The Mann That Leads Our City..

 

If you ever get discouraged about the state of our city, just remember you were warned!  Reprinting this email sent by the jolly new Mayor (before he was mayor) that demonstrates how he conducts business.  Do you think for a moment he changed after taking "the oath of office"?   "Fighting for Lee County" means destroying the reputations of others.   And calling those of us who disagree with "government knows best" - extreme, radical, etc.  

No the radical is this individual actually stating if conservatives were elected, we might as well kiss Sanford goodbye...the last good company has been recruited.  OMG!  Can you say desperation set in?

Geez..Sanford gets what it deserves. Don't come crying when your taxes go up!  And they have!  Another  "See we told you so".  Note words like "progressive", Tea Party Govenor, uninformed voter, etc.  I'm sure LEED Brat Pac members will be up to their usual slimy antics soon.  Courtesy of the Sanford Herald....

Here's the email folks:

From: Chet Mann <cmann@primelending.com>
To: "chetmann@gmail.com" <chetmann@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 9:06 PM
Subject: LEED PAC - Fighting for Lee County

Dear Friends,

               Hello to you all and best wishes on a great start to summer. LEED PAC – Lee Education and Economic Development- Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee – has been at work to insure that we keep the right message and the right information in front of our members and potential new members. Since the May Primary much has happened and work has started already for the critical November General Elections. This election may very well be one of the most important in many years to the future of Lee County. If you are new to LEED PAC or if you would like a refresher on who we are and what we stand for we encourage you to visit www.leedpac.com and look around. Especially visit the “Positions Tab”. This will outline what we believe. We are a non-partisan, business based group educating the public on our two main tenants – that a top quality public education system and the existence of progressive,  leading edge economic development measures are the backbone of successful communities.

Your efforts and support in the Primary helped protect and sustain public education in Lee County. A majority of the school board was maintained that will continue to uphold the progress being made by our public school system. If you don’t subscribe to the Sanford Herald we have attached the half page ads the PAC ran in the newspaper congratulating the local Teachers of the Year and listed the impressive statistics that Lee County Schools have achieved. We have come far in just a few years and with your continued support we will not take the emphasis off the progress we have made. The Statistics speak for themselves. Lee County has risen to the top of its peers and become a regional leader in public education. We also have the 2nd highest rated community college in the state and 65th best in the United States according to CNN/Money. That ad is attached as well. With all this going for us our opposition will still continue to try and thwart our progress and advocate for change – mostly by dramatically reducing spending and advocating for unaccredited alternative forms of schooling which by law are entitled to public funding. This funding would take from the available funds the school systems receive and desperately need which would be coupled with another State reduction in funding coming next year. Furthermore, we believe you would see an erosion of our overall leading statistics with these alternative schools which would become a deterrent to our growth and prosperity. The opposition’s goal seems to be to target our School’s leadership and Board of Education members replacing them with those who would seek to change and disrupt our progress. For the time being we have won this battle but never let us take our eye off this continuing attack on Lee County Public Education.

Now our attention turns to the November General Election. At stake is the majority of the Lee County Board of Commissioners. As you may know three at large seats are open. The candidates that have adopted the LEED PAC stance on education and economic development are Democrats Amy Dalrymple, Ricky Frazier, and former Republican running as an Independent – Ron Hewett who successfully raised the !,350 registered voter petition he needed to be put on the November ballot. A very encouraging sign for the upcoming election. The challenge ahead for the community is winning all three of these seats as the Womack led commissioners and their extreme right faction of the local Republican Party only need to win one seat to claim a majority. They will send the minority on the board to the end of the line as they begin to dismantle the County as we know it. The community will need to come together and resist the temptation of  pulling a straight ticket in November and vote for the candidates that will work together towards our common goals. Kirk Smith, Max Dolan, and Frank Del Palazzo have all aligned themselves with the Womack militia and are sure to carry out his orders and vote against growth and sustainability. If successful and one of them wins we may very well have seen the last new company recruited to Lee County for at least the next two years until the next election cycle. The damage this could have on our County could last much longer.

Economic Incentives will be the crux of the political debate in this election. Anyone advocating for them will be targeted by the opposition as tax and spend candidates. This is just not true. If you visit our position papers and study how economic incentives work you will see that Lee County has received a 509% return on investment from incentives paid vs. taxes received since 1997. The City of Sanford has seen a 1,582% return during the same time period. Folks, if we stop recruiting industry to our County using incentives they will go somewhere else. Who will then be left to fund the tax base in the future? Likely a shrinking business base and the homeowners that are left here that’s who. We only need to look to our neighbors in South Carolina who are led by a Tea Party Governor and the most Conservative state leadership in the South. They are using an incentive package that trumps ours in Lee County and North  Carolina ten times over. Why are the Republican leadership there so much more progressive and business oriented than ours are here? The results in South Carolina have been thousands of new jobs many of which were originally intended to land in North Carolina.

The question is clear. What kind of leadership do you want to have in Lee County after November? Where do you see a new majority of the Lee County Commissioners taking us in the future? How will your business fare? Do you see your taxes actually rising or falling with a new leadership who pledges to abolish economic incentives, the Economic Development Corporation of Lee County and drastically changing our public schools?

So what can you do and what does LEED PAC need from you?

· Get Involved and forward this email and the link to www.leedpac.com to all your friends, family and fellow Lee County voters.

· Join the PAC by making a minimum donation of $25.00. You can use our pay pal feature on the website or you can print a form from the site and mail a check to us. Businesses and individuals can contribute and there is no maximum amount.

· We need 100 new members to join over the next month that will tell 5 others to do the same. We need members to carry our voice and message. Our numbers are growing and our membership is made up of all types of citizens in Lee County. Republicans, Democrats, business owners, retirees, and working people from all sectors. Support the candidates that are running on some of the same tenants that LEED PAC supports. Help them at the polls and during the campaign.

· Write letters to the editors, post on Social Media, and get our message out to the average uninformed voter in Lee County. Use the material from our website to help with your own message.

· Don’t allow yourself to get fooled with the Opposition’s message. Ask yourself if they succeed in the election what is their plan for the future? Good companies will cut spending in one area and invest in another. Ask the opposition candidates where they would invest your tax dollars for future growth. It’s easy to say they will cut your taxes. It takes little vision to be a “no” candidate. The greater questions remains. What is their plan for sustainability, growth, and continued quality of life initiatives for Lee County?

As always the LEED PAC wishes all the best to your family and your business. Contact us if you have any questions. Stay tuned for our next meeting announcements.

Sincerely,

Chet Mann &
LEED PAC