Q&A With Peachtree Corners City Council Candidate Scott Ehrlich

Peachtree Corners Patch asked the 20 candidates for the six council seats on the new Peachtree Corners City Council a series of questions relating to city government for the upcoming Municipal Election on March 6, 2012.

Each of the candidates were asked the same set of questions. The last question we posed was to ask each candidate ask and answer his or her own question and provide the answer.

Here Patch introduces Scott Ehrlich, one of four candidates seeking to fill the council seat for Post 3.

Name: Scott Ehrlich, age 30

How long lived in Peachtree Corners: 2 years (rented just outside the new PC borders for one year prior)

Educational background: BA, History, Wake Forest University 2003; MBA and JD from University of Florida, 2008

Military background: None, both grandparents US Army Vets

Family: Married, 3 years, Alexandra

Occupation: President, Marketing Disease Prevention and Awareness: Do healthcare marketing conference based on widespread diseases, currently focused on diabetes, obesity, and minority healthcare. Handle all event execution, planning, sales, and marketing. Most of my position entails finding out what people want and seeing if I can provide it to them at a high quality and reasonable price, a skillset that would be useful on the PC City Council.

What experience in your background do you think has best prepared you for serving on the Peachtree Corners City Council?   

My job entails a lot of communication, development, research, and execution. Not only do I have to determine people’s wants and how to fulfill them but then I have to execute in an affordable and high quality way while communicating to them what is occurring in the process and why its important.

I have done this as acting President of my HOA and as the Head of Communications for the UPCCA, as I have expanded our communications with residents considerably, found out their desires and concerns, tried to address them as best I could, and made sure they were handled by the appropriate people when they were beyond the scope of my knowledge. I think this perfectly reflects my attitude towards public service and much of what I feel my role on the city council would be. I believe in strong communication, especially in listening to constituent concerns, and then making sure they are handled either through executing an effective, efficient solution or by clearly explaining to them why I cannot address their concern and what other ways it may be handled.

Tell Peachtree Corners readers about your vision for the new city and how you would accomplish it?  

My vision for a “new” Peachtree Corners doesn’t differ greatly from the “old” Peachtree Corners. I think things are generally going well in this city and we don’t need a major overhaul in most areas. Obviously, I’d like to address the trash situation and discuss with both the county and the major haulers a way to lower our trash costs, increase our trash options, and hopefully both while avoiding major litigation with Gwinnett County.

As far as zoning and code enforcement, I believe our new government gives us the ability to make sure our codes better address our citizens but do not require a complete rewrite from the ones adopted from Gwinnett. For the most part, I believe citizens should have the rights to do what they wish with their properties without interference from government as long as they aren’t infringing on the rights or causing damage to others. In that sense, I believe that most zoning requests from businesses and requests for the relaxation of certain codes should be granted unless the government can show significant harm would occur if this does not happen and even then, anything that increases the burden on citizens should be done in the least broad and restrictive manner as possible.

As far as taxes, I believe that we need to keep them as low as possible to provide the city with a decent surplus in the first two years and a minor surplus annually after that, with my goal to get us to between 9-12 months projected operating costs accumulated after the first four years to protect the city against any emergency expenses, economic downturns, or unplanned expenditures. I believe any less exposes the city to too much risk and in an emergency, may result in a city council trying to pass a “temporary” or “emergency” tax increase that never goes away; any more accumulating savings provides too much temptation to future council members to see it as “their” money and find an excuse to spend it rather than the taxpayer’s money.

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing Peachtree Corners, and how would you approach it?  

The greatest challenge for Peachtree Corners is the elected officials become too comfortable and entitled in their positions and start making “exceptions” to our three services or city expenses or their own benefits. The best way to handle this is to keep the voters engaged and cognizant of what is going on. I plan on doing this by providing citizens with unprecedented access to myself and what is happening at city council meetings through blogs, tele-town halls, in person meetings, online communications, as well as other means as they may suggest and I’d do this at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

I’ll always keep citizens in the loop with what is going on, name names if someone is looking to raise their taxes, spend their money, increase our benefits, or make special “exceptions” that make it easier for future city councils to expand those exceptions. I also believe that voters need to continue to demand this of other candidates and elected officials and continue to elect new citizens to run and vote against any incumbent who has been in office for too long. To that end, if elected, I promise never to run for reelection to any city position nor will I ever vote for a raise or expansion of benefits for anyone serving during my term in office.   

What would you like to see done about trash services?

I believe this is a more complex issue than it should be because we are potentially bound by the contract with Gwinnett County. Because trash costs are divided evenly among us and other citizens of currently unincorporated Gwinnett County, and many of those parts of the county have considerably more yard debris and more distance between them than Peachtree Corners, their actual per household trash costs are much higher than ours.

However, if we pull out of the trash agreement, their trash costs will rise considerably and because of this, elected officials from other parts of the county have threatened to sue Peachtree Corners if we do so. Even though I believe we have the legal right to pull out of the contract as the City of Peachtree Corners was not a party to it, lawsuits are costly and time consuming.

Therefore I believe it is in our interest to get a good sense of what cost other trash haulers could provide trash service for, what that service would include, and then bring a comparison of those estimates, along with what we have now to the citizens of Peachtree Corners for comment. If the price of service is much lower, as I believe it will be, and the service options are higher, which I believe they should be, then we should undertake the step of seeing how we can amicably extricate ourselves from the Gwinnett trash contract in a way that addresses both of our concerns and avoids litigation.

Ideally, we’d ultimately have trash service in the City of Peachtree Corners that is cheaper than what we have currently, and citizens that are interested would have the option of adding services such as increased disposal of yard waste and/or doorside trash pickup, without burdening all citizens with the additional cost for these services that they may not require. We created this city to better control our own destiny and the more individual control citizens get over their sanitation costs and services, the more we have achieved that goal.