In PTC, the time is now to 'pull up the ladder'

In

PTC, the time is now to 'pull up the ladder'

I got a pretty good

laugh reading the letter from Mr. William Gilmer

published in this newspaper Feb. 2. While I understand

Mr. Gilmer's reasons for feeling the need to defend the

building profession, many of the comments he made were

not in touch with the problems faced in Peachtree City

today.

If you follow Mr. Gilmer's

reasoning, the easy answer to solving the problem of

overdevelopment requires just three simple steps. First,

we need to pass a law that prevents any new immigrants

from moving into our city. I would assume this would

especially apply to the most pesky of all immigrants, the

ex-Yankee. Sure, passing this kind of law would probably

mean our city could be nominated for the first annual

John Rocker Good Citizen Award, but what the heck.

The second step is to stop

those foolhardy citizens who believe in having more than

two children. Yes, all of you who want to have a

"large family" you need to do it somewhere

else. If you already live here and have more than two

children, perhaps you can pawn one off on a neighbor who

hasn't hit their quota yet. The one child per family

quota has worked in China, hasn't it?

The third step may prove

the trickiest. Somehow we need to find a way to convince

the automobile-loving population of our area to give up

their cars and either find work closer to home, or to

lobby for MARTA buses to come down our way. If we just

keep building with no restraint, we can make the roads a

virtual gridlock and force people to leave their SUVs and

minivans parked in their garages gathering dust. Maybe we

can all get jobs at the new big boxes and simply walk to

work. I sure hope they will pay a bit more than minimum

wage, though.

The way I see it, there is

an easier solution, one that doesn't involve fences to

keep out immigrants or forced birth control to keep down

family sizes. The best solution, the one that we can

accomplish, is to control high density growth and deny

any move to annex more land into our city.

Zoning rules and other

regulations are what has helped make our city the great

place that it is. Without those rules and regulations

builders and developers like Mr. Gilmer wouldn't be able

to market homes here for the prices they can now demand.

No one is trying to find a "scapegoat" for our

problems; we merely want to find solutions.

There comes a point when we

need to "pull up the ladder" and close out new

development in our city. There will always be resale

homes for those who want to move here, and those

newcomers will not add to the population totals (unless

they have a large family).

Our city is built out, and

unless we move forward with unneeded annexations or

decide to cover every bit of green space with more

cluster homes, now seems like a good time to say

"When!" Let's worry about those that live here

now, about their safety and well-being, and not be too

concerned about those who may want to live here in the

future.

Steve Fodor

Peachtree City