MARIETTA - Marietta native Johnny Sinclair, a former two term City Councilman who is running again for the Ward 3 seat, is excited about the change he sees coming with the retirement of Mayor Bill Dunaway.

"One of the reasons I left, you know, Mayor Dunaway made it so difficult to get anything accomplished," said Sinclair in a recent meeting with the Journal's editorial board.

Sinclair said it wasn't so much that he disagreed with Dunaway's vision for the city as "he made it so unpleasant to work with him that (Dunaway) was unable to get anything done. You've got a City Council that Mayor Dunaway holds in utter contempt," Sinclair said.

Sinclair touts himself as a consensus builder who is financially conservative, opposed to raising taxes and in favor of a transparent city government.

"If you're making decisions in private, even if you're making the right decision, but the public doesn't like it, then you're making the wrong decision. I think everybody at City Hall needs to re-evaluate his or her relationship with the public and with the press," Sinclair said.

Sinclair believes a classic example of the wrong way to conduct city business was how Dunaway and Councilman Philip Goldstein tried to rush a proposal to add more debt on the city's hotel and conference center before Councilman Grif Chalfant called for a citizens committee to investigate.

"It reminds me of how we originally talked about the conference center. Whether or not it's a good idea or a great idea or a disastrous idea, if you don't have the public's backing I don't think it's appropriate to be going around their backs. I feel like that's how the conference center was built and that's how they continue to try to feed money into it. It's sucking energy and money out of the city," he said.

As for better relations with the public, Sinclair is troubled by Dunaway using the city's Web site to attack a private citizen, Larry Wills.

"I thought it was absolutely - by the way he's one of my constituents - disgraceful," Sinclair said.

"For the Mayor to get that nasty - and remember, Mayor, you're at the top of the food chain, you need to be a little more kinder to the citizenry - it makes it look like the public official is beating up on the public, with the city logo on top. It really did look like he was stifling public opinion," Sinclair said.

If a public official can't handle disagreement, he or she doesn't belong in public office, Sinclair said.

"If you're used to being the kind of person who has a Harvard MBA and runs your own business without anybody questioning you then you're in the wrong business as the mayor of Marietta because it's the nature of our business to be questioned and to answer those questions. Lord willing we're going to get some change over at City Hall," Sinclair said.

But it's not just Dunaway who Sinclair views as a problem. As he goes door to door in his campaign, he's asked what can be done about Goldstein, who some believe is a walking conflict of interest as a councilman and large downtown property owner.

"Without a doubt," Sinclair said he would be more effective than Incumbent Holly Walquist in standing up to Goldstein, who has served on the council since 1980.

"You've got to have a City Council that's just as mad as sin and clips his wings," Sinclair said.

When the economy recovers, Sinclair believes it's time to consider selling the Marietta Conference Center which he said is receiving a "massive public subsidy" through the hotel-motel tax as it is.

"Remember all of the advantages we had thrown at us that it was going to bring? First of all, they never materialized. If they were going to materialize, they would have by now," he said.

While in office, Sinclair said he was the swing vote in terminating the lease with Sentry Hospitality, the original operator of the conference center, which posted losses of about $1 million annually - a figure swallowed by taxpayers.

"It was a situation where the City Council was not focused on the regular business of doing government. They weren't focused on streets and parks and development. Everybody spent all our energy going over to the Conference Center," he said.

He said he was also the swing vote to sell off the city-owned fiber-optics utility, Marietta FiberNet, which was supposed to generate revenues to defray the expected costs of electrical power deregulation, but didn't.

A clear cut difference between Sinclair and Walquist is that Sinclair opposes the $25 million parks bond referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot.

"The parks bond that has come up to me is a great example of what I consider to be a poorly made decision on the City Council's part. Raising people's taxes in the middle of the worst recession that any of them have ever seen save the five percent of the people who lived through the Depression that are still alive is not the wisest decision. I feel that we as Americans should tax ourselves when we're prosperous rather than when we've got people who don't have jobs and can't afford to keep their houses," he said.

Sinclair applauds the new senior center the county government is building on Powder Springs Street.

"I understand Bill Dunaway's point which was that he didn't want it taken off the tax rolls, but good lord I didn't feel like it was paying much taxes anyway and it was just awful looking," he said, referring to the existing building.

As a real estate agent, Sinclair has noticed that there are plenty of affordable houses in the city.

"Finding a reasonably priced place to live is not really a problem. We need to focus on mid-range housing. If you think about it there's nothing in Marietta in the $300s," he said.

Unlike some council members, Sinclair said he plans to always return phone calls as well as do his homework in advance rather than arriving at council meetings unprepared.

Like Walquist, Sinclair opposes Dunaway's plan to widen Whitlock Avenue by adding a third west bound lane from Kirkpatrick.

Sinclair said he has little faith in the Downtown Marietta Development Authority because they're not a board that's controlled by the public. And as such, he is skeptical of DMDA Chairman Tom Browning's proposal to deed Kennesaw House to the city in exchange for the city allowing the DMDA to erect parking meters downtown to fund a parking deck.

Sinclair believes the Marietta Museum of History has no friends at City Hall at the moment, but were he to be elected, the museum would see him as a friend.

"My opponent is a nice honorable person, but I think it's going to come down to people are going to ask who's going to do a better job representing them but more importantly who can get things done," he said.

Sinclair recently conducted a fundraiser at the home of Ed and Candace Bentley off Whitlock Drive, where he estimated a turnout of about 110 people.

"It was a great crowd," Sinclair said, noting he raised about $2,250.

Sinclair said also in attendance were Ed Bentley's mother, June Bentley, widow of the late George Bentley; Paul and Joanna Conyngham, who operate Owens Flower Shop off Whitlock; developer John and Trish Elliott, banker Ed and Linda Milligan, Historic Preservation Society member Becky Paden, realtor Jim Glover and Dempsey Kirk, among others.