Developers lack of interest in Tree Ordinance draws fire from County Commissioners

FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. – Forsyth County Chairwoman Cindy Mills scolded commercial developers for their lack of participation in stakeholder meetings and Commissioner Alfred John issued a stern warning regarding their “eleventh hour” request for modifications to the Tree Ordinance adopted at Thursday’s Board of Commissioners meeting.

Mills said, “Commissioner (Molly) Cooper and I sat through many, many, many, many hours of meetings. We had lots of input with the residential community but I definitely did not feel we heard from the commercial community. Did they have an opportunity to be there? Yes. Were they there? No.”

Mills said her comments were not reserved for the commercial interests. “I’m talking to Smart Growth. If you really care about trees, you should not want anybody to annex because in Forsyth County, when annexation happens, you lose architectural control. You’re losing your sign ordinance. You are losing mass grading.”

The approved Tree Ordinance includes some controversial, last-minute modifications that were proposed at a March 23 meeting with the Planning Commission that stakeholders were not allowed to attend. Those modifications include removal of a specimen tree survey that would have been required at the time of rezoning, removal of the post-development survey and exemption of industrial building footprints larger than 30,000 square feet from site density calculations.

“Kudos to Madam Chairwoman for putting the development community on notice,” Arnold said. “We’ve run a long marathon of 26 miles. At 26.2 miles someone trips you up. I want to hear from all sides but this has become a pattern. I’ve seen three times in the last four months at the eleventh hour, they come in and it’s the Homebuilders Association, Council for Quality Growth and they throw a grenade into this. We want to hear from them from the beginning not at the last minute.”

He added the following warning, “I’ll tell you going forward, if they come in at the last minute, throwing grenades into a process we have worked very hard toward, I’m going to be very unsympathetic to what they say.”