City Council member Carol Fritz

keeps announcing that "there is no conspiracy." How should we

describe what is going on in our midst? The Planning Commission voted

down Home Depot. The appeal was crammed into the last city council meeting

of 1999 when City Council member and developer Jim Pace could have one

final vote in office and the appeal was overturned. At that same meeting,

Fritz stated that she did not want the Home Depot in PTC but she conveniently

voted in favor of the project based upon the legal opinion of City Attorney

Jim Webb who has a shared business interest with one of the big box developers.

Afterwards Fritz was given

the necessary information and was offered help in researching and creating

a big box ordinance and no action was taken. The City Council members

refused to consider a moratorium on big boxes; hence, two more big box

site plan applications were subsequently turned into City Hall. Later,

City Council member Annie McMenamin introduced the idea of producing a

big box ordinance that judging by the latest wording seems to be nothing

more than a political smokescreen because of the exemption for the developers.

All of the negative impacts

of big boxes are in the preamble to the big box ordinance and it is a

shame that many of the council members are looking the other way. Unfortunately,

City Attorney Rick Lindsey is meeting with the attorney representing Wal-Mart

outside the public forum in order to "rectify" some of the arguments

for not allowing the store in Peachtree City. To make matters worse, Planning

Commission member Willis Granger was not reappointed. Granger was a proven

quality of life advocate and he opposed the big boxes.

The city council continues

to rely upon Rick Lindsey for the legal opinions concerning the vested

rights of the big box developers even though the top partner in the firm

has a financial business relationship with one of the developers. Should

not they be concerned that such a situation might arouse suspicions of

a violation of trust, clouded judgement and favoritism from the citizenry?

The city council toppled an

effort to allow big boxes to pay their fair share of the jail impact fees

and now they will pay just a little more than a 10,000 square-foot business

and we are stuck paying the difference. Can we say that this is all a

coincidence?

Why protect a special interest

and its stores when they can be proven statistically to have a negative

impact on crime, traffic and our small businesses only for them to move

away when a better location comes along? We need to look at what is happening

to the once prosperous (and big box laden) Snellville (AJC, Oct. 16) and

take a glimpse at what the future holds.

Why is Council member Dan Tennant

the only council member in favor of truly restricting all big box stores

in Peachtree City?

Steve Brown

Peachtree City

[email protected]