More than 3 dozen citizens filled the seats and lined the walls at the Oct. 20 Peachtree City Council meeting, but this was an expectant rather than an angry crowd. By the middle of the meeting, most had quietly left the chamber, satisfied with the council’s actions.
By that time, the council had unanimously voted to reconstruct the Riley Field track adjacent to Peachtree City Elementary School on Wisdom Road, abandon and turn over to the Planterra Ridge Homeowners Association a “portion” of a public street — Kelly Green — and adopt a restrictive new dog-tethering ordinance.
Rear decal on golf carts — on hold
Conspicuously absent was any agenda item about requiring a third license decal to be affixed to more than 11,000 golf carts to make them visible from the rear of the carts.
The council obviously had been hearing from their constituents and had said yes to three of the issues and decided to wait on the additional cart decal.
Why the wait? Because the unofficial public response was split down the middle, said Mayor Kim Learnard. The council wants more input — plus a fifth council member to bring it to its full 5-member strength. That fifth member will be decided in the city Post 3 election and likely December runoff.
Riley track gets a new top
The Riley track — the city’s only public walking-running facility — is showing its age with peeling and missing track topping and asphalt potholes. The city had budgeted for its refurbishment over a half-million dollars, but with some of the work to be done by city crews, negotiated a bid price of $457,000, well under budget.
Dozens of Planterra Ridge subdivision residents had made regular trips to council meetings over the past several months, often letting their elementary school-age children plead for relief from the speeding cut-through traffic on the residential streets.
The HOA will get title to a portion of the road and will be in charge of a gate to block through traffic on Kelly Green for part of the day.
New stricter rules for tethering dogs
Another group of interested citizens had been lobbying the council during public comment periods for new, stricter city rules to protect animals whose owners have tied them to tethers in residential yards.
Council voted 4-to-0 to adopt new rules to restrict tethering dogs to certain hours with specific limits on how that is done.
The council also approved buying a “custom rescue engine” for the Fire Department. Once the $774,866 engine is ordered, it will be ready for delivery in three years.
The council heard an impassioned plea for a residential zoning variance to allow an encroachment into the rear setback to build a covered entertainment area. The pitch: zoning rules from the 1970s need to give some wiggle room for people wanting to improve and upgrade the value of their homes. Two council members, Phil Prebor and Mike King, agreed. Mayor Learnard and Councilman Frank Destadio said no. The vote tied, the variance was rejected.
Two weeks prior, the council had approved a significant expansion of the city’s alcohol rules. It voted 4-to-0 in favor of allowing mixed-drinks-to-go from participating city restaurants.
I can only say please vote for Suzanne Brown and Laura P Johnson !
I wonder if I will have to drive through the Hwy 54/74 intersection when I pickup and return my Planterra Ridge resident grandchildren for meetings, lessons, practice and games? I don’t live in Planterra Ridge, but off McIntosh.
Cart possibly.. anywhere off of McINTOSH would be a fairly easy drive.
Very good decision to invest in maintaining Riley track! Thank you for listening to your constituents.
Yes with an average of 64 users daily (statistics provided during the council meeting) I am sure that the 0.16% of our population that we are spending almost a half million dollars on will enjoy the new surface. Good grief.
It’s a city amenity that needed to be fixed or removed, Hometown. They made the right choice I believe. However, the city spent $4M on the dam spillway years back. This includes a multi-use path on top that who uses now? If memory serves, the city won an appeal for a category (II) dam construction. Its cost was to be between $1.5-$2.5M, whereas a category (I) would’ve been $5-7M. So in the final analysis, Council likes to spend money – when, where and while it can, but more critically, at a higher cost. Meaning an outright over-spend and the taxpayers be damned.
Doon based on the statistics that were presented I would have been happy to see the track either removed or repurposed as some other form of recreation/outdoor use. As for the spillway, I live near there and I watch people all day long use the cart path and the path over the spillway. You are hard-pressed to find two minutes go by without somebodyCrossing. As for the expenditures, some of the spillway was way overboard by my estimation. Not sure how much legal counsel played into that but the boys to prevent boats is way over the top. No telling how many dozens of tons Of cement they poured on both sides of the lake and also in the lake bed. Just crazy
Hometown, thanks for the path use update. I’ve seen less but no doubt you’ve seen things with greater frequency. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the look of the dam and the area but to me it went well over – by about $1M. As for the Riley track refurbishment getting completed for $450K, one can only hope but it will be a challenging one. And when you think about it, wise spending on one project would have easily paid for the other.
You guys must build a lot of spillways…you should have bid and saved us a ton of money.
Spyglass I’m not an engineer but even I know that it doesn’t take tens of thousands of pounds of cement to hold a cable in place securely. Take a good close look sometime.
I agree the spillway was a bit overboard and I would have done some things differently. However, I understand the overall engineering design is “spot on” for what we needed and built. That information comes from a recently retired and highly experienced subject matter expert. I just don’t care for some of the aesthetics and how that particular environment changed.
That is crazy. Yes, they should have just gotten rid of it. Let the people walk the cart paths as they please. Plenty of those could have benefited from $500k worth of upgrades.
Thanks Council for deciding to fix Riley Field track, its right decision!! When will it be completed?