MARIETTA - Ward 5 City Council candidate Chris Johnson is determined to make decisions that will benefit Marietta in the long term.

"I want to improve things in Marietta, but I'm not going to do it at the risk of destroying it later down the road," he said. "Short-term gains are not worth long-term problems."

With a focus on redevelopment, Johnson wants to see more affordable housing. He believes the city needs to rethink the PVC farms.

"I would like to see the city come back and revamp these developments. Instead of trying to create Marietta as a bedroom community for Atlanta, where we'd have people who can afford $700,000 to $800,000 townhomes live in Marietta and drive to work in Atlanta, I'd much rather see these developments try to have, realistically, more like $180,000 to $300,000 homes and town homes. Scrap the condo idea and try to get people who actually will live and work in Marietta to be able to afford to live in Marietta."

The Waterman Street resident said he grew concerned about the direction of the city in 2004, as leaders were pushing such developments as Manget at Historic Marietta and Meeting Park.

"Those two developments were going to impact not only my quality of life, but my property values as well," he said. "One of my biggest concerns from the beginning was ... putting in high-dollar homes in these areas without a long-term plan."

He said the most important thing in considering future development - and rethinking existing developments that have fallen victims to the recession - is to make sure infrastructure is in place to handle the project.

Johnson is a member of the Loop Group, a neighborhood organization representing residents who live south of Roswell Street and north of the 120 South Loop.

Specifically for Ward 5, Johnson said he wants to clean up blighted areas by organizing a group of people and encouraging them, through tax breaks and other measures, to buy a block of the homes. Currently, he said, the city works with housing authorities to buy one house, fix it up, get someone to move in and hope that it attracts more people to do the same.

By encouraging a group of people to "buy the entire neighborhood," people are not relying "on one person to be the neighborhood. You're actually creating the neighborhood."

The city also needs to be more fiscally responsible, he said.

An example he uses in his neighborhood is "the brick crosswalks that they're putting in my neighborhood," that, although "very pretty," are a misuse of money when "you drive 30 feet up the road and there are potholes, drive 50 feet up the road and there are sidewalks that are buckled."

He said when the recession is over and money starts flowing back through the city, then is the time for beautification projects. That's also why he is voting against the $25 million parks bond.

He wants to hear more alternatives for solving the traffic problem on Whitlock Avenue rather than widening or nothing at all. He likes the idea of making Whitlock and Polk Avenues into one-way streets.

Johnson had not received any campaign contributions as of his last disclosure report. "I'm pretty much just going door-to-door and talking to people," he said.

He hopes to win the election, but said it is inevitable that the three-person race, with incumbent Anthony Coleman and James C. Dodd Jr., will go to a runoff.