Let's Get Peachtree City Back On Track

Core Election Goals

Restrict High-Density Housing: Brown and Clifton oppose high-density housing and aim to reinstate the city's pre-2022 comprehensive land use plan, which restricted further development of property for multifamily use. This initiative seeks to preserve neighborhood character, enhance safety, prevent schools from being overburdened, and city services from being exhausted by unchecked population growth.

Alleviate Traffic and Transportation Issues: Brown and Clifton criticize past city councils for approving overdevelopment along the western corridor of Highway 54 without proper consideration, which has led to gridlock. They believe millions of dollars are being wasted on a redesign of the 54/74 intersection that will not improve the east-west traffic flow. Brown and Clifton advocate for a more thoughtful and deliberate planning process to address these issues.

Encourage Free Speech and Transparent Government: Brown and Clifton are concerned about the heavy restrictions on citizens who want to speak at council meetings, where citizens are sometimes restricted to less than one minute to speak. They believe elected officials should encourage open dialogue and ensure every voice is heard.

Reduce Budget and Taxes: Brown and Clifton emphasize better budgeting and lower taxes to maximize the value of residents' hard-earned dollars while maintaining essential services. They criticize the city's government for finding new ways to spend tax windfalls on pet projects and a proposed additional $150 million for new recreation projects, when the city cannot afford to maintain its current venues and parks. Brown and Clifton pledge to utilize their business expertise to reduce the record spending and record tax increases, and return tax dollars directly to the people of Peachtree City.

Stop the Annexation and Rezoning Crisis: Land intended for revenue-positive corporate headquarters and light industry was rezoned to revenue-negative, dense residential zoning. Annexing for residential zoning has forced an extremely expensive expansion of all city services and increased taxes on all of us to cover the costs. It’s simple, go back to the former land plan and follow the zoning ordinances.

Family Oriented

High Standards

Properly Managed

Steve Brown and James Clifton do not support the actions of the current mayor and vow to change the following:

1. End all restrictions and time limits on citizens wanting to speak at public meetings. By city ordinance, only 10 people are allowed to speak at a council meeting, each for only three minutes. On agenda items with state-mandated public hearings, the mayor has forced the citizen comment time down to 52 seconds per person, which is ridiculous. It’s proof she does not care what you have to say. The mayor has been quick to say that if she feels you are worthy, she will consider allowing you to speak beyond the mandatory 10 citizens for a couple of minutes.

2. Restore citizens’ ability to have items of concern placed on a city meeting agenda. Peachtree City was built on a foundation of civic engagement and mutual respect. For decades, citizens had the right to put items of concern on the city council agenda—a simple, powerful way to ensure your voice shaped our community. But that tradition was unilaterally dismantled by a domineering mayor who decided your concerns no longer deserved a seat at the table. This isn’t just a procedural change—it’s a deliberate silencing of the people who live, work, and care about this city. We will restore your right to be heard—not just during comment periods, but on the agenda itself. Because real leadership listens. Real leadership empowers. And real leadership never fears accountability. Let’s bring back transparency. Let’s bring back respect. Let’s bring back your voice.

3. End all restrictions preventing city council members from being able to place agenda items on a meeting agenda. In Peachtree City, even your elected council members have been muzzled. The overbearing mayor has gone beyond silencing citizens—she’s stripped council members of their ability to place items on the meeting agenda. That means the very people you voted for can’t even bring your concerns to the table. This isn’t just wrong—it’s unconscionable. We don’t need a puppet master pulling strings behind closed doors. We need a public servant mayor who respects the voices of the people and the representatives they chose. When council members are blocked from doing their job, democracy breaks down. We will end these restrictions and restore the integrity of our local government. No more gatekeeping. No more power hoarding. No more silencing.

4. Reverse all changes made by the current mayor to the comprehensive plan and ordinances in 2022 that allow dense multi-family housing complexes to be built across the city. The Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) plan introduced by then-Mayor Vanessa Fleisch, which promoted thousands of dense multi-family complexes around the city, was the antithesis of our award-winning village planning. The current mayor attended those LCI meetings and never expressed a single negative comment. Her comprehensive plan changes in 2022 allow for the LCI plan to be executed. She has already approved several dense condominium complexes, which will most likely turn into rental units.

5. Take the traffic congestion seriously. The Fleisch administration and the current mayor endorsed and approved the current Highway 74/54 intersection construction, which will have almost no impact on the east-west traffic congestion, as confirmed by GDOT. We are currently wasting a valuable opportunity and multi-millions of tax dollars on a project that does not address the core congestion problem. We won’t settle for half-measures and cosmetic fixes. It’s time to bring serious, effective transportation solutions to the table—ones that actually address our traffic congestion, not just check a box. Enough with the band-aids!

6. Reinstate the abandoned moratorium on new dense multi-family housing complexes. The Fleisch administration killed the long-standing moratorium, and the current mayor changed our plans to allow for building more multi-family complexes, already approving several multi-family projects. Our market is alarmingly overbuilt with multi-family complexes (creating more pressure on traffic and school attendance), and her changes to the land plans allow for more. If the mayor really opposes building multi-family complexes, then why will she not continue the long-standing moratorium?

7. Stop the significant tax increases and ask for direct citizen involvement in the budgeting process. The mayor keeps trying to fool the citizens by saying she “did not increase the millage rate” to imply she did not increase our taxes. However, as our property values continue to rise, not rolling back the millage rate to compensate for these value increases results in significant tax increases. Not once has the mayor asked how the local government can find ways for a full roll back of the millage rate and prevent a tax increase. She has forgotten her fiduciary responsibility to the constituents. It is too easy to spend other people’s money. Steve Brown and James Clifton propose forming a committee of knowledgeable citizens to conduct a thorough review of government budgets. This review would aim to eliminate nonessential processes and duplication, have department directors identify waste, explore system reorganization, assess the performance of non-essential or low-performing employees, and establish a clear focus on meeting citizen expectations.

8. Return to strict adherence to the land plans and stop killing the city’s economic future by rezoning land for corporate headquarters and light industrial to revenue-negative residential zoning. Over the last 12 years, the city government has decimated our economic growth potential by eliminating our sites for future corporate headquarters and other high-paying jobs. Those taxes generated would have offset our residential property taxes. It’s either incompetent or negligent, you decide.

9. Start paying attention to the $10 million of outstanding maintenance issues, and build no new facilities until the significant problem is addressed. The mayor continues to run up the expenses, adding to our already mounting neglected maintenance issues.

10. Plan to scale, and stop proposing new city facilities, especially $140-$200 million of new recreation facilities, WHILE ALLOWING PEOPLE FROM OTHER CITIES AND COUNTIES TO USE THE FACILITIES FOR FREE. We are a city of approximately 40,000 people, and there is no way to build, maintain, and staff these dream projects without massive tax increases. And how absolutely insulting that the mayor expects us to overbuild amenities to our detriment and then allow people from Fayetteville, Fulton, Coweta, and elsewhere to use all of our taxpayer-funded facilities for free, NOT DOING IT! The mayor’s unscrupulous behavior has already resulted in her rigging the SPLOST project list for her pet project and slipping a new splash pad and $2.4 million in other expenses into the FY 2025 budget without any plans, budgets, or discussions in a public meeting (and we already spent a lot of money upgrading the current splash pad).

11. Is it lying or incompetence? The citizens were asked to vote to approve projects on the SPLOST referendum, but were not told the actual cost. At the February 11, 2025, retreat (held outside of Peachtree City), it was revealed that a path connection project was sold to the public at a cost of $88,000, but the actual price is over $1 million. A path near Walt Banks Road was budgeted at $300,000, but the actual cost is approximately $1.5 million. A pedestrian bridge (no golf carts) was budgeted at $250,000 and is now said to be $1.5 million. That pedestrian bridge is just hundreds of feet away from an existing bridge that we just paid to refurbish. The mayor’s response was to build them anyway.

12. Immediately end city retreats being held out of the city for the purpose of evading the citizens. Nothing shows more disregard for the constituents than the mayor having city planning retreats away from the citizens, and we pay for hotels for council members and staff when they should be doing the serious business of the people in our city.

13. End the current mayor’s taxpayer-funded internet show, placing that funding back into the budget for legitimate purposes. We shouldn't be paying our hard-earned tax dollars for a mayoral propaganda program that almost no one watches, that is essentially her trying to convince us she is not a bad person. She restricted citizen and council member speech, but she has her own taxpayer-funded program to support her agenda, which is sad indeed.

14. No more thoughtless annexations for residential development, making the developers rich and costing the taxpayers more to extend city services. The real estate developer-friendly mayor pushed for the annexations of tax revenue-negative residential development. We are now spending tens of millions of dollars in perpetuity for a new fire station, equipment, and staffing, as well as having to extend every other service the city provides. WE ARE NET LOSERS, and the Fayette County Development Authority recently produced a study demonstrating the ineptitude of those decisions and depleting our usable land for corporate headquarters.

15. No more sneaking expensive projects into the following year’s budget without any plans, budgets, or discussion on the items in the public forum. The mayor intentionally sneaked around $2.4 million worth of expenditures into the FY 2025 with no discussion and no approved plans.

16. No more lying to the citizens: significantly increasing employee pay, bonuses, benefits, and pensions, then telling the news media and the citizens it would “not cost the taxpayers a dime,” only to raise taxes months afterward significantly. The mayor thinks you’re stupid. She tells the news media that large increases in expenditures will have no impact on the budget, and she expects you to believe it.

17. Stop carrying excessive amounts in the reserve fund and using it as a non-accountable slush fund for non-budgeted expenses. The mayor continually has city staff underestimate incoming revenue, building up excessive reserves. Reserves of 35% are adequate for maintaining the AAA bond rating that then-Mayor Steve Brown obtained 20 years ago. The current mayor keeps around 60% in reserves. Instead of using the excess funds to offset your property taxes in the following year, they spend the funds down on unbudgeted items.

18. No more real estate developer political action committees having undue influence on our local government ordinances and policies, and it's time to start protecting our neighborhoods. Our established neighborhoods are treated as unwanted stepchildren. Steve Brown has a proven track record of giving priority to our existing neighborhoods and protecting them from unwanted development that could jeopardize residential property values.

19. No more backdoor hidden governance like the “speedhump” debacle that was initiated without a single public vote of the city council, and granting variances in violation of state law. No more violations of the Georgia Open Meetings Act and the Open Records Act. The mayor has significantly more experience, 12 years as a government official, than the newbies on the city council. She knows the law, inside and out, yet she has repeatedly broken it over and over again. She has had four city managers in four years, as they all jump ship, so they do not get tagged by her behavior.

20. Make all public city meetings citizenry-centered again. Solicit public opinion, recognize citizen achievement in meetings, and create volunteer opportunities for public participation. You cannot make this stuff up! The mayor actually used nearly $80,000 of your tax dollars on a foreign company with a suspicious reputation to use their proprietary algorithm to determine what you, the constituents, are thinking, at the same time she is heavily restricting citizen speech at council meetings and refusing to allow citizens to put items on meeting agendas. Beyond recognizing the winners of the city-run July 4th parade, the mayor’s meeting agendas are devoid of celebrating any of our citizens’ achievements. It’s appalling. We have so many men, women, and children excelling in all facets of life, and the mayor refuses to offer any official recognition at the council meetings (except for personal selfies at events during an election year). We need to return back to the days when the local government acknowledged and encouraged outstanding achievement by our citizens.

21. We know why all of the mayor’s chosen city council candidates keep losing. We did not move to Peachtree City for an urbanized setting like the other sprawling counties in metro Atlanta. We want a city that attracts quality, civic-minded families that demand low crime and excellent schools. For some reason, our last two mayors have a homogenized vision of emulating the other counties and their massive congestion, loads of dense multi-family complexes, and failing schools. We used to be the example for the rest of the state. Let’s get the city back on track.