Commission`s Abuse of Authority Costs You Money
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The Gwinnett investigative team at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has done an exceptional job of documenting the County Commission’s recent abuse of its authority to purchase land for public use. The newspaper, however, can’t do a thing about the abuse, but you can.
A Lack of Integrity, A Failure of Character
The land deals described in the AJC article are simply symptoms of the problem, which is a lack of integrity on the part of a majority of our County Commission. Policies and procedures are in place to guide the process of identifying and purchasing land for recreation. Some of our Commissioners, led by Chairman Charles Bannister, simply refuse to follow them.
There is nobody available to make them follow the rules except for you, but you are not allowed in the room when the rules are being broken. In most cases, the Commission’s failure to act honorably costs you money.
Failure to Follow the Plan
The county Recreation Department operates according to a long-range, comprehensive plan. The plan identifies areas of the county that are under-served by public recreational facilities and provides a guideline for meeting those needs.
But only one of the four properties described in the AJC article is located in an area identified as being under-served. Further, the county could provide no evidence that the county staff initiated consideration of any of the properties… every one of the deals started with a developer “working the deal” with their friend, a Commissioner.
The public’s piggy bank isn’t bottomless. Every tract of land purchased outside of the county’s plan takes dollars away from areas that truly need recreational facilities.
Failure to Defend the Plan
The County Commission spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to create and maintain a Comprehensive Land Use Plan, which is supposed to be their guide when deciding whether or not a certain area or property should be developed, and how and when.
In three out of the four land deals, however, the Commission acted according to the Comprehensive Plan, then failed to defend their actions when challenged in court. A majority voted to deny a higher density or inappropriate development proposal, then used your tax dollars to give the developer the profit that he sought anyway.
In one example, developer Marvin Hewatt applied to build a 91-home subdivision. Commissioner Beaudreau moved to approve a development at a density more in line with the Land Use Plan– 33 homes.
When the Commission acts reasonably and in accordance with the Plan, the decision is easily defensible in court. On many occasions, however, the Commission doesn’t stand behind its own action. In this case, it appears that Chairman Bannister began the process of buying his buddy’s property before the lawsuit was even filed—he ordered county staff to commission an appraisal just one day after the rezoning decision. Hewatt filed his lawsuit two weeks later.
Failure to Follow Standard Practices
The AJC found numerous discrepancies in the appraised values reached by county-hired appraisers, and several failures of those appraisers to follow industry standards and procedures. In several recent cases, the county has paid the price established by the seller’s appraiser!
Flaws in the county’s procedure for valuing property are not new. In 2001, I exposed numerous problems with the county’s “approved appraiser” list. Of the approximately 75 names on the rarely updated list, several were no longer licensed to appraise property and some had even died.
The number of disqualified and deceased appraisers on the list was irrelevant, anyway. Although I had been told that appraisers were selected from the list on a rotating basis, I found that most of the county’s appraisals were farmed out to just a handful of individuals including the Lawrenceville appraiser named in the AJC article, Ron Foster.
In late 2000, Foster grossly overvalued a tract near Stone Mountain, known as “Deshong Crossings.” Like the recent cases, the developer found himself with a dog of a property; the tract not only had rock outcroppings and buried granite but archaeologists had identified potential gravesites.
Former Chairman Wayne Hill was quoted as saying the property was probably worth $10 million and Foster managed to meet Hill’s value. The county’s purchase netted the developer, if I recall correctly, about a $5 million profit on property that he had owned for less than six months.
Apparently, Foster continues to provide the county with defective appraisals nine years later. An independent appraiser questioned Foster’s methods, calling them “very suspicious.” Foster dodged the AJC’s requests to explain his tactics.
Frankly, the county should not be accepting value from a low-bidding appraiser and county staff should certainly not have a “pet appraiser” like Foster, just because he is convenient or cheap. Instead, the county should establish a rate schedule that qualified appraisers should accept if they want to be on the “approved appraiser” list. The county should hire appraisers on a true rotating basis. Two independent values should be commissioned and the Commission should be prevented from buying property at more than 5% above the average of the two values.
The County Commission should never buy property based on the seller’s appraised value! In my opinion, doing so is a violation of the Commission’s fiduciary duty to spend public money in the most efficient way possible.
A Failure to Lead
The failures of procedure and practice are chargeable to one man, our only full-time Commissioner, Chairman Charles Bannister. It is his responsibility to insist, on behalf of you and your tax money, that proper procedures for buying land be established and followed. Bannister is apparently unable to insist on honesty and integrity in the process; probably because, as the AJC article details, he is the primary person taking advantage of the system.
Gwinnett’s $37 million land deals questioned | ajc.com
Bob, is there not some kind of State mechanism in place that would trigger a ‘independent’ financial audit of the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners land deals and zoning decisions related to just these latest land deals?
It just seems to me there is so much fraud going on behind the Commissioners ‘public office’ doors, that somehow the citizens should be given a fair look at the books and the Commissioners alledged ‘under the table’ financial relationships to the Developers. Kevin Kenerly was caught red handed cozying up with developers in Las Vegas, but he was not investigated properly then.
At a time when we need even more police and fire protection, these crooked Commissioners are willing to sacrifice the safety of my fellow Gwinnett citizens for hand fulls of cash.
I believe that the Grand Jury can order that a government entity conduct certain actions. The GJ, if it deems it appropriate, could order the county to conduct an audit of the type that you suggest or could conduct the investigation itself.
This part of the article about the Palm Creek deal caught my eye:
“According to Beaudreau, Bannister brought a copy of the developer’s appraisal to a closed-door commission meeting for his colleagues to consider. That one, based on 2006 land sales, was for $2.42 million. Bannister, in an interview with the AJC, didn’t deny bringing the higher appraisal to the meeting. He said he believes it was the more accurate of the two.”
First, a bank wouldn’t accept the seller’s appraisal for the purpose of a loan, so why should the county accept the seller’s appraisal for spending public dollars?
Second, Bannister is not an appraiser. He has no special expertise that qualifies him to choose the “right” value between two estimations by licensed professionals.
Finally, it doesn’t take any special mental ability to question whether or not an appraisal offered by the SELLER– obviously a biased party– would give the “more accurate” value.
The obvious conclusion is that Bannister wanted to give his friend, Marvin Hewatt, more of YOUR money.
One thing that is left out of this is that the community around “Deshong Crossing” fought hard to prevent the re-zoning and any development of the site. The park there was demanded by those nearby. A lot of the things now described to show the tract’s lower value were used as arguments against the re-zoning. The park there was sorely needed but not so much so that we should have paid too much. Still, in the end, that park is seen as a success despite the cost.
You are right that the purchase, as an alternative to development, was preferred by nearby residents. My point was that, like Bannister’s recent deals, the Deshong tract had not been identified as necessary to satisfy a need for recreational use land in the area.
Also, Hill essentially paid the seller’s value– the value as developed– when the truth is that the property could not be developed as the seller had proposed. As parkland, the tract was probably worth half of what Hill paid.
Actually I’m surprised that the AJC didn’t question the purchase of property in the Suwannee area that was owned for a sshort period of time by one of the Bowen’s and partners. This property was once considered for park land by the county but they didn’t move on it and Bowen and his aprtners purchsed with the intention of building a trip mall. The land if I remember right had some of the deficiencies of the Deshong property with granite outcroppings. Less than year after Bowen and his partners bought the land the county bought it from them for a few million dollars more than they paid the land owner the county had originally contacted the year before. The property appraisal had to be a questionable one as to how property that may have had a potential use as commercial but high expense to blast the granite out was appraised for anywhere near what the county paid for it.
One has to wonder how the Board of Education goes about buying land as well with all of their secret meetings that questionably follow the open meetings legislation of the state.
Bob:
According to your “breaking news”, this has been defeated 4-0-1. In the notes, I saw this:
“Later in the meeting, Commissioner Shirley Lasseter took a direct shot at TalkGwinnett, telling citizens in the audience that they “are unfortunately misguided.” She said that she had received many emails, but admitted that she had not read them.
“I assume that they were negative,” she said.
As one of the “unfortunately misguided” 250, I’m still waiting for her to explain her vote as well as her position. Maybe she’s thinking about running for higher office, starting off with not reading constituent emails or maybe even the legislation itself. That sounds consistent with some of our neighbor’s representatives.
With property values down around the County, maybe some forward-looking leadership might be able to allocate money (in a down economy) for a separate reservoir we’ll probably have to build to make sure “Success Lives Here” continues to be so. Soon enough we won’t be able to do anything like that, almost like mass transit.
Time will tell.
It’s ncie to see the commissioners come to their senses after citizen revolt. Now we need a sensible budget that may well mean soime raising of the millage rate and the expense of sending out a second bill for the difference.
I think you will find that the potential construction of a reservoir in the county has been explored and the result was there is no location suitable for this. Eventually the water issue will be worked out between the states. The next issue is how to go about recycling the water to keep more in the local area. By this I mean crossing the barrier to putting highly trated water back into the lake from our treatment plant rather than dumping it in the river so that other downstream can then use it. If highly trated water is good enough to send downstream then it is good enough to put back in Lake Lanier to be reused by us.