Government

Commission to get first crack at budget Thursday

Thursday at 5 p.m., the Fayette County Commission will conduct its first workshop meeting on the 2013-2014 budget proposed by County Manager Steve Rapson.

The meeting will be at the county’s Stonewall government complex in downtown Fayetteville.

No property tax increase is planned and the budget is projected to add $728,964 to the county’s reserve fund by the end of the year, providing $33.48 million in reserve and rainy day funds. Read More»

Cuts remain, but attrition saves some Fayette teachers’ jobs

Despite large cuts in the number of teachers’ positions in the Fayette County School System for the coming school year, attrition has become the friend of those remaining.

A lot of people either decided not to seek another year of employment with the local schools or chose retirement. That means fewer remaining teachers face getting handed pink slips.

What began as the elimination of 144 job positions of certified staff such as teachers and counselors has been reduced to a total of 18 current certified staff without positions for next year. Read More»

Former PTC Mayor Logsdon to try another run

Former Peachtree City Mayor Harold Logsdon has announced he will seek re-election to the office he held for one term.

And he’s running against a man he sued for libel.

Logsdon, who settled a libel suit against current Mayor Don Haddix last year, served as mayor from 2005 to 2009.

In his final year in office, the city eliminated a number of public works positions as landscaping services were cut and shifted to private landscaping companies via contract. The change was necessary at the time to provide a deep savings in the budget, Logsdon said at the time. Read More»

Fayette BoE for 1st time in years to limit spending to income

After a painful readjustment to five years of falling revenues, the Fayette County School System will plan to spend next school year only as much as it actually takes in.

The adoption of the Fayette County School System’s FY 2014 budget is about a month away, and a look at the tentative budget shows a slight drop in revenues beginning in July.

But the difference in this year and last is that the school system with a proposed $162 million budget would have an $11.5 million fund balance built in to begin establishing a goal of retaining up to 10 percent of its budget in reserve. Read More»

Federal judge orders district voting in Fayette

Fayette County is about to get district voting for all five seats on both the Fayette County Commission and the Fayette County Board of Education.

County Commission Chairman Steve Brown, while expressing his astonishment that the federal judge brushed past a significant legal hurdle to find for the plaintiffs, said Tuesday afternoon that an appeal is not certain. Read More»

PTC Council debates sales tax for roads, paths

A proposed countywide special sales tax, up for a vote in November, would provide $12.8 million to Peachtree City over a two-year period.

The city is almost certain to earmark much if not all of those proceeds toward road and cart path projects, as the city has no other plan to fund them. Such projects used to be paid for out of the city’s general fund, but that process stopped in 2005 when the transportation sales tax money started coming in. Read More»

Fayette's stormwater problems not that bad, Chase says

Fayette County’s stormwater problems are neither that urgent nor that extensive, says retired biologist Dennis Chase, an occasional Citizen columnist and outspoken advocate for environmental issues.

That caution has been added to the conversation surrounding Fayette County’s proposed stormwater SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) that could face voter scrutiny in November.

Chase says the project needs have been significantly overstated. Read More»

Fayette BoE to outsource schools’ janitorial services

The Fayette County Board of Education next week is expected to hire GCA Services Group to outsource the school system’s custodial services as one of the cost-cutting measures designed to help balance the 2013-2014 budget. The move will come with initial savings of $300,000 while providing staff transitioning to GCA the means to maintain their current rate of pay.

GCA provides janitorial and custodial services in a variety of industries and is currently serving school systems in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. Read More»

Fayette: No tax increase

Fayette County’s proposed 2013-2014 budget will avoid a property tax increase and also will be balanced due to a host of personnel cuts across county departments.

The county has eliminated 32 full-time positions, shrinking the government force to 706 full-time and 13.3 part-time employees. At the same time, the budget has made room for a new information systems analyst for information technology along with an assistant water plant manager as required by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, officials said. Read More»

F'ville crews work to repair sinkhole in Hwy. 85

Fayetteville work crews on Wednesday were putting the finishing touches on the repair of a sinkhole that developed along Ga. Highway 85 just south of Ga. Highway 54 adjacent to the Fayette County government complex.

The sinkhole near the county complex and across from Johnson Street developed due to an old water line that began leaking. Read More»