This story was updated Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025, at 2:16 p.m. to add the status of Farrell’s request that his proposed motions be included on the agenda of Friday’s regularly scheduled county commission meeting. Ellis did not include the request in an initial agenda sent midweek to commissioners.
Declaring it time to “put petty politics aside,” a member of the Chatham County Commission says he is taking steps to resolve a monthslong feud over the area transit system’s board of directors, in a rare act of public defiance of the commission’s chairman, Chester Ellis.
In a letter on Monday to Ellis, Commissioner Patrick Farrell (District 4) said he would introduce three motions at the panel’s regularly scheduled Friday meeting that if approved, would mean the county’s acceptance of the new expanded board of directors of Chatham Area Transit (CAT) and an end to a costly legal and political battle, waged mainly by Ellis, to restore its predecessor.
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One motion to be put forward by Farrell, a Republican candidate for the Coastal Georgia congressional seat held by Buddy Carter, calls on Ellis to rescind a Nov. 13 letter he sent to the CAT’s board of directors, in which he said the county would terminate its involvement in the transit system on June 30, 2026, and set up a parallel transit network…