The issue has become as hot as the heat wave and about as politically divisive in Forsyth County as showdowns in Washington over Medicare or the debt limit.
Should the Forsyth County Commission, in the interest of spurring lagging development, stimulating job growth and increasing the tax digest, back the pursuit of a $5 million U.S. Housing and Urban Development loan for a developer to build a senior community?
Or should the county butt out and leave it to the free market?
The commission voted 4-1 in April to move forward with the application. Two weeks ago, with Chairman Brian Tam absent and public opposition getting louder, a vote to rescind that first vote and kill the deal was split 2-2.
A decisive vote is set for June 16 as the issue continues to divide politicians and residents in a county that last year was named by the website The Daily Caller as the second-most conservative in the nation.
It has put Ethan Underwood, the head of the Forsyth Republican Party and also the attorney representing the developer, in the middle, taking heat from the tea party, of which he is also a member.
“I think HUD is unconstitutional, and the local GOP should be ashamed of themselves in their silence,” said tea party member Terence Sweeney, who has run for the commission and is one of its strongest critics.
Commissioner Todd Levent, who cast the lone vote against the HUD loan in April, said he believescounty taxpayers could be liable for repaying the $5 million if the project fails. County Attorney Ken Jarrard agrees.
Commissioner Jim Boff -- who first voted for the proposal and then against it -- said last week that he didn’t know why the Kennesaw-based developer, Almquist Hansen, couldn’t raise private money.
"Maybe there’s not a market for it,” he said.
The developer and Underwood said their reading of the law is the county won’t be on the hook. The loan, in any case, has become the latest fine line for the commission to walk as it tries to spur growth without provoking political backlash.
Forsyth’s building boom peaked in 2006, when it issued 4,792 building permits, and bottomed out in 2009 with 849 permits issued. Growth is rebounding, but slowly. Last year the county issued 1,138 permits. Through April of this year it has issued 364.
Depressed real estate values have hammered the tax digest. The commission is wrestling with the politics of the HUD loan as it’s beginning to grapple with the 2012 budget, which may require raising millage rates to balance.
For all those reasons, Commissioner Patrick Bell said last week that he sees no alternative but to pursue the HUD application through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs until the county knows whether it could be on the hook if the deal fails.
“I think the problem here is a lot of misinformation. People don’t understand the deal," Bell said. "They think it’s us getting federal money. We’re not getting federal money.”
Tam, the swing vote on the loan, could not be reached for comment.
Underwood said the deal essentially gives the private developer access to money generated by private investors and is channeled through HUD. If it were a federal loan, he said, he would be “ideologically” opposed to it.
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