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“The law…says that a government has an opportunity to phase out legal non-conforming or grandfathered uses over what’s called a “reasonable period of time.”...You tasked me to come up with some language that might begin to peel back some of the legal non-conforming uses that we have in the county.” — Forsyth County Attorney Ken Jarrard, August 7, 2025, speaking directly to the Forsyth County Commission explaining the purpose of an ordinance they passed later that evening
The above statement was spoken into the record by Forsyth County Attorney Ken Jarrard as he began to describe certain proposed ordinance provisions he authored at the request of the Forsyth County Commission and presented on August 7. The commission passed those provisions later in the evening, and they now reside on the books, ready to execute. Those are the same ordinance provisions I discussed in my recent Substack article entitled, “Forsyth County Commission Enacts Ground-Breaking Ordinance to Terminate Property Rights Associated with Grandfathered Businesses and Land Uses - Your Land May Be Affected.” Since publishing that article, public opinion of the new ordinance, and the board of commissioners in general, has been overwhelmingly, and increasingly negative.
Obviously alarmed by such public sentiments, three commissioners, Laura Semanson, Alfred John, and Mendy Moore soon posted social media statements, each portraying a similar manufactured defense of their August decision. The commissioners expressed, each in his or her own way, that somehow the ordinance provisions in question do not concern the purposes County Attorney Ken Jarrard explained to them on August 7, but are instead about “businesses who continuously violate our county or state codes” (Semanson), and “serial offenders who continue to ignore the ordinances or the law” (Alfred John), and “bad actors” (Mendy Moore). There is no language in the new ordinance provisions, nor in County Attorney Ken Jarrard’s August 7 explanation, that describes the intentions the three commissioners would like you to believe. And because we know from its author that, “phasing out non-conforming land uses,” is the singular purpose of the ordinance the county commission tasked Mr. Jarrard to write, it is no far stretch to reckon that the commissioners intend to apply those provisions to accomplish that very purpose.
Last week I cautioned the public that in my experience, laws should never be judged by what a lawmaker says, but rather by the authorities the laws convey. Once on the books, laws will generally be applied following the latter, and not the former.
Read more here.
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