But perhaps we can cut to the

heart of this problem. First, you are assuming the facts Mr. Lenox provided

are true. The mayor would have you believe that the county is willfully

violating House Bill 489.

In truth, HB489 was created

to prevent county and city governments from providing duplicate services

and thereby charging their citizens twice for those services. The bill

required that each county and its cities meet together and work out a

plan to prevent such duplication and to submit that plan to the Department

of Community Affairs (DCA) for approval. Fayette County and all of its

cities did meet, repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time and did jointly

submit such a plan to DCA. That agency responded via a letter dated August

1999 that the plan was approved and that Fayette County was in compliance

with HB489.

Secondly, Mr. Lenox would have

you believe that HB489 is being violated because Peachtree City citizens

are being unfairly charged county taxes for services that the city is

also providing.

Unfortunately, he is wrong

again. Georgia Law OCGA 36-70-24(1) states that when a municipality chooses

to provide a higher standard of service than the base level of service

that is being provided in the geographic boundaries by the county, such

service shall not be considered a duplication of services.

Counties in Georgia are constitutionally

created; cities are not. Counties are required to provide a basic level

of service that is available to all citizens within the county and the

cost of maintaining those services is the responsibility of all citizens

within that county. As a result, contrary to the premise underlying the

mayor's arguments, when Peachtree City voluntarily decides to provide

certain services to its citizens that already exist within the county,

the basic county services are not suddenly rendered solely for the benefit

of unincorporated area residents and the cities are not exempt from their

share of county taxes to help maintain those countywide services.

Finally, Mr. Lenox seems to

indicate that this is a county citizen vs. city citizen situation and

that the county commissioners are out to take advantage of the cities.

Three of the five commissioners live within the cities: Mr. Frady lives

in Peachtree City, Mr. Dunn and I live in Fayetteville. To imply that

we would purposefully choose to charge ourselves higher taxes is asinine

at best. Each of us are taxpayers and none of us are so wealthy or so

stupid as to want to pay any more than our fair share of taxes either.

I submit that Mr. Lenox is

sincere in his pursuit in serving the citizens of Peachtree City, but

in this particular matter he is sincerely wrong. The bottom line is simply

this: the mayor and the commissioners disagree, period. That does not

mean our disagreements and differences of opinion make us villains nor

does it mean we don't care. It just means we are all trying to do the

job we were elected to do.

Linda Wells

Vice Chairman

Fayette County Commission

A.G. VanLandingham

County Commissioner

Herb Frady

County Commissioner