Although I couldn’t attend the last Fayette Board of Commissioners meeting, I contacted a friend who was able to go. He said there was another large crowd in attendance.
People are finally beginning to wake up and, more importantly, show up.
By the first meeting in April of this 2011, more local citizens had attended Board of Commissioners meetings than all of the meetings in 2010 combined. The main reason for the boom in attendance is people are very angry over the previous board’s and the three current holdovers’ total lack of respect for their constituents.
If you called to question any of the actions of the previous board, you would get a stern lecture from the past Chairman Jack Smith on why your opinion didn’t matter. Herb Frady, the current chairman, is no better. In fact, Chairman Frady can get downright cruel with his fellow commissioners and the audience.
For years, ex-Chairman Smith and Fayetteville Mayor Ken Steele fooled everyone into thinking they opposed mass transit in Fayette County. The problem was they kept voting in favor of mass transit plans that included trains and buses in Fayette County.
If you don’t believe me, go look at the November 13, 2008 meeting minutes of the Atlanta Regional Commission Transportation and Air Quality Committee. Both Smith and Steele approved the regional mass transit plan that included bus and train routes in Fayette County.
Mayor Steele is running around the county acting like the toddler who stole the cookie from the cookie jar and totally denying everything. Even more damaging to Mayor Steele’s reputation was ex-Chairman Smith admission of their votes on mass transit in a Citizen article entitled, “Commission Chairman Smith explains his vote for mass transit in Fayette.”
Sorry, Mayor Steele, but you can’t have it both ways. We’re not stupid enough to believe that you continually supported a mass transit plan you didn’t agreed with.
Commissioner Steve Brown put a resolution before the Board of Commissioners to withdraw Fayette County from all the regional mass transit plans. Commissioner Brown, in front of an audience at the Fayette Republican breakfast, asked Mayor Steele to show support for his resolution.
Of course, Mayor Steele didn’t say a word and Chairman Frady, Commissioner Lee Hearn and Commissioner Robert Horgan voted the resolution down and decided to keep our county in the mass transit plans.
I really hope the voters in Fayetteville are going to show up at the polls in November and send Mayor Steele packing.
Mayor Steele is as much responsible for the road to nowhere West Fayetteville Bypass as Chairman Frady, Commissioner Hearn and Commissioner Horgan. What a waste!
The people got a small victory at the last Board of Commissioners meeting by humiliating Chairman Frady, Commissioner Hearn and Commissioner Horgan into continuing to allow citizens to speak at the beginning of Board of Commissioners meetings.
I try to record key issues discussed at the Board of Commissioners meetings and put them on Youtube.com for local citizens to see. You can hear the audio recording of the meetings on the county’s web site (www.fayettecountyga.gov).
I invite you to please come to the meetings whenever possible because the people like Mayor Steele and the three holdovers on the Board of Commissioners need to know we are watching them.
President Thomas Jefferson said something over two hundred years ago that still rings true today. He said, “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
David Barlow
Tyrone, Ga.
