Commission Corner

Residential Growth:
A Blessing or Curse?

(Editor’s Note: The following article was written by Jasper County Commission Chairman Jack Bernard, and reflects his opinion. The newspaper allows him the space as a public service so Jasper residents are clear on the commission chairman’s opninions.)

By JACK BERNARD
Do you know the time honored Metro Atlanta recipe to create a starter home subdivision? The first ingredient is pure farmland. You can guess the rest. Give up? Just add water lines, greedy developers, clueless politicians…and mix very quickly before apathetic voters can catch on.

Let it continue over 20 years and, no surprise here, you have whipped up Gwinnett County!
Due to our location, growth has and will come. As JFK once said, “We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.” Therefore, the real question is: “what kind of new housing will Jasper County have?”

My belief is that housing growth must be controlled tightly with the goal that it should primarily benefit our community versus individual investors/developers, many of whom do not even live in this county.

Let’s take a look at the argument made by some people that we need rapid unrestrained residential growth because it creates a tax base. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? Well, in the 60s some people thought living on a commune was logical too…but now we all know it does not work well in practice.

Neither does the theory that more starter homes will help our taxes. Industry and retail stores create a better tax base, not starter homes. Let’s look at the facts as to what a typical such home costs us.

Let’s say the new home, similar to the 1,000 square foot new home subdivision recently approved by the City of Monticello, costs the owner $100,000. The annual property taxes paid are in the range of $1,000 (most of which goes to schools).

The average Jasper County home has 2.5 residents. Given the large number of single parent families that means about one child per household on average. In our county it costs about $8,000 per year to educate a child. Plus, for every new house, there is a cumulative impact on service delivery (law enforcement, fire protection, jails, emergency medical services, courts, roads, social services, and so forth).

Dr. Jeff Dorfman of the University of Georgia has done dozens of studies in counties around the state to quantify the exact nature of these costs. In neighboring Jones County, similar to us, he found that the “tax- services” breakeven point for a new house with one child is $151,000… and with two children, it is $282,000.

So, it is clear that unrestrained residential growth hurts us “tax wise.” According to Georgia Trend magazine, Jasper’s annual growth rate from 2000-2005 was 3.3 percent, versus a middle Georgia regional rate of 1.2 percent. This out of control growth was a major reason behind past tax increases.

Last year we had only a 1.7 percent county property tax increase, breaking the Jasper tradition of 10 percent annual property tax increases. For 2006, the BOC approved (subject to public hearings this month) a tax increase of only 1.96 percent. But to continue to remain under the rate of inflation, we need appropriate residential growth.

Unrestrained growth also hurts our quality of life in countless ways (congestion, traffic, crime and so forth). For many of us, this is even more important than the financial side. Isn’t that why we don’t live in Atlanta?

The way state laws are written and interpreted in Georgia, once the infrastructure is in place, your county government cannot stop residential development, although we can and have influenced its nature through strong zoning. Therefore, the key to residential growth is infrastructure, including roads and water/sewer services.

So, should we just build paved roads and put in water lines wherever and whenever we can? Not if we want to preserve our rural way of life and restrict tax increases.

That is why, upon the recommendation of the new Planning and Zoning board, we have restricted further manufactured housing in residential areas. In addition, the BOC has begun a study to charge impact fees to developers to partially offset the costs to taxpayers of new homes. We have also put in place much higher minimum square footage and construction quality requirements for new sub-divisions and homes in residential areas.

Starter homes simply do not pay their way and we should not be subsidizing new residents to move here.

That is also why, for example, the BOC has appointed six new Water Authority members, folks who understand the big picture. We do not need to run lines as we have in the past, just because we can get government money to do so. We need a long-range plan for multiple water sources, and not get stampeded into spending many millions on the very much still alive proposed Bear Creek Reservoir in Newton County.

Our aim must be industrial growth and delivery of water to existing (versus future) residents. Note that the Jasper County Water and Sewer Authority was created for this purpose and, due to past leadership, has yet to deliver one drop of water to any business.

In summary, I believe that we can prevail in this war against unrestrained growth. But, it will not be easy. We have won a few battles but we have a long way to go. Developers and some others want residential growth because that is how they earn their living… and that is fine.

Even the current BOC is split 3 to 2 (new versus old members) on this issue. However, if the voters are not careful, the next election may well mean a return to the ruinous policy of unrestrained housing growth, higher taxes to support Bear Creek Reservoir and the customary 10 percent annual tax increases.

Your elected officials need to represent your interests and not those of the developers. Make sure they do so before it is too late.