By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 14, 2020 | The business community of Peachtree Corners is growing, as are many Gwinnett cities. A report from Peachtree Corners the other day listed 33 new businesses in the city in June. But on close inspection, 14 of these new firms had applied and were granted a license as a used car dealer.
What’s this? Peachtree Corners breaking out in used car lots?
Not so, says Brandon Branham, assistant city manager. “The city is not approving used car lots. These are persons who must get a state and city permit to sell one automobile at a time. In the economic climate we are in now, some people think they might make some money by selling used cars. Most of the time, they don’t renew their license a second year.”
He adds: “There’s a big turnover in this area. We issue about 75 such licenses a year. But each year we lose about that many. It cost $400-500 for a state license, and $300 for a city license.”
Part of the license requires that the license holder cannot sell the vehicle on his residential property, but must meet the buyer at a public location, such as a parking lot. Note that a person must make about $1,000 on a used vehicle to come out with a slight profit. We learned that several other cities allow such licenses, but that seldom results eventually into a used car lot.
“It’s just a few residents trying to make some money during these times,” Brandon added.
The late Mrs. Louise Cooper for years promoted her hometown of Lawrenceville as the “Wisteria City.”
What happened? We never hear of that any more. Is the town still the Wisteria City? There is certainly enough evidence. We see that some people in Lawrenceville still like wisteria.
We raise this as we note that the City of Williamson in Pike County now has a Wisteria Festival every April. Has Williamson taken away from Lawrenceville, that title as the Wisteria City of Georgia?
Think back about 200 years ago, as New York City was beginning to grow fast, as Gwinnett is now. It needed a means to move people around the area. Soon a horse-drawn wagon, outfitted to haul people emerged, the first streetcar, run by a man named John Mason, a banker and big landowner. It originally looked like a stagecoach, and ran on rails laid on the streets in Lower Manhattan.
Each streetcar had a driver and a conductor, who rode in the back, collected fares and instructed the driver. By 1880, New York counted 150,000 horses in the city, each horse producing 22 pounds of manure each day. The city literally “smelled.” But by 1917, powered vehicles replaced horse-drawn street cars….and the city had purer air.
By comparison, gas fumes don’t sound so bad. But Gwinnett sure needs a better way of moving people around. Perhaps this fall’s election will provide future relief.
Remember that photo of a single red daylily we published a few weeks back? Eventually we had two blossoms at the same time. But now the flowers have withered, and we’ll have to wait until next year’s hotter temperatures to produce these beauties again.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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