of highways 74 and 54 towards Coweta County.
Imker was the only candidate to say, “Work with GDOT to stop the no-value added $9M expenditure on the intersection of GA54/74 and retarget that money to better improve GA54 East & West bound.” I was personally in the meeting with the GDOT engineer who referred to the lame intersection proposal as a “budget-constrained project” which means they only had $9-10 million in the budget so we have to settle for a project that will provide almost no traffic relief.
I was impressed that Imker realized that if the city accepts the GDOT’s ineffective low-ball proposal that it will put us at the back of the line for funding a viable long-term solution for the intersection.
He also stands with most local citizens on not wasting tax dollars saying, “We’re not doing yet another ‘Traffic Study’ [on the 74/54 intersection]. We know the problem. No need to waste another $100,000 on it.” Also, Imker has made it clear he is opposing residential and commercial rezoning on Huddleston Road which would be a nightmare and a significant burden to the existing traffic calamity in that area.
Out of all the candidates, Imker definitely has the best grasp of the government finances, other candidates have acknowledged this. The city budget and the ability to hold costs down, maintain reserves, and prioritize expenditures in what could be a rocky economy is paramount. (He gets four carts out of five.)
Now for some housekeeping on the other two races.
The quick view on the other two City Council races is as follows. The solid selections for candidates who oppose building thousands of apartments and rezoning corporate/industrial land to residential zoning are Phil Crane in Post 4 (https://www.facebook.com/VoteCranePTC/) and Gretchen Caola in Post 3 (https://www.caolaforptcouncil.com/meet_gretchen).
If you want to know why you should not vote for an incumbent on the current City Council, it’s all in this piece: https://thecitizen.com/2021/07/22/council-members-ernst-and-madden-get-thumbs-down-for-4-more-years/.
Turnout for municipal elections is normally very low. We cannot afford the low turnout this time around. Please go downstairs at the Peachtree City Library and cast an early vote.
Steve Brown
Peachtree City, Ga
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Commission.]
If we come out of this WITHOUT Learnard, Ferrante, Ernst and Madden we will be blessed.
Honestly all of those are better options than Eric. We don’t need a holier-than-thou narcissist having power over our great town.
I remember when the Imkers got blasted in the public square for saying kids chalk drawings on the cart path were vandalism. Criminalizing children’s drawings in a family community is a disqualifier in my book.
0/5 carts.
What a sorry attempt to disparage someone. I had nothing to do with that.
Try again.
I left the plural s on the end to be cordial. But I can’t imagine the sentiments are too different across the table. Hundreds of people saw it.
Chalk writing can be beautiful when the art is on your driveway or private property. Who is going to monitor what’s acceptable art or just plain trash talk? Disqualifier, I don’t think so.
Yea it is unless you’re a crazy person. It rains like every day here in the summer and washes away. If you live here and think kids chalk drawings on the ground are Vandalism – you made a big mistake in moving to a family community, and probably need to move to a community that’s only 65+. It’s absolutely and totally against what Peachtree City was founded for. And the Imkers have shown they don’t have the social skills to understand the fabric of this community.
I like that you comment without a name. I did not say vandalism, just put it some place else. I will say that you should have left your politics/policies where you came from.
Correcting the record … for the final time hopefully.
Eric F. Imker (I am EFI-from-PTC) never supported the 2012 TSPLOST years ago. Saying so is an outright lie. I never supported it and no one has any documentation to say I ever did. It was a loser proposition for PTC all around. Of course I examined it carefully and when I saw it had such ridiculously low revenue for PTC is made no sense.
Also, those that have no clue about how to leverage SPLOST money should not being trying to mislead citizens. Clearly you CANNOT transfer SPLOST money to the General Fund. But you can use extra SPLOST money on identified priority one projects, road and cart path maintenance being the primary one.
We should be using the EXTRA (above what was planned) $2.5M(!) per year of SPLOST money we’re now getting and applying it to the road and cart path maintenance priority one SPLOST project thereby not needing to use as much budgeted General Fund money. This “frees up” the General Fund money and now we can use it for pay raises, lowering stormwater bills and imagine this, still have enough for a half mill tax cut!
Let those that do not know how to manage a budget step aside and allow those that got us out of the $22M deficit in 2010 more forward. Your welcome and thank you. Eric Imker
Obviously, familiarity with even rudimentary rules of grammar, syntax, and punctuation are not a prerequisite for elected office in PTC.
Obviously, familiarity with even rudimentary rules of grammar, syntax, and punctuation is not a prerequisite for elected office in PTC.
(Apologies – I hit “post” without proof reading.)
Self inflicted. Nice job.
You are right. I deserve the derision. Like the old blues song says, “Before you accuse me; take a look at yourself.”
You most assuredly did support it and voted for the censure for me not supporting it. Remember that legal document you signed retracting your accusations?
You forgot some history in the newspaper.
Mayor Haddix: Regional T-SPLOST is a net negative for Fayette taxpayers
“[Fayetteville] Mayor [Kenneth] Steele, a devotee of ARC, transit (yes, in 2008 he did try to lecture me at a Chamber luncheon about Peachtree City and my being parochial on not supporting rail here) and urbanization (no, we are not an urban county) led the campaign to remove me from the Regional Transportation Roundtable (RTR) because I dared to suggest there was a better way.
He was supported by three on the Peachtree City Council in a resolution (note the majority seems to do a resolution a year against me, which is interesting) and the mayors of Brooks and Woolsey.”
Doug and I opposed the tax. You, Learnard and Fleisch supported. So who is the liar?
Where are all of those items in the improved tax list? You cannot add what is not there.
Correction: approved not improved.
Smartest guy in the room, just ask him^^^^^^
I won’t dignify an answer to your comments. Have you ever told the truth.
Apparently Mr Brown did not have time to visit all of the City Council Candidates websites. All four Candidates for Post 4 oppose building additional multi-family housing.
It seems the only thing negative anyone has to say about Nick Ferrante is that… well I’m not quite sure, because the criticisms are actually about a New York Congressman, a Vermont Senator, a Georgia Senator, and a failed candidate for Georgia Governor. It seems that nobody from the local good ol boy system can be bothered to actually substantively address any of Nick’s platform issues. It’s just mud-slinging and smear tactics to hide the fact that virtually everyone else running has so much baggage that the real fear is not that PTC voters will switch, but that people who gave up voting in this town might actually return in droves and put him in.
Everyone running has a long history of accomplishing little to nothing but embarrassing this city with petty bickering and political tomfoolery. It’s time we had someone from outside the political establishment take the reigns for a while. I know some people doubt Nick’s bonafides as a leader, but I feel pretty confident that he couldn’t do worse.
Oh yes he could.. starting with the PAC he has hitched himself too! Soros funded, de-fund the police platform. I am not interested in turning PTC into Portland’s new lifestyle or any other of the messes that PAC is funding.
Or turning the Kmart parking lot into a open container brew-ha-ha!
See his drunken video rage on Facebook hanging at Line Creek Brewery! 3 strikes he is out. No trust there.
I am voting for two new council people and Kim. Not Nick!
I am certain you are not sure.
I am sure Nick is a nice guy. Mayor of PTC. I don’t think so. Most of us don’t want to turn this into California East.
Let me add, I have been quite vocal about the waste proposed for the intersection. I am the only candidate that actually has a workable plan, that being reversible lanes.
Steve, when I was mayor you forget the Councilman I worked with on many projects to save the city money and do improvements. It was almost always a three to vote. The three being Fleisch, Learnard and Imker. All they did was constantly attacked me. Remember the censure? Remember their support of the 2012 TSPLOST, which included apartments and mass transit on Huddleston? Remember them wanting to build a shopping mall in West Village? Remember dissolving the development authority, stopping economic development? They actually told me that I had to do what they wanted because they were three vote.
Just as you know them now, they have no interest in cooperation or compromise. Even in their campaign it is always
“I will” with the two of them. They were always in the majority.
Imker has no understanding of traffic. His plans are a bypass which will never happen and shutting down turn lanes during rush hour, which DOT will not allow.
He talks about transferring SPLOST money to the general fund, which cannot be done. He talks about ensuring we get full use of the money with his plan. All of which he is taking from existing law.