AGG issues a response

Beth Gavrilles from Athens Grow Green emailed me a response to my concerns over their endorsement process, and, as always, I appreciate it ...

I’m responding as a member of the AGGC elections committee. It’s true that Ed’s questionnaire responses were a lot shorter and less detailed than Red’s, but as we mentioned on the Web site we also considered information from the candidates’ Web sites and other public statements. As you know, our central issue is growth management and our decision was chiefly based on the different philosophies of the candidates on this issue. We believe that strong growth management policies are necessary to protect the environment, and based on a number of his statements, we felt that Red’s approach is too hands off. This is a fundamental issue for us, and although we were favorably impressed with a lot of what Red said, we just couldn’t get past that.

However, we do post everything and include the links to the candidates’ Web sites with the idea being that anyone who’s interested doesn’t need to take our word for it but can read and decide for him- or herself. We tried to be clear about why we made the decision we did.

I also want to add that we like and respect Red, and we support his work with OneAthens. It was not an easy decision for us.

And, again, I've always admired the work of AGG, and Beth is a loyal reader of this blog and good people all the way around.