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October 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 19:56:45 GMT

Please see the October 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter which includes other community updates. Please feel free to call 678-513-5884 or email me at cjmills@forsythco.com with any comments or questions.

Good afternoon everyone,

I hope you and your family are doing well. So many have been sick this fall and COVID has definitely taken its toll on our health care system. Thank goodness the data shows the peak is over and we can only hope and pray it will stay in control and another variant won’t cause another spike in the future.

On to a better subject (maybe) – transportation. There is a lot going on in District 4 concerning transportation with our new interchange (Exit #18) at 400/369. Much progress has been made in a short amount of time. Being slated as a three-year project, we can only hope that this kind of progress will continue so it will finish on time, or ahead of schedule. I know, wishful thinking on my end. Check out the link to a great video, created by our Communications Department, updating you on the project here.

An event you won’t want to miss is the annual Transportation Summit hosted by the Chamber of Commerce at the Forsyth Conference Center on Tuesday, October 19. Registration and networking begin at 10:30 a.m., lunch at 11:00 a.m., with the Summit beginning at 11:30 a.m. This popular event fills up fast so you will want to register in advance here. Speakers this year include the Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry, District 25 State Representative Todd Jones, Executive Director of Georgia Transportation Alliance Seth Millican, Forsyth County Manager Kevin Tanner, and myself as Chairwoman of the Board of Commissioners. I am excited to share all that is happening with transportation in our community and hope to see you there!

Forsyth County loves technology and we’ve invested in a new tool just for you! “Connect2Forsyth” is our new mobile app that functions on both IOS and Android platforms. By downloading this to your cell phones you will be able to report animal welfare, code compliance, or road hazard issues. You can view and pay water bills, property taxes, apply for water service, building permits, auto registration, obtain information on applying for or renewing a passport, read the latest news items on the county website, view county government calendar events, and contact your district commissioner - all while on the go. Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play for convenient access to your local county government.

As you may be aware from our zonings, District 4 is a very busy place and highly sought out by others as a coveted landing spot. Unfortunately, I am still dealing with a lot of old zonings and doing what I can to improve them. Recently, the BOC did just that by approving a zoning on Settingdown Circle and GA400. It was a zoning from 2005 with roughly 300 townhomes and we did not have the conditions that we do today to ensure higher quality, other than the design standards we recently put into place. To compound things, we changed the zoning conditions, at the landowner’s request, to a single home product and greatly reduced the density. The landowner’s attorney found a loophole where we had not made the single-family home conditions site plan specific. An error on all of our parts, but an error none the less. The conditions adopted were made for homes, and he was attempting to reference back to an old site plan with 300 plus townhomes. It was quite a mess. I wouldn’t approve his new sketch plat and he wouldn’t abide by the old site plan, so we were at an impasse. I knew an ongoing issue was road safety on GA400. When another old zoning came in for The Falls apartments on GA400, the only way to access them going north was by doing a U-turn at Hampton. Roughly 500-600 cars doing U-turns daily on GA400 where cars are going around 80 miles per hour is a recipe for disaster. I was able to work with the developer for this new site by getting him to build a standard county road off Settingdown Circle, through his development and connecting to The Falls, with a gate. It wasn’t easy, and extremely expensive on their end, but it will help create a safer route for everyone in the area as well as give more traffic to the commercial component on GA400. By bringing so many cars through this new road, it’s hopeful that the commercial will attract some quality restaurants and businesses. Walking trails and a nice green-space area are also included in the plan. This is the lemonade from lemons proverbial phrase that fits. We have conditions that hold these apartments to a very high standard with a continued maintenance check list into perpetuity. This flawed zoning was inherited and not one I anticipated having to deal with. However, we added a huge safety feature while making the zoning better than it could have been. I don’t like dealing with so many bad zonings from the past, but I have approached each with how to improve them and give some “win” back to the community.

Thank you for your continued support and your willingness to learn more.

Cindy

September 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 20:42:49 GMT

Please see the September 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter which includes other community updates. Please feel free to call 678-513-5884 or email me at cjmills@forsythco.com with any comments or questions.

Happy Friday!

Today marks the first day to kick off a long Labor Day weekend. Today, I’m working with my North Forsyth Rotary Club at the United Way’s Day of Caring. We will package over 10,000 meals to send out to folks who are hungry.

Next week, September 9th at 6:30 p.m. at My Local Church (3105 Dahlonega Hwy), we will have our 5th Suicide Awareness/Mental Health Summit to honor World Suicide Awareness Day that’s on the 10th. We have a fantastic youth panel with mental health professionals who will discuss the mental health of our kids and what’s occurring and why. We will also explore how to make their present situation better. Hope to see you there.

I was very honored to be a part of the Forsyth County Chamber’s Women in Leadership event last week and to invite my fellow chairwomen, Chairwoman Lisa Cupid from Cobb County, Chairwoman Nicole Hendrickson from Gwinnett County, and fellow Chairwoman Carlotta Harrell from Henry County. These three dynamic women joined me onstage to talk to the audience about what it means to be a female leader in 2021 in government. We were blessed to have 80 high school students representing the 8 different high schools in our county. The young ladies were so engaged and eager to find leadership opportunities for themselves. It was a great event. Please enjoy the pictures below and the video here, and share these words of wisdom with your own children and family.

The Coal Mountain town center is in its last phase of draft mode and should be coming to our board in the next month or so. If you’d like to be added to an invitation list to a townhall meeting regarding this town center, please send me your email address so I can ask my secretary to compile a list of names to notify when we meet. You’ll also find info on other zonings and activities coming to our board. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns you may have.

Have a blessed Labor Day.

Cindy

August 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 21:00:17 GMT

Please see the August 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter which includes other community updates. Please feel free to call 678-513-5884 or email me at cjmills@forsythco.com with any comments or questions.

Good Afternoon Everyone!

August is flying past me and I’m late getting my newsletter out. This month, our focus is truly on health. It’s the month that our Board recognizes Drug Awareness and Prevention. Heather Hayes, licensed drug therapist and interventionist, will bring a proclamation forward for the Board of Commissioners to read at our August 19th meeting. The “Fed Up Campaign” proclamation says we are fed up with people dying from overdose. On August 31st, we will light up the town square purple as part of the 4^th Annual Tea Cup Memorial, recognizing those that have lost their lives to overdose deaths. Additionally, Jennifer Hodge, a local mother who unfortunately lost her son to overdose, will have 23 banners of pictures at United Way (240 Elm Street) with real life photos of people who have died from addiction. Those banners show what two weeks in America looks like. She will also have teacups memorializing all that the lives lost to overdose deaths. The event is being sponsored by the Forsyth County Drug Awareness Council.

September 5 through September 11 is National Suicide Prevention Week. Please mark Forsyth County’s Mental Health and Wellness Initiative - World Suicide Awareness Day event on your calendar for Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 p.m. at My Local Church (3105 Dahlonega Hwy).

Another health-related topic, that I had hoped and prayed was going away, is COVID. Unfortunately, our numbers have shown an increase due to the new Delta variant. We met with our medical partners this week, and they encouraged us to remind people to get vaccinated. Our hospitals are full, and they are having to divert patients that are sick with other things due to increase in COVID cases. Our healthcare workers are extremely fatigued. Please help them and help yourselves by vaccinating. You can find additional information regarding the Delta variant and vaccines here. The people vaccinated that have experienced break throughs due to the Delta variant have experienced more moderate cases of COVID with lighter side effects, the experts are saying.

Thank you for signing up for the monthly newsletters and allowing me to serve.

Cindy

July 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 19:57:28 GMT

Please see the July 2021 District 4 Zoning Newsletter which includes other community updates. Please feel free to call 678-513-5884 or email me at cjmills@forsythco.com with any comments or questions.

Happy 4th of July to the UNITED States of America!

One thing that bothers me the most about being in politics is, well, the “politics”. I am a doer. I like to be effective, not waste money or time and to get things done. That is why it drives me insane to watch people mire up in the minutia on Facebook, without ever truly addressing the facts. The media will key in on the components that get people the most aroused, the most afraid, and you can pretty much forget ever letting facts get in the way of the narrative. I’ve seen it happen on every level of government and across party lines. The saddest part of it all to me is how toxic politics is now and it’s like a contagion that can infect everything it comes into contact with. Americans have lost their ability to unite. We have lost the shared ideology that was our common ground that we could come back to when our country was more moderate and cared more about working together than another conspiracy theory. We have lost our ability to find love for one another despite our differences. Even in our own county, we are beginning to see allegations based on national headlines that have created great fears within people. While it is wonderful to see people advocating for their beliefs and being engaged, it is sad to see it digressing into conspiracy theories on many other fronts.

Last week, the Forsyth County Chamber had an amazing event launching One Forsyth, a group that was created two years ago but almost stopped due to COVID. I am proud to have been a part of it for the past year. I invited many people that I have worked with on zonings or in the community to also participate. Because One Forsyth includes words in their description like diversity, race, and culture, a few people have worried it might be tied to things the media are saying they should fear. All I know is the group is attempting to bring all people of our county together. It says that we might not all agree on all the issues or all the policies, but we can all work together and listen to one another while sitting together at the same table. I encourage each of you to watch the event here.

For far too long, folks have been critical about Forsyth County’s past, but today we are doing great things uniting and moving forward, together. The way I see it, if we are listening to each other and working together, we have fewer reasons for people to be protesting and rioting against each other. We can learn from each other, from the mistakes other communities have made, and hopefully together we will build a stronger community here. I believe our country should be doing the same.

Happy 4th to you and your family! Thank you for allowing me to serve!

Cindy

A Christmas and Holiday Season Message

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 22:15:00 GMT

Dear Fellow Citizens,

I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season to you and yours. Having spent the past week in quarantine due to finding out I had COVID-19, gives one time to reflect on what we have all endured in 2020. With so much unrest and uncertainty in our less than stable world, it gives me a new appreciation and commitment to the things I can always find faith in. Things such as my family, my faith, and Forsyth County. All three play an integral role in my life and I hope to never take any of these for granted. So instead of focusing on the things that are out of our control this season, I will choose to focus on the joy in the things that bring me the greatest blessings in my life, and I will delight in the grace that has come to me from above that I didn’t earn in anyway but was a gift given to me out of love.

I pray your Christmas will be a blessing to you. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Merry Christmas!

Cindy