Chapter 5‑How Three County Commissioners Screwed Over the City of Cumming-Vote NO on SPLOST

An Untrustworthy Lot

I remem­ber from child­hood the very first tenet of theBoy Scout Law. A Scout is TRUSTWORTHY. That prin­ci­ple trans­lates to busi­ness as well. Suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­als will tell you that to do well in busi­ness, as in pri­vate life, one must be trust­wor­thy. Obvi­ous­ly, how­ev­er, that max­im does not trans­late to pol­i­tics. Time after time the pub­lic elects indi­vid­u­als they hope and believe can be trust­ed. And more times than not those hopes and beliefs are dashed by truth­ful rev­e­la­tions about their favorite pub­lic fig­ures. The case I bring to you today is no dif­fer­ent.

In busi­ness, vio­lat­ing basic stan­dards of hon­esty is not an option. To do so would be to deal in bad faith. A busi­ness per­son who deals in repeat­ed bad faith rarely gets away with it. The laws do not allow it. Vic­tims of bad-faith busi­ness prac­tices gen­er­al­ly have recourse. In pol­i­tics, how­ev­er, gen­er­al­ly, and very unfor­tu­nate­ly, deal­ing in bad faith has only the rem­e­dy of the bal­lot box. By the time elec­tions roll around, politi­cians nor­mal­ly dis­cov­er they can over­come their bad faith prac­tices sim­ply by smil­ing and being pleas­ant, by shak­ing hands, kiss­ing babies, by out­right lying and oth­er­wise putting on acts depict­ing sin­cer­i­ty designed for pub­lic con­sump­tion. The pub­lic, com­prised of indi­vid­u­als who would nev­er act like politi­cians, unfor­tu­nate­ly, have a hard time rec­og­niz­ing when those they sup­port polit­i­cal­ly, engage in the kinds of bad faith acts they do. Bad faith in politi­cians has become more com­mon than not. And deal­ing in bad faith is what I allege three major­i­ty-con­trol­ling mem­bers of the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers do very well, recent­ly prac­tic­ing that craft in nego­ti­at­ing a SPLOST agree­ment with the City of Cum­ming.

Regard­ing that agree­ment, it is appar­ent that the three Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Chair­man Alfred John, exe­cut­ed a con­scious, pro­grammed plan of bad faith, played out over an extend­ed peri­od, con­cern­ing the final terms of a deal with the City of Cum­ming. That deal had to do with the divi­sion of prospec­tive SPLOST rev­enues result­ing from a suc­cess­ful ref­er­en­dum Forsyth Coun­ty vot­ers will decide this com­ing Novem­ber. Gain­ing the citys sig­na­ture on a deal laid on the table by coun­ty Attor­ney Ken Jar­rard, with hard­ly a tick remain­ing in the crit­i­cal time frame allowed by law, these three com­mis­sion­ers sud­den­ly reneged on the deal the coun­ty itself pro­posed and seem­ing­ly agreed in prin­ci­ple, forc­ing the city to accept a dimin­ished deal or lose some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of $15 mil­lion, pos­si­bly more, in SPLOST rev­enues over the next 6 years, should the mea­sure pass. Hon­est peo­ple do not act that way. Hon­est peo­ple deal in good faith. In the process, the com­mis­sion­ers cre­at­ed ascape­goatto blame for their bad faith behav­ior, some­one they dont mind sac­ri­fic­ing to the god of pub­lic opin­ion. Despite bet­ter judg­ment, and despite knowl­edge of how these three com­mis­sion­ers con­sis­tent­ly oper­ate in bad faith, Cum­ming city offi­cials trust­ed the three Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion mem­bers enough to nego­ti­ate hon­est­ly and open­ly, only to dis­cov­er that what I have been pub­lish­ing now in four pre­vi­ous Chap­ters of this series, is true. The peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty, includ­ing the City of Cum­ming, should not trust Club-mem­ber com­mis­sion­ers Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill or com­mis­sion chair­man Alfred John.

What is SPLOST?

SPLOST stands for Spe­cial Pur­pose Local Option Sales Tax. Geor­gia law allows coun­ties to pro­pose ref­er­en­dums for local cit­i­zens to elect to pay addi­tion­al sales tax than oth­er­wise col­lect­ed, the result­ing increased rev­enues pro­vid­ing funds for their gov­ern­ments to acquire or build infra­struc­ture improve­ments. Doing so is designed to aid com­mu­ni­ties in achiev­ing high­er qual­i­ties of local liv­ing.

In every coun­ty in the state, there is at least one city. One of those cities is deter­mined to be the coun­ty seat. The coun­ty seat is where offi­cial gov­ern­ment busi­ness, be it coun­ty or city, must occur. No offi­cial busi­ness by either munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment can legal­ly trans­act out­side of the coun­ty seat.

In Forsyth Coun­ty, the munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment hous­ing the coun­ty seat is the City of Cum­ming. The Geor­gia law gov­ern­ing poten­tial SPLOST rev­enues requires the ref­er­en­dum-spon­sor­ing coun­ty to equi­tably divide those rev­enues with the city, or cities in the coun­ty. The per­cent­ages of that divi­sion are decid­ed dur­ing a nego­ti­a­tion lead­ing up to a drop-dead date. Should that date pass with no deal in place, the law man­dates any SPLOST rev­enues be divid­ed strict­ly accord­ing to pop­u­la­tion. Present­ly, the pop­u­la­tion of the City of Cum­ming is about 3% of the total pop­u­la­tion of Forsyth Coun­ty. That being the case, one might won­der why Forsyth Coun­ty would ever strike a deal for less than 97% of the total rev­enues on their side of the ledger. The answer is that a SPLOST ref­er­en­dum in which there is noInter­a­gency Gov­ern­men­tal Agree­ment(IGA), would only run for five years rather than six, and be capped at the esti­mat­ed rev­enues pre­sent­ed in the ref­er­en­dum, mak­ing it much more dif­fi­cult for either gov­ern­ment to count on a con­tin­u­ous stream of rev­enues long enough to com­plete cer­tain infra­struc­ture projects paid through SPLOST.

The present SPLOST agree­ment runs out at the end of this year. The pro­posed new SPLOST ref­er­en­dum is bud­get­ed to yield a total in the neigh­bor­hood of $350 mil­lion over the next 6 years. Take away one of those years and the total drops by almost $60 mil­lion. Take away the excess rev­enues should the cap be sur­passed, that could be an addi­tion­al $60 mil­lion or so the SPLOST might not col­lect. So you see, the for­mu­la makes both sides some­what moti­vat­ed to com­plete an agree­ment with the oth­er, entic­ing the par­ties to nego­ti­ate a deal the oth­er finds at least fair enough to sign. Any­way, that is the intent. It is that nego­ti­a­tion, or per­haps bet­ter expressed in this case, thatmanip­u­la­tion, the events of which I will describe below, involv­ing an appar­ent scheme per­pe­trat­ed by three com­mis­sion­ers, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Chair­man Alfred John, that I can only describe as dis­hon­est and in bad faith. The alter­na­tive is to imag­ine these three are just stu­pid, a propo­si­tion I can­not jus­ti­fy. Thus, as I have warned in the past, beware deal­ing with a coun­ty com­mis­sion gov­erned by such an untrust­wor­thy trio. The three unscrupu­lous com­mis­sion­ers to whom I refer will scheme in what­ev­er way nec­es­sary to achieve their pur­pos­es, while orches­trat­ing events to cre­ate an air of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty. Just know that going in.

And recall from ear­li­er chap­ters in this series of arti­cles, I main­tain the three com­mis­sion­ers to whom I refer, Seman­son, John and Hill, help to make up a very real, albeit infor­mal asso­ci­a­tion of politi­cians, polit­i­cal oper­a­tives and pri­vate cit­i­zen water-car­ri­ers who I, and a bur­geon­ing num­ber of oth­ers, open­ly refer as,the Club. In pre­vi­ous chap­ters in this series I have shared much about the Club, many appar­ent­ly who are in the Club, what they do, and how the Club oper­ates to achieve its ulti­mate pur­pose of con­trol­ling all polit­i­cal oper­a­tions through­out Forsyth Coun­ty. And what you will read below will add more fuel to that same infor­ma­tion fire.

The Negotiation

In ear­ly Spring, Forsyth Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­ee began a con­ver­sa­tion with the City of Cum­ming con­cern­ing the prospec­tive divi­sion of SPLOST rev­enues result­ing from a suc­cess­ful ref­er­en­dum should the ques­tion pass this com­ing Novem­ber. On April 9th, Mr. McK­ee sent a fol­low-up email offi­cial­ly request­ing City Admin­is­tra­tor Phillip Hig­gins to send over a list of projects and asso­ci­at­ed costs the city would like to incor­po­rate into their allot­ment of rev­enues under an agree­ment to be nego­ti­at­ed.

Lat­er that day, Mr. Hig­gins answered McK­ees request with the fol­low­ing set of projects, rough­ly esti­mat­ed to cost about $61 mil­lion, approx­i­mate­ly 17.5% of the total pro­ject­ed SPLOST rev­enues. This was a high-ball num­ber, not­ing that any­one about to enter a nego­ti­a­tion wise­ly starts out high and comes down from there.

On May 8th, Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee met with Cum­ming May­or Troy Brum­balow to nego­ti­ate a more mod­er­ate city per­cent­age, the result of their talks being a reduc­tion from 17.5% to 8%.

On May 20th, Mr. McK­ee sent a draft agree­ment based upon those para­me­ters to the may­or and city admin­is­tra­tor.

The coun­ty man­ag­er wrote to Brum­balow and Hig­gins,If you are agree­able in prin­ci­ple,I will dis­cuss with my Board (ie. Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers)and pre­pare the statu­to­ry joint meet­ings required.As draft­ed this is a 92% — 8% split gen­er­at­ing an esti­mat­ed $28 mil­lion for the city of Cum­ming as dis­cussed.

After that email from David McK­ee, the only changes from the city arriv­ing at his desk would be edits in the indi­vid­ual project allot­ments, but nev­er a change in the 92%-8% split.

In keep­ing with his com­mit­ment with the city, on June 6th, dur­ing a reg­u­lar meet­ing of the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers, theboard heard from Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­eerequest­ing autho­riza­tion for him and his staff to pro­ceed with SPLOST IX pro­gram­ming and to sched­ule a statu­to­ri­ly-required joint meet­ing between the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion and the Cum­ming City Coun­cil.

That day, Mr. McK­ees request, along with autho­riza­tion for Chair­man Alfred John to sign a let­ter addressed to the city to the effect of McK­ees stat­ed pur­pose, was unan­i­mous­ly approved by the board, Chair­man Johns noti­fi­ca­tion, sent the fol­low­ing day, as seen below.

Pri­or to the June 20 joint meet­ing, on June 11 Coun­ty Attor­ney Ken Jar­rard took McK­ees draft agree­ment, agreed in prin­ci­ple by May­or Brum­balow, andpre­sent­ed that agree­ment to City attor­ney Kevin Tal­lant, indi­cat­ing it was an offi­cial Coun­ty pro­pos­al.In the sub­ject line, Jar­rard char­ac­ter­ized the agree­ment as, FINAL.

Thus, as of June 11, 2024, hav­ing received a doc­u­ment deliv­ered from the coun­ty attor­ney to the city attor­ney labeled as a FINAL Agree­ment, appar­ent to city offi­cials, no fur­ther changes to the IGA pro­pos­al would be done. The deal, at least as far as the city was con­cerned, was cooked. The only item remain­ing to occur before mak­ing the deal offi­cial would be to fol­low the law­ful pro­ce­dure, a process which required a meet­ing between the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers and the Cum­ming City Coun­cil includ­ing May­or Brum­balow.

Board of Commissioners Joint Meeting with the City of Cumming

In keep­ing with Chair­man Johns let­ter above, on June 20 the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers host­ed a joint meet­ing with the Cum­ming City Coun­cil and May­or Brum­balow. Dur­ing that meet­ing, both par­ties to the IGA described the infra­struc­ture projects they pro­posed to build with SPLOST dol­lars should the ref­er­en­dum pass in Novem­ber.

Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­ee pre­sent­ed the fol­low­ing exhib­it bud­get­ing sev­er­al project buck­ets the coun­ty hoped to fund with the SPLOST mon­ey over the next few years. Those project buck­ets can be seen in the fol­low­ing slide he pre­sent­ed:

Notice that the pro­posed split between Forsyth Coun­ty and the City of Cum­ming in Mr. McK­ees pro­pos­al is 92% for the Coun­ty and 8% for City.

Next, notice Com­mis­sion­er Lau­ra Seman­son and Chair­man Alfred John were in atten­dance. Com­mis­sion­er Hilldid not attend this impor­tant meet­ing with mil­lions of dol­lars at stake. Com­mis­sion­er Lev­ent, to the far left, attend­ed after arriv­ing late.

I point­ed out who among the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers were present at this meet­ing because the nego­ti­at­ed IGA, as offi­cial­ly pro­posed by Forsyth Coun­ty Attor­ney Ken Jar­rard to the City of Cum­ming, was pre­sent­ed to every­one attend­ing, in its entire­ty, numer­ous Pow­er­Point slides detail­ing each of the projects includ­ed in the IGA shown to the com­mis­sion­ers and explained. All com­mis­sion­ers present had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the FINAL pro­pos­al sent by the coun­ty to the city, ask ques­tions, make remarks, or even nego­ti­ate, had they cho­sen to. Com­mis­sion­er Ker­ry Hill had every oppor­tu­ni­ty, and in fact every oblig­a­tion, to view online the meet­ing she missed, but would lat­er claim igno­rance of the pre­sen­ta­tion, because she was­nt there.

When Mr. McK­ee fin­ished speak­ing, he turned the meet­ing over to coun­ty Gen­er­al Coun­cil Ken Jar­rard, who took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explain the next steps in com­plet­ing the IGA. He indi­cat­ed that a form for the IGA had already been put togeth­er, but stressed, the final agree­menthad not been approved. Jar­rard then expressed hishopeandexpec­ta­tionthat dur­ing the timeimme­di­ate­ly after this meet­ing, either senior man­age­ment and their peers with the City of Cum­ming,OR ELECTED OFFICIALS AND THEIR PEERS,whomev­er needs to, will get togeth­er and iron out anyaddi­tion­al specificsof the inter­gov­ern­men­tal agree­ment.

Note, Attor­ney Jar­rard stat­ed clear­ly to all attend­ing that the process to achieve an inter­gov­ern­men­tal agree­ment on the pro­posed SPLOSTwas on a crit­i­cal path, mean­ing there wasno time to wasteto hit the dead­line nec­es­sary to place the ref­er­en­dum on the bal­lot. Any actions to change its terms must there­fore beginimme­di­ate­ly after this meet­ing.

The Stall

The joint meet­ing was held on June 20th. The Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers met again five days lat­er, June 25th. On the 25th, not a word con­cern­ing SPLOST was uttered. The com­mis­sion­ers met a sec­ond time on July 9th. Again, not a word on SPLOST. After July 9th, the next com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing would not be until Thurs­day, July 18th at which, as Attor­ney Jar­rard informed the com­mis­sion­ers on June 20th, the IGA would have to be act­ed upon by the board to com­plete the SPLOST process with­in the time frames required to place the ref­er­en­dum on the Novem­ber bal­lot. Also, as con­tem­plat­ed by Mr. Jar­rard, the Cum­ming City Coun­cil would meet two days pri­or to that, on Tues­day, July 16, at which time he expect­ed they would vote on what­ev­er agree­ment might be on the table at that time. The drop dead date for the IGA to be signed by both par­ties would be Tues­day, July 23. After that, it would be too late to change its terms with­out tak­ing extra­or­di­nary mea­sures, and the deal, if passed in Novem­ber, would revert to five years at 97% for the coun­ty and 3% for the city, with rev­enues capped at the orig­i­nal esti­mates.

Dur­ing the time between the June 20th joint meet­ing and the July 16th Cum­ming City Coun­cil meet­ing, there were no com­mu­ni­ca­tions forth­com­ing from Forsyth Coun­ty, either by its exec­u­tive staff or the com­mis­sion­ers them­selves, to their coun­ter­parts with the city. There­fore, expect­ing that the IGA pro­pos­al was sat­is­fac­to­ry to the com­mis­sion­ers and would there­fore be approved as pre­sent­ed to the board the month before, dur­ing the meet­ing on the 16th, the Cum­ming City Coun­cil vot­ed to approve the agree­ment, send­ing it back across the street for the com­mis­sion­ers to con­sid­er when they would meet two days lat­er on the 18th. It was dur­ing that board meet­ing that com­mis­sion­ers Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Chair­man Alfred John, cul­mi­nat­ed what appears to be an orches­trat­ed plan, work­ing togeth­er seam­less­ly dur­ing the meet­ing in an effort that would in the end in a dou­ble-cross of the City of Cum­ming.

At the meet­ing, to kick off the dis­cus­sion, Com­mis­sion­er Mills offered the fol­low­ing favor­able opin­ion of the IGA, as approved by the city.

Mills then asked Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee his opin­ion of the IGA. McK­ee respond­ed that the IGA is a deci­sion for the board, but offered his expla­na­tion of how the pro­pos­al got to where it was at that time.

McK­ee described how on June 6th, the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers autho­rized him to pro­gram an inter­gov­ern­men­tal SPLOST agree­ment with the City of Cum­ming. McK­ee described how, four­teen days lat­er, on June 20, dur­ing a joint meet­ing with the City, he pre­sent­ed the deal he nego­ti­at­ed to the com­mis­sion­ers, as it stood at that time. Accord­ing­ly, the orig­i­nal request from the city was 17.5%. As it stood at the joint meet­ing the city per­cent­age had been nego­ti­at­ed down to 8%.

McK­ee summed his remarks with the fol­low­ing state­ment:

As I report­ed above, on June 20th Attor­ney Ken Jar­rard instruct­ed the Com­mis­sion­ers that each of them had a poten­tial role in the out­come, should they choose to play it, to iron out any addi­tion­al specifics of the inter­gov­ern­men­tal agree­ment.Dur­ing the inter­im, none of the com­mis­sion­ers, least of whom the three who would ulti­mate­ly turn the deal down, they being Club mem­bers Seman­son, Hill and Chair­man John, instruct­ed McK­ee on how they wished toiron out any addi­tion­al specifics,or to pro­pose dif­fer­ent, per­haps more accept­able num­bers to their coun­ter­parts at the city. And cer­tain­ly, none of the com­mis­sion­ers picked up the phone them­selves to affect the nego­ti­a­tion. The three com­mis­sion­ers, includ­ing Hill (who, recall, did not attend the joint meet­ing), knew the para­me­ters of the deal as far back as June 20. Over the ensu­ing month they took no action to change or nego­ti­ate the deal any fur­ther. Thir­ty days of inac­tiv­i­ty result­ed in that same deal, one that every­one involved inti­mate­ly under­stood, becom­ing the assumed pro­pos­al for the Cum­ming City Coun­cil to con­sid­er dur­ing its reg­u­lar­ly-sched­uled meet­ing on July 16, at which time the city approved the agree­ment. That brings us up to the moment when dur­ing the July 18 com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing, Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son sud­den­ly low­ered the boom on Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee, mak­ing the com­mis­sion­ers inac­tion regard­ing the agree­ment to be McK­ees fault, accus­ing him of a lack of trans­paren­cy and inter­ac­tion with the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers in nego­ti­at­ing the agree­ment.

Com­mis­sion­er Mills then stat­ed the obvi­ous, mak­ing the point that if the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers want­ed to be the body to nego­ti­ate this deal, they should have tak­en on that role much ear­li­er, an option made plain to them the month pri­or by attor­ney Ken Jar­rard. Inter­est­ing­ly, Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son can be heard at the end seem­ing­ly agree­ing with Mills, obvi­ous­ly attempt­ing hav­ing it both ways, deflect­ing and com­plain­ing as if the sit­u­a­tion is not of her and the boards own faults, say­ing,Now, were under the gun.

In that short utter­ance, you heard from Com­mis­sion­er Seman­son an attempt at pos­tur­ing, at spin­ning the publics per­cep­tion of these events. She had just laid full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the boards fail­ure to act, includ­ing her own fail­ure to act to influ­ence the final pro­posed IGA, at the feet of Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­ee, when every­one knows that the mem­bers of the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers are in full con­trol. That sov­er­eign, gov­ern­ing body can do any­thing it wants to in this set of cir­cum­stances. Per­ceiv­ing a cer­tain defi­cien­cy in the nego­ti­a­tion, that body, or any com­mis­sion­er indi­vid­u­al­ly, could have offered Mr. McK­ee addi­tion­al guid­ance, or instruc­tion, or sim­ply picked up the phone and called the May­or across the street. Attor­ney Ken Jar­rard made those alter­na­tives clear to the com­mis­sion­ers on June 20. Their fail­ure to do so, there­fore, can­not be direct­ed at McK­ee. With­out fur­ther direc­tion from the board, or the boards mem­bers, Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee could only assume that the deal he already nego­ti­at­ed would be accept­able to the final deci­sion-mak­ers. It is those deci­sion-mak­ers, not McK­ee, who are respon­si­ble for find­ing them­selves, under the gun, that state­ment by Seman­son obvi­ous­ly deliv­ered for pub­lic con­sump­tion, hop­ing to trans­fer blame for her fail­ures, and the boards fail­ures, onto some­one else, in this case, Mr. McK­ee. From all appear­ances, dur­ing this entire cha­rade the three major­i­ty-con­trol­ling com­mis­sion­ers remained qui­et, stalling any action on their parts, fail­ing to act on this issue for weeks, while choos­ing the coun­ty man­ag­er to become their pub­lic scape­goat, appear­ing to use McK­ees alleged inad­e­quate work as their excuse to change the deal at the last minute, even after it had been approved by the City of Cum­ming, and receive no blame.

As you can see, thats not going to hap­pen.

Jus­ti­fi­ably, and I will add, quite pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Coun­ty Manger McK­ee took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to defend him­self, stat­ing what I have already shown you to be true, that noth­ing he did was a secret from the begin­ning. On June 20, the IGA pro­gram­ming he nego­ti­at­ed, as instruct­ed on the 6th by the com­mis­sion­ers, was ful­ly dis­closed to each of them, and to the City of Cum­ming, and for that mat­ter to the entire world via the web­site. Even Com­mis­sion­er Ker­ry Hill, who did not attend, had no excuse to claim igno­rance of McK­ees pre­sen­ta­tion because the video is right there online for any­one to view. It is Hills job as a com­mis­sion­er elect­ed to rep­re­sent her dis­trict, to watch and ful­ly under­stand every­thing that hap­pened dur­ing the joint meet­ing with the city, with mil­lions of dol­lars at stake.

In the fol­low­ing clip you will hear McK­ee in is own defense, but also Chair­man John chim­ing in over the top of the coun­ty man­ag­er, express­ing that what McK­ee allegesis not entire­ly true, claim­ing that the chair­man expressed his reser­va­tions twice to McK­ee, and also expressed reser­va­tions to the coun­ty attor­ney.

So, lets dis­cuss Chair­man Johns reser­va­tions. To say one has reser­va­tions is not an instruc­tion. Tak­ing the chair­man at his word, he did not instruct the coun­ty man­ag­er regard­ing any spe­cif­ic changes in the agree­ment that Mr. McK­ee should seek. Giv­en the boards lack of spe­cif­ic direc­tion on how he should pro­ceed with the nego­ti­a­tion, includ­ing spe­cif­ic changes the board of com­mis­sion­ers would find agree­able, Mr. McK­ee found him­self swing­ing at ghosts. In these meet­ings, we saw the three major­i­ty-com­pris­ing coun­ty com­mis­sion mem­bers, offer­ing three dif­fer­ent view­points on the deal with the City. Accord­ing to Ker­ry Hill, the city should only get 3% and any­thing beyond that they would have to con­vince her that the cityneedsthe mon­ey more than shewantsthe mon­ey. With that in mind, should McK­ee have told the City of Cum­ming they get 3% and thats it? Had he done so, he would be sound­ly crit­i­cized by all.

Accord­ing to Lau­ra Seman­son, dur­ing the July 18th meet­ing she admit­ted hav­ing no idea what kind of a deal she would seek or approve, and that she was just dis­ap­point­ed that nobody asked her, which if they had, she would have been forced to admit hav­ing no opin­ion. Should McK­ee have gone to the city and sim­ply thrown up his hands? I dont think so.

Chair­man John took the posi­tion only that he had reser­va­tions, offer­ing no guid­ance as to what his reser­va­tions were, or how to over­come those reser­va­tions. Giv­en reser­va­tions and no instruc­tions, McK­ee had noth­ing of author­i­ty to pro­ceed with in his nego­ti­a­tions with the city. In essence, Chair­man Johns reser­va­tions only pro­vid­ed the means for him to jus­ti­fy a rhetor­i­cal com­plaint against any final deal McK­ee might present when it came up for a vote.It is just too bad for Forsyth Coun­ty tax­pay­ers that Alfred John did not have any reser­va­tions about the new $115 mil­lion coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion com­plex he worked so dili­gent­ly to pass, paid for with excess tax pro­ceeds left unre­turned to coun­ty tax­pay­ers and held to accu­mu­lat­ed over time by the coun­ty, the build­ing sit­u­at­ed, by the way, OUTSIDE OF THE FORSYTH COUNTY SEAT, MAKING IT ILLEGAL FOR COMMISSIONERS TO HOLD MEETINGS AND TRANSACT BUSINESS IN THAT LOCATION. Per­haps we will talk about that boon­dog­gle again in the near future.

In essence, these three coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Alfred John, proved by their final actions in turn­ing down the deal the coun­ty itself ini­tial­ly pro­posed, that none of the fore­go­ing was real. It was all crap, a ruse, an act pur­posed to screw over the City of Cum­ming and have some­one to blame it on oth­er than them­selves. Had Chair­man John want­ed to change the num­bers in the agree­ment, all he had to do would be to call the May­or on the phone and talk. The mat­ter could have been resolved in ten min­utes. This is how these peo­ple oper­ate. This is how the Club oper­ates. This is insid­i­ous and the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty should not tol­er­ate it.

What you just heard from these three com­mis­sion­ers was a set of pre-planned jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for post­pon­ing their own involve­ment in the SPLOST nego­ti­a­tions with the City of Cum­minguntil the very last minute, at which time they would pull the rug out from under the deal. Polit­i­cal­ly, they would do that for sev­er­al rea­sons. First, they could avoid respon­si­bil­i­ty for any result by cre­at­ing a scape­goat out of their coun­ty man­ag­er. They placed David McK­ee in an unten­able, no-win sit­u­a­tion. On June 6th, they assigned him the task of nego­ti­at­ing with the city, giv­ing him no guid­ance regard­ing what the coun­ty com­mis­sion would find accept­able. They had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer McK­ee guid­ance through­out the entire process, and chose not to. In the end, noth­ing McK­ee could have nego­ti­at­ed would have been accept­able to these three. Sec­ond, the three com­mis­sion­ers under­stood that as politi­cians, they are free to bar­gain in bad faith with the city of Cum­ming because, ulti­mate­ly, noth­ing pre­vents politi­cians from being dis­hon­est. Should they try to nego­ti­ate like I describe in busi­ness, they would soon find them­selves con­sid­ered so untrust­wor­thy that no one would do busi­ness with them again. The third rea­son for act­ing as they did in this SPLOST nego­ti­a­tion I will reserve to dis­cuss below.

So, What Happened to the SPLOST?

Con­tin­u­ing the saga of the July 18th meet­ing, near the out­set of the dis­cus­sion Com­mis­sion­er Mills made a motion to accept the SPLOST IGA as pre­sent­ed (92% for the Coun­ty, 8% for the City). After a few moments, Com­mis­sion­er Lev­ent pro­vid­ed a sec­ond to the motion, a vote was tak­en andthe motion failed, two for and the threeClub mem­bers, Hill, John and Seman­son, pre­dictably against. Here is what that sound­ed like:

This Charade Was All About Control

As you can see, the Club, rep­re­sent­ed by Seman­son, John and Hill, votes togeth­er. For the Club to con­trol Forsyth Coun­ty polit­i­cal­ly, its mem­bers must always act in con­cert. That vote is sym­bol­ic of a vol­ley launched by the Club in theWar Under the Waves and the Strug­gle to Con­trol Forsyth Coun­ty. Viewed from the Clubs per­spec­tive, the IGA nego­ti­a­tion with the City of Cum­ming was sim­ply anoth­er bat­tle in that war. The Club does not con­trol the City of Cum­ming. Cum­ming has a pop­u­lar May­or and City Coun­cil, May­or Brum­balow win­ning his last elec­tion with 77% of the vote. Because the Club can­not con­trol the city, the Club must pun­ish and dom­i­nate the city how­ev­er it can. That is how these peo­ple think and oper­ate.

Please lis­ten to the ratio­nale by which the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers final­ly set­tled on the per­cent­ages to allot to the City. Chair­man John states arbi­trar­i­ly,I would prob­a­bly be OK with6.22 per­cent.

So, the test of equi­ties in Chair­man Johns pro­posed split of poten­tial SPLOST rev­enues between Forsyth Coun­ty and the City of Cum­ming rest­ed not on what these two gov­ern­men­tal enti­ties might do for the tax­pay­ers, but instead on whether Chair­man John and the oth­er Club mem­berswould prob­a­bly be OK with,an arbi­trary per­cent­age the chair­man casts into the dis­cus­sion.

In the next few min­utes, the sec­ond motion passed 5–0, drop­ping the City per­cent­age from almost 8 to an arbi­trary fig­ure of 6.22 per­cent. After the meet­ing adjourned, Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee con­tact­ed City Admin­is­tra­tor Hig­gins with the news, the next day pro­vid­ing the city with a IGA com­plete with the updat­ed per­cent­ages, signed by Chair­man John. The city then scram­bled to pro­vide prop­er noti­fi­ca­tions for a spe­cial city coun­cil meet­ing to occur the fol­low­ing Mon­day, July 22nd. The coun­cil con­vened and approved the SPLOST ref­er­en­dum to be placed on the Novem­ber bal­lot at that time.

Just so you know, the dif­fer­ence between the orig­i­nal pro­posed city per­cent­age of 8% (7.91 actu­al­ly) and 6.22%, based upon Chair­man John and the oth­er two Club mem­bersprob­a­bly being OKwith the dif­fer­ence, could eas­i­ly mean the dif­fer­ence between the City of Cum­ming hav­ing the funds to install a right turn lane between the cor­ner of Geor­gia High­way 20 and Kel­ly Mill Road, around to Castle­ber­ry Road at the south­west­ern cor­ner of the cour­t­house square, the lack of which any coun­ty tax­pay­er trav­el­ing into town on High­way 20 from the west will under­stand to mean the result­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion they always expe­ri­ence dri­ving into town will con­tin­ue to plague motorists for years to come. So, when you are dri­ving into town, Im sure you will rest easy know­ing that Chair­man John and the Clubwould prob­a­bly be OK with you sit­ting in a per­fect­ly avoid­able traf­fic jam.

Per­son­al­ly, none of these Club mem­ber com­mis­sion­ers would ever receive my vote. These peo­ple are not Repub­li­cans. They are old-time lib­er­al Democ­rats who, not sur­pris­ing­ly, place an R next to their names to gain elec­tion. Their behav­ior dur­ing the recent SPLOST nego­ti­a­tion was rep­re­hen­si­ble. If the City of Cum­ming is smart, they will nev­er trust these com­mis­sion­ers again. The May­or and City Coun­cil all deserve apolo­gies. Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­ee deserves an even big­ger apol­o­gy, and a bonus for deal­ing with the kind of abuse he took dur­ing all this non­sense.

The peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty should not reward this kind of behav­ior by their elect­ed offi­cials in Novem­ber. The last thing the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty should do would be to sat­is­fy this cadre of dis­hon­est, tax-and-spend politi­cians with a suc­cess­ful SPLOST ref­er­en­dum. Even if you think SPLOST is a good idea in prin­ci­ple, it is time to teach your coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers, and the Club, that any­one who rep­re­sents you must do so hon­est­ly and forth­right­ly, and with only the needs and desires of the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty in mind. Should SPLOST fail, and I believe it should, the coun­ty com­mis­sion can adjust how it does busi­ness and bring it back for anoth­er vote in the future. For these rea­sons, I urge all Forsyth Coun­ty cit­i­zens to

VOTE NO ON SPLOST IN NOVEMBER.

Below you will find links to pre­vi­ous chap­ters in this series:

War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty-Chap­ter 1- The Marc Mor­ris Let­ter

War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty-Chap­ter 2‑Ghost-Writ­ers in the Sky

War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty-Chap­ter 3‑Club Now Bul­ly­ing Pri­vate Cit­i­zens-Local War­lords Appar­ent­ly Run­ning Coun­ty Pol­i­tics, Per­haps Even the Courts

War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty-Chap­ter 4‑Cy­ber-War­fare to Go With Bul­ly­ing? Well, Would You Expect? This is War