What is going on in the tiff

between the Peachtree City Council and the city's Development Authority

and should you even care?

Second question first: A few

people, ably represented by letters from an almost mayoral candidate and

a defeated one, are up in arms and seemed poised to remain in a state

of high dudgeon for the next four years of the Steve Brown administration.

Tennis players, relax. Amphitheater

patrons, relax.

No local elected politician

is going to padlock the tennis center and force desperate racqueteers

onto the mean streets of Peachtree City. No local elected politician is

going to deprive any sensitive soul of the pleasure of drinking wine under

the pines and sharing hors d'oeuvres chatter to the drowned-out background

of rock 'n' roll has-beens.

No, nothing sacred is going

to be taken away (although I wish both venues which are publicly owned

would end up answerable to publicly elected officials).

Now, should you care? Read

on and determine.

The tussle is over tax money

and power. The ones who have wielded the power in Peachtree City and thus

have controlled the money are unaccustomed to being out of power and out

of control. They are screaming bloody murder in the meantime. That's what

the letters in this issue from the two former candidates for mayor are

really about.

With a light heart, one could

describe the situation (tongue firmly in cheek) in historical, even medieval,

terms.

For years, Peachtree City was

a company town, beholden to "The Developer." Between "The

Developer" and the royal line of succession there arose a complicated,

but complementary, symbiosis of governmental and business interests. There

was a route to power and only the anointed received the blessing of the

Peachtree City aristocracy.

Now the commoners have increased

in the fiefdom and have wrested the reins of power from the anointing

aristocracy, and the lords and ladies of the manors and their vassals

are unhappy.

Between tee time and the clubhouse,

some of the anointed even contemplate a palace coup to oust those interlopers

who don't know their place.

It's a nasty, internecine mud

battle, and, though very local and parochial, begs comparison to the Clintonista

years.

A development authority in

most places is a strange brew, a mix of entrepreneurs and bankers and

elected officials, all trying to woo faraway industries to the local industrial

park. In Peachtree City's case, the industrial park has been controlled

Let's see how things look,

and discover what you may not know otherwise. What we have on the Authority

are the following job descriptions, as provided by city staff:

1. The chairman, who is employed

to the Authority-controlled tennis center, but who until a year ago, worked

for guess who? "The Developer."

2. A banker, whose bank held

the multi-million-dollar promissory note on "The Developer's"

land in Peachtree City, including the industrial park.

3. A "real estate consultant"

who for years worked as a paid consultant to "The Developer."

4. An attorney board member

who also serves as the lawyer for the Airport Authority, which itself

is involved in this current tax control tussle.

5. A residential real estate

developer.

6. A "financial services"

person.

7. And a former member of the

City Council, a dentist, who resigned his seat on Council to take a spot

on the (then) relatively unknown Development Authority.

A tangled web of interlocking

relationships, isn't it?

Individually, I'm sure these

are all honorable people volunteering to serve their community. But as

a group, the Authority seems a bit clubby. And, sadly, a bit grasping

grasping for unaccountable power and unelected privilege.

As a group, the Authority wants

control over city assets it does not own and power to spend taxes it did

not levy. And maybe that's not in the best interests of all the citizens

of Peachtree City.

Who should control public tax

money and public assets the City Council you elected, or the Development

Authority you did not elect?

My money is on the ones we

can throw out. Nobody, not even the Council that appointed them, can touch

the Authority, however unwisely the unelected group may act.

Taxation without representation?

The concept has a familiar ring to it.