lotstodo said:
You're letting him off way to easy there Winchester. Far too much of the people's business was done behind the scenes and against the express wishes of the voters. His administration was not above board. You may have liked what he did, but the voters didn't, and he was just as in the pocket of the large residential developers as well as the local major landowners as anyone on the board. I'm not saying he was on the take, but they sure had his undivided attention. He did nothing to reel in the wild west atmosphere that dominated the real estate heydays, and his campaign contributions came from the same RBMD's as everyone else's.
Obviously you can't blame just him unilaterally for the complete lack of foresight that dominated the growth period, but you cannot discount his turned back either. Those were heady days, and there were a lot of opportunities to rape this county through their prevalent attitude that all growth is good, regardless of the long term negative aspects of a reliance on rapid high to medium density residential construction, and without much regard to infrastructure or quality of life.
Oh I'm sure there was lots of stuff I did not know about and I'm not going to comment on something I had no direct knowledge about. But as in any county, these people have a lot of power and money and politics will always be in the middle of that.....no matter who's in office.
Knowing these people and working with them does not mean you are doing their bidding. Almost ALL of the developments that were built during his time in office were approved before he took office. Normally it takes 3 to 4 years before application to the development office until you see the first signs of construction. Jerry made a LOT of changes to the zoning codes to make improvements but a large share of these developments were R-2 which had very little oversite. Over the years I've sat thru 100's of zoning hearings and I've seen some mad developers because they did not get what they wanted because the BOC requested extra changes.
Up until about 6 years ago, Paulding County only real industry was housing. That was were the money was at. And why was it so strong? Because people wanted to move here! Plain and simple, people wanted out of Cobb, Fulton and other Counties. Paulding was the next closest location. As businesses grew or moved to the Atlanta, people needed a place to live.
Now that Paulding is getting more and more commercial development, the housing boom will return at some point. I don't have a crystal ball to know if it will be like before but it's coming back. And there are a LOT of approved projects still in developer's hands that are just waiting for this to happen. No approval required other then EPD applications.
To blaming Shearin for the housing market then is like blaming Nixon for the Vietnam war. It was the wild west and Jerry admitted it. No County had ever experienced 175% (or something close from what I remember) growth until then. It was unknown territory. Sure mistakes were made and lessons learned.
Also, keep in mind that there were state laws the County was battling. You cannot restrick a land owner from doing what they want with land they own, within reason of course. If it complied with state and local law and zoning requirements, they could build what ever they wanted. And R-2 zoning allows for 1100 sq ft cookie cutter houses without sewer. PRD improved minimum codes and required sewer ( plus a lot of other stuff at developer's expense) in exchange for higher density.
LOL, I've been rambling too long and lost my tract of mind of where I was going.
In short, there were many PRD's approved but few actually built before the market crashed. Most of what you see are R-2 zoning. Just look at the current zoning map
http://www.paulding.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=190. And that large shaded area covering most of the southern part of the County was Jerry's idea. That will require Seven Hill's style of building....eventually.