Forsyth County Tree Ordinance has Political Purposes Designed to Give Commissioners Cover While Building the Tax Base

Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Truth Social, Twitter, Youtube 

“Saving trees in any meaningful way, and preserving the character of Forsyth County, is no goal of your present Forsyth County Commission. New homes mean new property tax revenues computed at current-established homestead values. Ever-accelerating property tax revenue is what the commissioners running your county are after.”

“Back in the Day,” Tree Ordinances Were Not Necessary

I am a home builder of over 40 years. And for most of those years, there were no tree ordinances to speak of, whether in the City of Roswell, or North Fulton County, Gwinnett County, Hall, Dawson, or certainly not Forsyth County. During the 1990’s, I built homes in Polo Golf and Country Club and Aberdeen. And never once was there a conversation concerning adhering to a county tree ordinance. That said, did developers and builders indiscriminately take down trees? Of course not. Builders coveted wooded lots. Wooded lots had dollar signs all over them. Wooded lots were easy sells. Developers held lotteries and charged a premium for those lots. In those days, builders and developers went out of their ways to save every tree they could. Under those circumstances, why would anyone need a tree ordinance? They wouldn’t. We need to get back to that in Forsyth County. And the path back to that world is reflected in my campaign for county commission.

The Atlanta Home Building Environment Has Changed

The world I describe existed during the days before vertically-integrated, national development and home building corporations took over the Atlanta market. Those corporations buy the dirt, develop the subdivisions, and bring in their own building teams. They offer three or four basic styles of homes, have their own marketing companies, and their own unlicensed sales forces to sell their homes. That way, they keep all those revenues in-house. Vertical integration allows large builders to do all that I describe as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, their goal of course being to generate the largest profit imaginable.

During the 1990’s, one by one, as the corporations I describe entered the Atlanta market, they pushed the mom & pop builders out. Developer-run builder programs where a land developer would invite the best local builders to compete for business in their subdivisions, such as occurred in Polo Golf & Country Club, Aberdeen and Laurel Springs, went the way of the dinosaur. Businesses like ours were forced out of the speculation market. Fortunately, in our case that meant we would concentrate on what we did best anyway, custom home building. Some of the large corporations, such as Centex, attempted to become offsite custom builders, but are not set up to operate that way, and found it difficult to effectively compete in that market.

Recipe for Success for National Development/Home Building Corporations

If you run a national developing and home building company, your recipe for success is pretty much as follows:

1. Design your subdivision with lots as small as possible
2. During the development phase, take down all trees that might affect mass-grading of the development
3. Prep the lots during the development phase such that each is ready to accept a concrete slab foundation
4. Build a model home or two with all the bells and whistles
5. Bring in your in-house sales team
6. Set up a sales office and start selling.

Read more here.

‘NO AD’ subscription for CDM!  Sign up here and support real investigative journalism and help save the republic!