Peachtree City

Mayor Steve Brown is upset that a letter reassuring employees of the tennis

center and amphitheater that their jobs were safe wasn't immediately delivered

to them.

In a letter

to the editor in Wednesday's Citizen, Brown chastised Development Authority

Executive Director Virgil Christian for not delivering those letters immediately

after receiving them Monday.

But Tate Godfrey,

the chairman of the authority, told The Citizen Thursday that holding

the letters was his decision.

"It was

my call, not Virgil's, to do it this way," Godfrey said.

The decision

was made so the letters could all be distributed at the same time to employees,

which would eliminate various rumors spreading, Godfrey said.

Brown called

that reasoning "a lame excuse."

Godfrey pointed

out that the employees of the tennis center and amphitheater are not city

employees. He compared the mayor's wishes to immediately deliver the letter

to the mayor asking the CEO of a local company to do the same thing.

"Virgil's

recommendation was to present the letter to the two staffs during staff

meetings," Godfrey said.

Godfrey said

he told Brown that the decision to withhold the letter was his and not

Christian's during a meeting Tuesday morning. But the letter accusing

Christian appeared in Wednesday's paper.

In the letter,

Brown accused Christian of "milking the employees' anguish in the

hopes that 20 more tennis participants might send the mayor an angry e-mail."

The Peachtree

City Development Authority runs both the tennis center and amphitheater

although both facilities are owned by the city. Brown contends that a

separate sports and entertainment authority should manage the facilities,

leaving the authority to focus on economic development.

When asked

how the move would improve the operations of the tennis center and amphitheater,

Brown immediately pointed to the under-construction $2.5 million addition

of the tennis center, citing the increased operating costs the new building

and courts will have.

"I certainly

don't want the city paying for that," Brown said, referring to the

increased operating costs.

Brown also

said he felt the facilities could benefit from being run by a body that

could focus on them alone and not economic development.

Brown has stated

before that he opposed the way the expansion project was bid. Fellow Councilman

Steve Rapson also opposed the expansion previously, claiming the project

was so large that it should listed as a question on the ballot in November's

bond referendum so citizens could decide if it was a worthwhile project.

Brown said

the only benefit of having covered courts he has been told is the ability

to attract tournaments. But he feels the economic impact of the tournaments

is dramatically overstated.

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