Dear editor,
Commissioner John Douglas made a motion in Tuesday night’s Board of Commissioners meeting (before a huge crowd) to do away with the 2050 Plan.

He referred to keeping the plan as putting lipstick on a pig, but still ending up with a pig — A great statement that I fully agree with.

However, his motion to end the 2050 Plan failed by a 3-2 vote with Commissioner Henderson voting with Douglas. Commissioner Henderson stated that during his election he had only two calls supporting the 2050 Plan and many against. Think whatever you want about some of Commissioner Henderson’s votes, but he does seem to put what his voters want ahead of his personal views. Is this not what a commissioner is supposed to do — represent the citizens in their district?

Commissioners Douglas and Henderson got the message from the citizens in their district.

Yet at the end of the meeting Commissioner Levie Maddox, with a motion decided to go ahead and put lipstick on the 2050 pig by moving it to the County Development Services Department, hoping it will be able to make this pig into something else. Commissioners Nancy Schulz and Lanier Sims agreed to try to make this lip stick pig into something else by voting with Maddox. Commissioner Maddox said that he had talked with a former long term commissioner who had spent 10 years on the 2050 Plan and sat in on over 200 meetings and he did not want the plan thrown out.

Let me submit what this former longtime Commissioner did while on our BOC. He was part of the vote to change our form of Government to a County Manger Government without the vote of the citizen. He was part of taking $5 million of your tax dollars for a Civic Center in the 2005. A civic center that has and shouldn’t be built yet they still have your $5 million gathering dust. He voted to take much more of your 2011 SPLOST to build a Agriculture Center which has not nor should be built. He was in office during the glory time when tax dollars were flying into our county yet they saved nothing for the rainy days that we are in. He was part of the BOC that allowed the buildup on the Westside we have today by lack of good zoning or voting to let zoning be bypassed.

How many of you average citizens were allowed in the 200 2050 meetings that the former commissioner sat in on? Yet Commissioner Maddox , Schulz and Sims vote to adhere to his wishes and against the wishes of the majority of citizens of Newton County.

I believe they will end up passing this pig onto us as a land use plan in the near future. This is a Clint Eastwood Quote “Don’t urinate down our backs and try to tell us it’s raining. “ That is exactly what they are trying to do to the Newton County Citizens with this 2050 Pig.

Dennis Taylor