Seen and Heard: Gwinnett County GOP Town Hall Meeting

We attended the GOP town hall meeting in Snellville, Ga., on Nov. 1, 2011.

State Reps. Brett Harrell and Len Walker; State Sen. Don Balfour; Gwinnett County Commissioner Mike Beaudreau; Carole Boyce, a school board member; and Dr. Robert McClure, school board chairman were present at the meeting to take the public's questions. 

See the attached videos for a little of what we heard. Below, we gathered a few quotes of the night.

On federal judge’s ruling, allowing Lake Lanier to be used for water consumption:

“That was very, very good news. If we had overreacted to some folks a couple of years ago, we would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Gwinnett would have taken out loans and who knows how much money to build reservoirs.”

--Commissioner Mike Beaudreau

On education, E-SPLOST:

"We can't continue to do more with less. Any reduction in our funding streams presently, or frankly a decrease in the flexibility of the school system to be able spend the money the way we see fit, will be very difficult to maintain the quality of education that we presently have."

-- Dr. Robert McClure, Gwinnett County school board chairman

On the economy:

"We are a lot better off than most states. When we talk about we're at 9 percent or 10 percent unemployment, and that's terrible, that's as bad as it's been in a long time. I was just in Spain, 22 percent unemployment. That's another country, (but) there's a lot of states like Illinois, California, they're bankrupt. If the wisest man in the world could take over as the dictator of California or Illinois tomorrow I don't know that they could straighten it out. They're so upside down."

-- State Sen. Don Balfour

On transportation, H.O.T. lanes:

"I actually still have hope that that project will prove to be successful. And, my longer view, quite frankly, is that if we stop with this one project, that we won't impact dramatically congestion in metro Atlanta."

"We're at just maybe at 60 percent of the (Peach) passes that they think needs to be in use to prevent some of the congestion in the general purpose lanes. Again, I'm hopeful that this is the ramp up in growing pains. This type of program worked in other places in the country very well. But, then again, people say us Southern drivers are just hard-headed sometimes."

-- State Rep. Brett Harrell