Three County Commissioners Attempting to Cover Their Incompetence

Bringing You Up To Speed

In July, I pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled, “How Three Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers Screwed Over the City of Cum­ming-Vote NO on SPLOST.” That arti­cle was the fifth of a series enti­tled, “War Under the Waves-The Strug­gle for Polit­i­cal Con­trol of Forsyth Coun­ty.” In it I described the events lead­ing up to the moment when three Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers, Lau­ra Seman­son, Ker­ry Hill and Chair­man Alfred John, turned their backs on a SPLOST rev­enue shar­ing pro­pos­al they them­selves pro­posed to the City of Cum­ming, in essence dou­ble-cross­ing the city after the city had approved the county’s pro­pos­al. The dou­ble-cross occurred with hard­ly enough ticks on the clock for the city to recon­sid­er, and cer­tain­ly not enough time to rene­go­ti­ate. That last minute change by the coun­ty com­mis­sion forced the Cum­ming City Coun­cil to meet in emer­gency ses­sion the night before the dead­line to get the SPLOST ref­er­en­dum placed on the Novem­ber bal­lot.

Next, in August I pub­lished anoth­er arti­cle, one enti­tled, “Forsyth “Club Mem­ber” Com­mis­sion­ers Dou­ble Size of Local Gov­ern­ment, Do Noth­ing for the Peo­ple.” In that arti­cle I wrote about the deci­sion made by com­mis­sion­ers Seman­son, Hill and John, act­ing as the major­i­ty of the board, to build an extrav­a­gant coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion com­plex on Free­dom Park­way, com­plete with rooftop obser­va­tion decks for the com­mis­sion­ers and a $22 mil­lion exer­cise (well­ness) facil­i­ty for coun­ty employ­ees. Accord­ing to the coun­ty man­ag­er, this admin build­ing is designed to dou­ble the size of local gov­ern­ment. The three com­mis­sion­ers made the deci­sion to build the Free­dom Park­way facil­i­ty with­out con­sult­ing the peo­ple, break­ing with prece­dent estab­lished almost 30 years ago, at which time that coun­ty com­mis­sion placed build­ing the present admin build­ing on a bal­lot ref­er­en­dum for the coun­ty tax­pay­ers, not the com­mis­sion­ers, to decide.

Final­ly, last month I pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled, “Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion’s Irre­spon­si­ble Tax­ing and Spend­ing Can­not Con­tin­ue.” Cit­ing a “long black train” of poor deci­sions by those same com­mis­sion­ers, irre­spon­si­bly rais­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions in excess tax rev­enues and frit­ter­ing those tax dol­lars away on extrav­a­gant pet projects such as the Forsyth Coun­ty new “Taj Mahal” admin com­plex, I urged vot­ers to teach the com­mis­sion­ers a les­son by vot­ing “no” on the new SPLOST (Spe­cial Local Option Sales Tax) ref­er­en­dum present­ly being decid­ed on the Novem­ber bal­lot. With such a track record of incom­pe­tence and waste­ful spend­ing by their com­mis­sion­ers, Forsyth Coun­ty tax­pay­ers would be wise to turn off the mon­ey spig­ots.

Now that you are up to speed, I would like to share with you the lat­est major incom­pe­tence of Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers Seman­son, Hill, along with Chair­man Alfred John. You see, the part of the deci­sion to build the new coun­ty admin com­plex which I did not touch on above, is the part in which the three com­mis­sion­ers above approved hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars over the life of the project, know­ing that, appar­ent­ly, Geor­gia law and the state con­sti­tu­tion pre­vent the coun­ty com­mis­sion from meet­ing to enact offi­cial coun­ty busi­ness at the new loca­tion because it is sit­u­at­ed OUTSIDE of the coun­ty seat of Cum­ming. Yes, those three com­mis­sion­ers, act­ing in the major­i­ty, decid­ed to build the facil­i­ty know­ing that with­out an act of God they would not be able to meet there law­ful­ly, essen­tial­ly prov­ing any alle­ga­tion of their incom­pe­tence.

In addi­tion to Geor­gia Law and the state con­sti­tu­tion appar­ent­ly stand­ing in their way, a local ordi­nance requires the coun­ty com­mis­sion to meet at the present admin­is­tra­tive build­ing on East Main Street in down­town Cum­ming. To change that local ordi­nance, which is appar­ent­ly just the first step toward rec­ti­fy­ing the even big­ger statewide prob­lem, a new ordi­nance would have to be pre­sent­ed to the Geor­gia leg­is­la­ture, spon­sored by a UNANIMOUS coun­ty del­e­ga­tion. That means that every state leg­is­la­tor, rep­re­sent­ing any and all areas of Forsyth Coun­ty, must act to co-spon­sor that local leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the 2025 Gen­er­al Assem­bly. I can tell you, that is not like­ly to hap­pen.

I can reveal to you at this time, as report­ed to me from sev­er­al inde­pen­dent sources, that the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion has recent­ly con­tact­ed the City of Cum­ming ask­ing a favor, or per­haps pre­sent­ing a deal. Appar­ent­ly, the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion has sent over a pro­posed res­o­lu­tion, ask­ing the may­or and city coun­cil to sign. It is a res­o­lu­tion express­ing the sen­ti­ment that the City of Cum­ming would be agree­able for all applic­a­ble laws to change in order for the coun­ty com­mis­sion to enact busi­ness out­side of the coun­ty seat of Cum­ming. I have no knowl­edge regard­ing what the com­mis­sion­ers would be will­ing to trade the city for such a res­o­lu­tion. But because this is the same Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion who just screwed the City of Cum­ming out of a cal­cu­lat­ed six mil­lion dol­lars should the SPLOST ref­er­en­dum on November’s bal­lot pass, I would expect that the com­mis­sion­ers deal must be sub­stan­tial if they believe it has a chance to gain the city’s favor after the way the city has been treat­ed. It is too bad the com­mis­sion, and by that I mean Seman­son, Hill and John, did not con­sid­er these cir­cum­stances before pulling the rug on the SPLOST agree­ment with the city. But, that is what incom­pe­tent elect­ed offi­cials do. I sup­pose we should expect it.