Newspaper Page Text
Page 4A
The Braselton News
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Opinion
This time last December, we said the City of
Hoschton was the most improved local govern
ment of 2018.
How much has changed in a year. Since 2018,
Hoschton’s leader
ship has unraveled
and its government
has run off the road
into a ditch.
Those were
self-inflicted
wounds stemming
from a combina
tion of ignorance,
intolerance and a
large dose of Ma
chiavellian political
manipulation.
There are no win
ners and losers in Hoschton’s political mess —
and the blame was not as simple as it might have
appeared to those who casually kept up with the
events there.
•••
Hoschton’s political leadership has never been partic
ularly progressive. It didn’t need to be given the sleepy
nature of the small town where the government didn’t
do very much, nor did it need to. The town, which
doesn’t have a city property tax, never had much mon
ey so there wasn’t much to fight over. At one point, the
town’s finances got so bad it had to disband its police
department, which was consuming a large number of
dollars the city simply didn’t have.
But for the most part, the town’s government has tra
ditionally been one part social club, one part public ser
vant. That was pretty evident a few years ago when the
town’s most pressing issue was to see how many scare
crows it could build in an effort to set a world record.
Small town, indeed. With just a few hundred people,
everyone knows everyone else in town — many people
are related.
But there are no more bitter fights than those within a
family and Hoschton’s “family” dynamics became vit
riolic in the extreme during 2019, even as newcomers
have begun to replace the old-timers in town.
In a way, Hoschton is like a small New England town
where local government is done through community
meetings, a nod to direct democracy over representa
tive government.
Hoschton citizens have long blurred the lines at pub
lic meetings between the elected and the “people.”
Many small towns have a gadfly or two who slap at city
officials; in Hoschton, it sometimes seems like half the
town’s population are gadflys.
But over the past year or two, that kind of “people’s
democracy” crossed a line and has become intensely
acrimonious with numerous verbal confrontations be
tween elected officials and the public. It’s gotten ugly.
That’s been coming for a long time. A couple of
decades ago, I moderated a town political forum in
Hoschton where one woman brought in a bucket of raw
sewerage she’d scooped out of her front yard to show
town council candidates just how bad her subdivision’s
faulty sewerage system had become. I was standing
close by when she came to the podium to speak her
mind, the bucket of sewerage sloshing close to me as
she railed about the problem, demanding action from
the candidates.
The irony of that is it was just this past year that old
sewerage problem got special state funding to be fixed,
a fix done by an administration which by the end of
2019, had itself soiled the town’s reputation with its
own sewer-worthy comments.
•••
What people will remember about Hoschton in 2019
is that the mayor injected race into a hiring discussion
by the council and that exploded into a recall effort.
Exactly who said what to whom — and what was real
ly done — remains a blur. There’s not doubt, however,
that the issue of race entered the discussion over hiring
a city administrator. No matter how you slice it, that’s
illegal.
Putting fuel on the fire was the mayor pro tem, who
expounded about his own intolerant views about mixed-
race couples. At one point, he said seeing mixed-race
couples made his “blood boil.”
All of that led to a firestorm which was splashed
across the country. Hoschton became a national poster
child for racial intolerance — a small, Southern town
caught in a time-warp, circa 1954. State and national
media, including multiple television stations, made
Hoschton a story de rigueur about racial relations in
the nation.
When calls for the mayor and mayor pro tem to re
sign didn’t happen, a recall movement began. Against
some pretty stiff legal odds, the recall was allowed to
move forward by the courts.
But late in the year, before the slated Jan. 14, 2020
recall vote could be held, both officials resigned.
The result might have been emotionally satisfying for
some in the community, but it left the town’s govern
ment without any experienced hands on deck at a time
when the city is facing some critical decisions about
the future.
What next for Hoschton?
• ••
But let’s back up. The turmoil in Hoschton hasn’t
been just about racial intolerance. The actions by May
or Theresa Kenerly and the words from mayor pro tem
Jim Cleveland were just gasoline tossed onto a fire that
was already burning.
Long before the racial incidents, Kenerly had come
under intense public criticism over how she was per
ceived to have dealt with a controversial proposal for a
warehouse near the town.
In 2018, a developer attempted to have an historic
old farm rezoned for several warehouses. That site,
known as the Pirkle property, wasn’t inside the City
of Hoschton, but it does abut the town’s limits and a
major subdivision in the community.
The developer attempted to have the county gov
ernment rezone the property. When that failed, he at
tempted to have the Town of Braselton annex the prop
erty and rezone it. That also failed.
While Hoschton wasn’t directly involved in the re
zoning efforts, citizens in the town became hyper-con
cerned about what might happen if the property were
developed for warehouses. The focus fell on Mayor
Kenerly, who was attacked verbally in multiple public
meetings for what critics said was her weak opposition
to the proposed development. She did oppose the de
velopment on the record, but that didn’t satisfy many
of her critics who both in public meetings and on so
cial media, hounded her about the issue.
Muddying the water even more was the idea from
Kenerly, along with some other members of the city
council, that perhaps Hoschton should itself annex the
property so it could control what was built on it rather
than wait to see what the county or Braselton eventu
ally approved.
But critics pounced, accusing Kenerly of having “se
cret” negotiations with the developers. The mayor said
she, along with other city officials, had met with the
developers, but only for information and that she did
not engage in any “negotiations.”
Throughout 2018, the Pirkle property controversy
ginned-up political rhetoric in Hoschton. Social media
rumors and accusations were responsible for much of
the heat that would boil up during the citizens’ com
ment time at council meetings.
By December 2018, the warehouse issue was legally
at a dead end — the developer had run out of options
for the time being — but the anti-Kenerly rhetoric was
very much alive.
Kenerly said she got an ugly email Christmas morn
ing 2018 from one of her most vocal critics. Soon
after, at the January 2019 council meeting, Kenerly
fired back at her critics during a contentious council
meeting, giving a lengthy speech about the situation
with the Pirkle property and defending her own tenure
as mayor from what she said had been ugly Facebook
postings.
” I’m a good person and / don’t care what she (a
Facebook critic) thinks, or anybody else thinks — I
work my hiney off for this city and I’m very proud of
this city and I’m very proud to be your mayor.”
The next month, former city council member Tra
cy Jordan called on citizens in the town to “stop the
back-stabbing.”
"It’s really easy to get on social media and be real
ly brave and talk bad things about people when you
really don’t have the facts,” she said at one council
meeting.
But the die had been cast and Hoschton was split
into two warring tribes — those who supported Kener
ly and those who wanted to see her booted from office.
• ••
It was in that hot-house atmosphere that the racial
accusations and comments hit, giving Kenerly’s crit
ics something around which to rally support for her
removal from office.
People who previously didn’t care about the zoning
issue did care about accusations that the town’s mayor
had racially profiled a job candidate. Council meet
ings became packed with people watching, sometimes
goading, what quickly became a circus. Law enforce
ment had to be posted at every meeting in case emo
tions got out of hand.
By the November city elections, it was clear that
Kenerly and Cleveland would eventually be recalled.
That anger came through in the fall as the elections for
two council seats loomed. One council member, Susan
Powers, didn’t run for re-election. But incumbent Min-
di Kiewert did, along with two new candidates who ran
as a team to fill both seats.
It was this situation that perhaps became the most
troublesome in Hoschton. Kiewert had stayed out of
the racial controversy, not commenting about it to the
media and avoiding comments at public meetings. She
simply didn’t take sides.
That infuriated Kenerly’s critics, who wanted Kiew
ert to join their chorus of anti-Kenerly denunciations.
When she didn’t, the public turned on her with ugly,
personal comments at public meetings and on social
media.
For the anti-Kenerly crowd, the end seemed to justi
fy the means. Kiewert became a proxy for Kenerly and
she was roundly flogged.
To nobody’s surprise, Kiewert was defeated. On her
way out the door, she gave a speech at her final pub
lic meeting, warning the public to be careful how they
attacked public officials in the town with hurtful com
ments.
•••
As 2020 rolls around, Hoschton is struggling to right
its government ship.
While Kenerly’s critics won the day, it was perhaps
something of a pyrrhic victory.
The resignations of Kenerly and Cleveland, along
with the defeat of Kiewert, left the town with just one
experienced council member. Hope Weeks was elected
in 2018 to her council seat, making her the senior mem
ber on the council.
She was joined in November by two political new
comers, Shantwon Astin and Adam Ledbetter who had
ousted Kiewert.
The Kenerly-Cleveland resignations also left the
council unable to transact business until last week
when a judge’s order allowed the town to operate with
a three-member council.
But getting rid of Kenerly and Cleveland wasn’t
enough for the new council members. Astin, Ledbetter
and Weeks quickly voted to fire the city’s administrator
and did so in a way that would deny him his separation
pay. (Their move overruled Kenerly’s action to allow
him to resign and keep his severance.)
It’s apparent that the trio intends to clean house in
Hoschton and to do so with a measure of retribution
toward those they believe were too close to Kenerly.
But this loss of institutional knowledge could hand
icap the town as it faces some big challenges in 2020.
The massive Kolter development is about to come on
line in the town and with a weakened city administra
tion and few people with background knowledge, that
project is likely to get very little oversight. There has
already been some controversy about how much of a
free hand the city has given Kolter to develop a huge
amount of land in the city.
And this political housecleaning could kneecap fu
ture political leadership in the town. Who in their right
mind would want to run for mayor and a seat on this
fractured council? What professional city administrator
would want to apply for a job under this council after it
put a knife into the previous administrator?
Hoschton needs healing and unity, not further polar
ization from a council bent on revenge.
•••
Being a bomb-throwing critic of government is easy.
The verbal Molotov cocktails that were tossed by cit
izens over the last two years in Hoschton were pretty
simple to construct. Kenerly and Cleveland really can’t
blame anyone else for the firestorm they created and
the opening they gave their critics to slap them.
There is a difference, however, between being a
critic from the outside and governing from the inside.
The latter is much more difficult than the former. And
for all their faults and racial intolerance, Kenerly and
Cleveland did a pretty good job with city policies and
in moving the small town forward in recent years.
For the most part, local government work is boring.
It’s laying water lines. It’s paving roads and filling pot
holes. It’s dealing with building codes and state man
dates. It’s trying to figure out rezoning applications.
For small town elected officials, it’s answering phone
calls when people don’t get their garbage picked up on
time, or hearing them complain about their neighbor’s
dog barking.
Over most of the last year, Hoschton has been in a
bubble, surrounded by media and intense scrutiny.
But now, the bright lights of the television cameras
have faded and the city will soon return to being just
another small town with all the usual problems. It’s 15
minutes of fame is over.
In the end, Kenerly’s critics got what they wanted.
They have slain the dragons and ousted their enemy.
But that leaves those same critics with nobody else
to blame when things go wrong, or don’t get done on
time, or when there is a screw-up.
Hoschton’s leadership has changed, but in the pro
cess, it’s political culture dove into a muddy ditch.
Time will tell if those who have inherited this turmoil
will rise to the occasion, or if they, too, will get caught
in the grinding vortex of small town politics which eats
its own for sport.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet News
papers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.
com.
The Braselton News
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher & Advertising Manager
Alex Buffington Editor
Ben Munro Sports Editor
Wesleigh Sagon Photographer/Features
MEMBER
• Georgia Press Association
• National Newspaper Association
• International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors
A newspaper published by:
MainStreet Newspapers, Inc.
PO Box 908
Jefferson, Georgia 30549-0908
Web Site: www.BraseltonNewsToday.com
Email: alex@mainstreetnews.com
Voice: 706.367.5233
Fax:708.621.4117 (news)