Prioritize Our People
I will scrap the wasteful pet projects, stupid subsidies, and developer handouts that have cost our city tens of millions of dollars under the Brady regime. That money, coupled with impact fees on irresponsible developers, will be reinvested to encourage affordable housing development and infrastructure improvements that directly benefit our citizens. Our tax dollars should go to our citizens’ needs, not to our mayor’s ego.
Chalk Level had to wait four years for a federal grant to repair tornado damage. While our people waited years for the resources to rebuild their homes after a disaster, Keith Brady and his cronies threw millions of our tax dollars at handouts for developers and subsidies for failed council projects. The worst part is, those federal grants would have paid Newnan back if we had acted years earlier instead of making our people wait. My administration will proactively prepare for disaster response by coordinating local church and other volunteer emergency response teams, holding insurance companies accountable when they refuse to pay legitimate claims, and putting our people first when disaster strikes.
Stop Reckless Spending
Have you ever made a $5 million dollar mistake at your job? If you did, do you think you would keep that job? Keith Brady and his yes-men on city council just gave at least that much of our tax money to an out-of-town developer to put a budget hotel on the old Caldwell Tanks lot downtown. And that’s not the first time. Over the past 32 years (not a typo) Mayor Brady has given tens of millions of our tax dollars away in subsidies and tax breaks for his developer buddies. He always promises that these handouts will eventually bring in more tax revenue, but they never do. These well-connected outsiders take our money and run, while we’re stuck holding the bag.
As Newnan’s mayor, I’m ending the gravy train for outside developers. Our money should stay in our town to pay for our priorities. In my career as a corporate attorney and management consultant, I’ve worked on billions of dollars of deals. I’ll bring that expertise to making sure the city we love stops getting robbed by developers who make big promises but never follow through.
Small Town, Not Sprawl Town
Growth isn’t going away, but it has to happen on our terms. We need to grow as Newnan, in a way that benefits the citizens who are already here. As your mayor, I’ll scrap the tax and zoning codes that give developers a free ride while putting the burden of higher taxes on homeowners. I’ll require developers to pay the full cost of their projects with impact fees and infrastructure requirements that turn growth from a burden into a benefit. No taxpayer should be forced to put their hard-earned money into the pockets of parasites—whether they’re cut-rate developers or corrupt realtors.
For over three decades, Keith Brady has worked to replace the city we love with a cheap copy of Atlanta’s northern suburbs. We are not Lawrenceville, Alpharetta, or Marietta, yet our development has followed their example. The city continues to annex more and more of the county to make room for projects that nobody wants. Why? Because Keith Brady is selling our home out from under us and taking a commission for it.
Make Newnan Affordable Again
My administration will invest in the infrastructure that makes starter homes possible while getting out of the way of people who want to build homes that fit their needs. Every decision I make will be based on whether it makes our city more affordable for our citizens—full stop. Newnan’s mayor should focus on creating the conditions for families to thrive so that our children can afford to live here and our parents can afford to retire here, not giving our tax money to developers who make our city worse.
Under Keith Brady, Newnan has become a housing hellscape where the only things that can be built are the vinyl houses and cheap strip malls that earn him a commission. The starter homes that our parents and grandparents grew up in have been outlawed, while more and more expensive, cookie-cutter houses and apartments are thrown up in the clear-cut lots that used to be our forests. It’s time for us to get away from expensive, tacky sprawl and go back to a common sense housing regime.
Safe for Kids, Safe for Families
Public safety is more than police, firefighters, and EMTs. By making Newnan a place where it’s as safe to play outside and be a kid as it was when we were little, we can build a city that is healthier and happier while taking pressure off our first responders. I will change our zoning codes to encourage safer streets for our kids while requiring developers to build the infrastructure that is needed for them to have safe places to play in our neighborhoods. Doing so will make Newnan a better place to live by reducing accidents that tie up our first responders, allowing them to focus on real emergencies.
For our first responders, I’ll develop robust housing benefits that that make it easier for the people who protect us to live right here. With those benefits, we can keep our first responder compensation competitive without forcing them to pay more and more of their hard-earned money chasing rising housing costs.