Consolidation would give 'thieving' commissioners more power
Editor:
Consolidation is a bad idea. (I risk being labeled a troglodyte. CAVE person, troglodyte - get it? Never mind.) One of the basic underpinnings is that the present Columbia County Commission is doing such a good job as evidenced by the burgeoning growth of the county. Nonsense.
The population growth is in great measure due to flight from Richmond County. They settle here for lack of anywhere else to go. What are their choices? Across the river simply doesnt have the infrastructure, roads, utilities, and especially, housing. Burke County is the same, as is McDuffie.
People do settle here for the schools - I did - but the school system is being slowly infected by the same apathetic parents and attitudes that have gutted Richmond County. Its a point of pride with many we spend less per pupil than Richmond County schools; what seems to be overlooked is the dedicated professionals that shaped our schools are dead, retired, or voted out of office. We now have the same cancerous partisan system that destroyed our neighboring county.
Much is made of the divisive nature of Augustas Commission; we have something worse. While the Augusta Commission is split representing racial factions, at least some citizens benefit. In Columbia County there is no division and no representation: the Commission is the property of builders, developers, Realtors, bankers and hereditary land interest, period. Columbia County is the real estate equivalent of a Ponzi scheme, one citizens will suffer from the in the next 10 years.
It goes like this: The Commission, which is supposed to be overseeing and guiding development, is actually perpetrating by their aberrant zoning decisions the destruction of neighborhoods. Who benefits? The commissioners constituency of Realtors, et al; when they destroy neighborhoods, the current residents move out, and where do they move? To new homes farther out in the country, built by - yeah, thats right, the Commissions paymasters Its a pyramid scheme, and weve just about reached the base.
Tell me the benefit - other than to commissioners and their masters - of giving these thieving, unaccountable plutocratic lackeys more power.
Dave Stewart
Grovetown