Forsyth County Commission’s Irresponsible Taxing and Spending Cannot Continue

You will recall my reveal­ing Sub­stack from late July, enti­tled, “How Three Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers Screwed Over the City of Cum­ming-Vote NO on SPLOST.” That arti­cle was the 5th Chap­ter of my series, “War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty.” In that chap­ter, I chron­i­cled the bad faith bar­gain­ing of Forsyth County’s three “Club mem­ber” Com­mis­sion­ers, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Chair­man Alfred John, with respect to the final divi­sion of poten­tial SPLOST rev­enues between Forsyth Coun­ty and City of Cum­ming, should the pro­posed Spe­cial Local Option Sales Tax ref­er­en­dum pass in Novem­ber. Rather than rehash­ing all that here, I will let you refresh your mem­o­ries by read­ing that arti­cle.

Then, in August, you will recall my arti­cle enti­tled, “Forsyth ‘Club Mem­ber’ Com­mis­sion­ers Dou­ble Size of Local Gov­ern­ment, Do Noth­ing for the Peo­ple,” an arti­cle which became Chap­ter 6 of that same series. In it I dis­cussed the tac­tics of the same three Club mem­bers, togeth­er com­pris­ing a major­i­ty of the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion, regard­ing the details of the lead-up and final deci­sion to build the new Forsyth Coun­ty Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing present­ly under con­struc­tion on Free­dom Park­way. Just know that, among oth­er strong­ly sup­port­ed con­clu­sions, in that arti­cle I showed you that the trio of com­mis­sion­ers in con­trol of final deci­sion-mak­ing on the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion, they being Seman­son, Hill and Chair­man John, ignored every inher­ent demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sid­er­a­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive local gov­ern­ment, strate­gi­cal­ly over-tax­ing the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty for sev­er­al years, result­ing in an accu­mu­la­tion of cash reserves under their direct con­trol, such that when they ulti­mate­ly took up the mat­ter of build­ing the new admin build­ing, they did it as a mat­ter under their own dis­cre­tion, with­out need of a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum, in oth­er words, with­out con­sult­ing the will of the peo­ple. Unlike the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the deci­sion to build the present admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in 1996, those com­mis­sion­ers at the time appro­pri­ate­ly call­ing a ref­er­en­dum to make that deci­sion. This time, how­ev­er, the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty had no voice in the ques­tion whether to spend what will like­ly become $150 mil­lion, or more, on the admin­is­tra­tion com­plex many now refer as the “Forsyth Coun­ty Taj Mahal.”

Because the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion has not spent your mon­ey wise­ly in the past, Forsyth Coun­ty should not give them even more mon­ey to frit­ter away, a prac­tice that has become a ver­i­ta­ble cus­tom.

Hard Facts

Below I want to show you just how reck­less the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion has been with YOUR MONEY. Yes, it is YOUR MONEY, not theirs. Take a look at the fol­low­ing graph, which apt­ly illus­trates how they raised the mon­ey for the new admin com­plex WITHOUT a ref­er­en­dum.

As you can see, over the last decade end­ing in 2023, res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty assess­ments in Forsyth Coun­ty have increased a whop­ping 86%! Vir­tu­al­ly half of that increase occurred dur­ing the last two years of the peri­od. Now, while, admit­ted­ly, the “Big 3” com­mis­sion­ers had no con­trol over the amount of the assessed val­ues of homes around the coun­ty, they had 100% con­trol over the mill­age rate, which is the per­cent­age of the assessed val­ue the coun­ty applies to com­pute the tax for your prop­er­ty. Had these indi­vid­u­als been tru­ly con­ser­v­a­tive com­mis­sion­ers, they would have low­ered the mill­age rate, allow­ing prop­er­ty own­ers to keep more of their mon­ey. Doing so would have pre­vent­ed the accu­mu­la­tion of such large sums, and required the com­mis­sion­ers to take the ques­tion of a mam­moth admin­is­tra­tion build­ing project to the vot­ers, had they thought the admin com­plex to be a wise invest­ment for the peo­ple to make at this time.

Now, what I just described is the rev­enue (tax) side of the Forsyth Coun­ty bud­get. So, next let’s look at spend­ing. And along­side coun­ty gov­ern­ment spend­ing let’s look at the growth of Forsyth County’s pop­u­la­tion.

These fig­ures show that, since 2016 Forsyth County’s spend­ing bud­get has increased by 98%, prac­ti­cal­ly a fac­tor of two, all the while the coun­ty pop­u­la­tion has only increased by 29%, not even one-third. Fur­ther­more, over that peri­od, while the size and scope of Forsyth Coun­ty Gov­ern­ment has dou­bled in cost, at least part of that cost can be attrib­uted to gov­ern­ment employ­ment increas­ing by a whop­ping 42%. And none of these fig­ures count the cost of the new admin­is­tra­tion build­ing.

And now Com­mis­sion­ers Seman­son, Hill and Chair­man John want to tax and spend even more of your mon­ey. To help them with that goal, they are adver­tis­ing SPLOST on bill­boards, such as this one locat­ed on Hwy 306 between GA 400 and Browns Bridge Road. The ad seen on the bill­board pic­tured below is not pure­ly infor­ma­tion­al, as is required of gov­ern­ment pub­li­ca­tions. It is polit­i­cal, and per­sua­sive of pub­lic sup­port, mes­sag­ing that it only take “Pen­nies” in exchange for Forsyth Coun­ty to expe­ri­ence “Progress.”

From what I under­stand, the coun­ty retained the right to a “1/9th flip” of this board as part of a set­tle­ment agree­ment with the bill­board com­pa­ny, the agree­ment aris­ing from a suit the com­pa­ny pur­sued against the coun­ty. So, should you ask who is pay­ing for the sign, you can antic­i­pate a response that the ad is not cost­ing tax­pay­ers any mon­ey. That answer is insuf­fi­cient to explain the per­sua­sive char­ac­ter of the ad, which is a con­flict-of-inter­est on the part of the coun­ty, and the fact that the coun­ty had to pay their attor­ney with tax­pay­er funds to secure the agree­ment.

Unavoidable Principles of Government Growth

It seems strange to be true, but high­er edu­ca­tion in Geor­gia was much more afford­able BEFORE the lot­tery and before the Hope Schol­ar­ship. The rea­son is that when the lot­tery began fun­nel­ing so much mon­ey into what used to be com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, those insti­tu­tions took the mon­ey and invest­ed in facil­i­ties, many or most of these insti­tu­tions even­tu­al­ly becom­ing uni­ver­si­ties. All of those facil­i­ties must be staffed. They must be main­tained. Land had to be pur­chased. That meant that the cost of edu­ca­tion would have to rise, even­tu­al­ly sky-rock­et­ing. Now that Geor­gia has the Hope Schol­ar­ship, it is not uncom­mon for stu­dents to grad­u­ate owing six fig­ures in col­lege loans. That nev­er hap­pened before. When that much mon­ey is poured into gov­ern­ment, the gov­ern­ment will grow, the cost of gov­ern­ment will grow, and the need to keep rais­ing tax­es to sup­port spend­ing nev­er relents. That is the phe­nom­e­non devel­op­ing in Forsyth Coun­ty Geor­gia today. The only way to stop it is to restrict the growth of coun­ty gov­ern­ment rev­enues.

And as the size and scope of gov­ern­ment grows, lib­er­al-spend­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials such as Seman­son, Hill and John appar­ent­ly become intox­i­cat­ed with the notion of cre­at­ing new poli­cies, pro­ce­dures and sys­tems to con­trol pub­lic activ­i­ties. Don’t be fooled, con­trol­ling what you are try­ing to accom­plish down to the very last eye­lash is what gov­ern­ment offi­cials term, “pro­vid­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices.” But, in many cas­es, those “gov­ern­ment ser­vices” are only “ser­vices” in the same way a bull might “ser­vice” a cow, if you know what I mean. To house the admin­is­tra­tion of those “ser­vices,” your coun­ty com­mis­sion rul­ing jun­ta, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Alfred John, jus­ti­fied their deci­sion to forego ask­ing the judg­ment of the peo­ple they rep­re­sent, decid­ing to spend all those sur­plus funds col­lect­ed over the past few years to build the new admin­is­tra­tion com­plex on their own author­i­ty as elect­ed offi­cials. You should also know that the build­ings present­ly under con­struc­tion on Free­dom Park­way are designed to allow the coun­ty to imme­di­ate­ly DOUBLE its admin­is­tra­tive staff once the build­ing is com­plete, and, of course, once the plaque com­mem­o­rat­ing the roles Seman­son, Hill and John played in tak­ing your mon­ey, is promi­nent­ly affixed to its facade. Coun­ty Man­ag­er David McK­ee speaks below of dou­bling the size of coun­ty gov­ern­ment in this mar­ket­ing video which can be found on the Forsyth Coun­ty web­site.

As I report­ed in my pre­vi­ous Sub­stack, the new admin­is­tra­tion build­ing is so ill-con­ceived that its loca­tion out­side of the Cum­ming city lim­it will appar­ent­ly pro­hib­it the coun­ty com­mis­sion from law­ful­ly enact­ing offi­cial busi­ness from with­in its con­fines. Thus, appar­ent­ly, any offi­cial busi­ness the com­mis­sion con­sid­ers will have to be vot­ed on back at the exist­ing Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing in down­town Cum­ming. There is a Geor­gia law and coun­ty ordi­nance in place stat­ing as much. Below Coun­ty Man­ag­er McK­ee seems to stum­ble through deal­ing with that issue as the ques­tion aris­es dur­ing the video.

Vote ‘NO’ on SPLOST

Make no mis­take, your Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion is ram­pant­ly SPENDING YOUR MONEY. They are tax­ing and spend­ing coun­ty tax dol­lars with­out rea­soned over­sight. That prac­tice must stop. Vot­ers in Novem­ber must send a mes­sage to their com­mis­sion that THEY, the VOTERS, will take over the nec­es­sary over­sight func­tion if the com­mis­sion will not, and that tax­pay­ers will no longer pro­vide SURPLUS FUNDS sim­ply for coun­ty gov­ern­ment to decide how to spend them. A lean gov­ern­ment is an effi­cient gov­ern­ment. This coun­ty com­mis­sion has proven it is not capa­ble of using appro­pri­ate dis­cre­tion when it comes to tax­ing and spend­ing the hard-earned dol­lars of coun­ty tax­pay­ers. For that rea­son, it is my hope coun­ty tax­pay­ers will heed this advice and VOTE NO ON SPLOST in Novem­ber. Doing so is the only way to tru­ly send a mes­sage to your coun­ty com­mis­sion.