Last week, I wrote a column on Mayor Kim Learnard and her accomplices attempting to recreate some of the long-lasting mistakes made in past years (see https://thecitizen.com/2024/09/09/opinion-look-out-multi-story-apartments-are-back-facing-peachtree-city).
Learnard keeps pushing stacked multi-family complexes and denying she is doing it. She and her friends keep pushing for affordable housing, mainly apartment complexes.
One of Learnard’s former accomplices, former Councilman Mike King, supports the new apartments near the Highways 54 and 74 intersection.
Lest you forget, King was one of the council members who kowtowed to the real estate developers and rezoned all the land up MacDuff Parkway to residential and multi-family. For decades, that land had been earmarked for corporate headquarters and light industrial use (also known as revenue-positive uses).
Not a clue
The dangerous side of Mayor Learnard is not that she knows little about land planning and transportation but that she makes no attempt to learn and covers her tracks with false promises and misinformation.
Instead of working to get a better design, Learnard approved of the current intersection construction project at Highways 54 and 74. She said it would relieve traffic, but GDOT said east-west traffic would remain virtually the same. She doubled down, saying there would be a second phase coming soon, but GDOT says that is all for the next 15 years (see: https://thecitizen.com/2024/04/22/future-of-54-74-intersection-interview-with-gdot-traffic-engineer/).
The same is true for land planning. Learnard loves the “affordable housing” bandwagon but knows little about what constitutes affordable housing and how to keep those units affordable. As with transportation, she is willing to take some land use shots in the dark and see if they work (Note: It’s easy to do that with other people’s money).
The problem is that those are expensive, long-term mistakes. Communities that prosper avoid such errors.
The inevitable cliff
I enjoy following Seattle, Washington (population approximately 750,000). The rise and fall of Seattle is an object lesson for all communities.
Seattle had it all. The winds of success were at Seattle’s back, and they rose as an important technology, commerce, and industrial center with an outstanding quality of life. The median household income is over $100,000.
Names like Amazon, Starbucks, Deloitte Digital, Costco Wholesale, Microsoft, Boeing, and others catapulted Seattle into the stratosphere of wonderful places to live and work. However, the success also bred political evolution from a “progressive” pro-business stance into an overbearing far-left nanny government.
As the community’s wealth increased, political ideology changed to a more Marxist form of free distribution of goods and services (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”). This is not hyperbole, as Seattle voters have elected communist party candidates on the city council.
Seattle began to think of the government as the solution to all problems. The local government believed that everyone should be able to live in prosperous Seattle/King County, even if they had nothing to offer the community in return.
A significant push to create affordable housing threw the stable philosophy that made a strong, vibrant community off the cliff. Affordable apartment buildings were constructed, and people from all over the West went to the promised land of Seattle.
Soon after George Floyd’s death, the forces behind the changes in politics and policies turned on law enforcement. The affordable areas had turned into protest and rioting hot spots. The rioters took over a six-block section of the city named Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ.
Today, according to T.A. Frank, writing for Unherd, “Seattle’s core looks like a pockmarked ghost town. Businesses on both sides of Third Avenue, a major thoroughfare, are boarded up. Blocks from the Four Seasons hotel and the Fairmont Hotel, tents crowd the sidewalks, and drug users sit under awnings holding pieces of foil over lighter flames. Traffic enforcement is minimal to nonexistent. The year 2020 saw a 68% spike in homicides, the highest number in 26 years, and the year 2021 saw a 40% surge in 911 calls for shots fired and a 100% surge in drive-by shootings. Petty crime plagues every neighborhood of the city, and downtown businesses have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund their own security.”
Seattle’s clueless Mayor, Jenny Durkan, described the massive destruction as “patriotism.” Asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo how long the CHAZ would last, Durkan quipped, “I don’t know. We could have the summer of love.”
According to T.A. Frank, “Seattle’s city attorney, Pete Holmes, and King County’s prosecuting attorney, Dan Satterberg, had always taken a lenient approach to so-called quality-of-life crimes, but after June 2020 they began to ease up across the board toward a range of other offenses. Most of those who committed vandalism or looting during the protests escaped any punishment.”
The influx of newcomers with nothing to offer was impactful.
Stupid actions beget damaging results
I think we can all agree that those hard-working median $100,000 income families were not the ones tearing the city apart.
Many small and medium-sized businesses called it quits, and big corporations are looking to move elsewhere because of the city government’s unresponsiveness.
Elected in 2022, Mayor Bruce Harrell said, “The truth is the status quo is unacceptable.” His state of the city address continued, “It seems like every day I hear stories of longtime small businesses closing their doors for good or leaving our city.”
I am sure there will be anonymous comments under this column claiming that I hate all kinds of people for citing how strong quality-of-life cities fail. The name-calling proves nothing. Say what you will, but it is an excellent case study on how government policy and official ideology changes can ruin even the strongest communities.
On the affordable housing side, Seattle is in such a quandary that even the left-leaning Seattle Times is worried and asking for reforms. In August 2024, the newspaper admitted to “dysfunction in the affordable housing system.”
Hard-working Seattle residents are watching millions upon millions of their tax dollars being dumped into rescuing area affordable housing just to keep it afloat with the latest installment to private multi-family providers at $14 million.
According to the Seattle Times editorial board, affordable housing “landlords report that some tenants are not paying rent, a trend that worsened during the pandemic. At the same time, housing operators are having to repair damaged units while insurance costs spiral ever higher.”
One of the affordable housing apartment owners, Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), noted that it “faces serious issues regarding rent collection.” LIHI reported to the city government, “The vast majority of those who don’t pay rent have sufficient income to pay but choose not to. Although we offer payment plans, those who accept them do not follow through with them.”
There are also reports of criminal activity in their affordable housing market and the costs that this incurs for the affordable housing owners.
The editorial board concludes, “The bottom line: Revenues are falling while expenses are rising.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that is how cities with everything going for them allow their elected officials to bring it all tumbling down.
Please, do not think for a moment that we cannot fall just as hard in Fayette County. All it takes is a few incompetent elected officials who could care less about why we all moved here in the first place.
Tell the mayor and city council members that you want market-priced housing and that we have more than enough apartments already.
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]
I’ll give Mr. Brown credit for writing, “Seattle began to think of the government as the solution to all problems.” It may, or may not, be true. But many act as if the Government is their god.
Well, it seems our most prolific opinion writer has his facts askew once again. The MacDuff Parkway completion and rezoning occurred years prior to my being on Council. I’m quite sure that our residents in Centennial and others along the southern MacDuff Parkway are relieved to have a northern exit after waiting the best part of a decade. He certainly omits the fact that the extension and bridge was done at no cost to the city. I’ll go on to say that the residents of both Cresswind and Everton are great additions to Peachtree City.
As far as my being in favor, all I can say is that it wouldn’t hurt to to consider, but the failed one term mayor somehow makes assumptions out of his fourth point of contact.
It seems Seattle is not unburdened by what has been.
Thank you Steve! So many folks fail to see the potential community destruction of these policies. We need to continue to say NO in Peachtree City!