A number of residents from the same subdivision just north of Fayetteville spoke out at the Sept. 25 Fayette County Board of Commissioners meeting about a problem that has increased in recent months and caused major changes to the local landscape.
Property owners in the Beverly Chase subdivision off Gingercake Road are reporting a dramatic increase in logging throughout the area, something they think is not appropriate for a residential area.
Companies have been going door to door and offering to cut down trees at no cost to homeowners, and those who find such an offer too good to be true are left with huge piles of debris and messy surroundings that are unacceptable to their neighbors.
County officials have scheduled a meeting today in Fayetteville with representatives of the Georgia Forestry Commission in an attempt to see what they can do to legally govern what is going on, much of which is currently outside their jurisdiction because of a lack of sufficient county codes in place.
Keenan Anderson said that the company who cut trees on his neighbor’s property agreed to clean up when finished but never did so. This is a complaint that was repeated throughout the night by various citizens.
Some yards have not been touched in more than a year after the tree cutting was completed, commissioners were told, with debris in some places reaching 40 feet high.
“We are all property owners who believe in property rights,” said Anderson. “But there must be some regulations to protect other property owners as well in these situations. Peachtree City and Fayetteville have checks and balances in place for this.”
Most of the companies soliciting business in the area have no identification on their trucks and cannot produce business cards when asked, he added.
“Bonding and insurance is probably not there, either,” he said. “No one knows for sure.”
The matter of bonding and insurance was another hot topic during the discussion, as the residents wondered what would happen if a sloppy company caused a neighbor’s tree to do some damage on their own property as a result of work over which they had no control.
“No one plans to destroy their own neighborhood,” said one homeowner. “But when free cutting if offered it seems like a good deal.”
The Tolberts said that the lot next door to their home on Gingercake Trail has been in disarray for well over a year after most of it was clear-cut. There have been uprooted stumps and just a mess in general, with the rain making things worse as their home sits downstream from most of their neighbors.
They specifically thanked Commissioner Charles Oddo, who answered their call for help and brought out an environmental team to take a look at the damage. The couple stressed that the excessive cutting has caused a great deal of water to collect on their property and the lack of regulation and oversight is allowing devastation to the neighborhood.
Elizabeth Gerhardt, who also lives on Gingercake Trail, believes she understand why a lot of this is happening.
“I think people are getting cheap. They don’t want to hire a tree service,” said Gerhardt, who said she spent $2,000 for a tree service to cut and dispose of a few of her trees the right way.
The wife of a military officer currently on assignment elsewhere, she said that when he returned for a visit he compared the sight in the neighborhood to Bosnia, where he served previously.
“Houses in the neighborhood are being deforested front and back,” she said. “I am horrified every day when I drive by.”
She also referred to the environmental impact, saying that the huge piles of debris are a perfect nesting ground for snakes and rodents.
Linda Rosher, who lives on neighboring Tall Pine Drive, repaired her own fence when one of her neighbor’s trees fell on it. After calling the company owner for reimbursement, she was instructed to email an invoice, but that was ignored. A certified letter she sent was returned because the address was no good.
She gave all of this correspondence to the commissioners so that the county can look into the matter further.
County Administrator Steve Rapson reported that the situation had been made known to him and his staff around Aug. 11, and four citations were issued during their initial investigation.
The most recent inquiry, the day before the commission meeting, led to an altercation between a tree cutter and a member of the county’s code enforcement office. The Sheriff’s Department was called and an arrest was made, Rapson said.
He added that the biggest problem right now is the lack of jurisdiction, since it all currently falls under the Georgia Forestry Commission. Today’s meeting with that organization will lead to what he hopes is the establishment of some county codes that will allow his office to provide better protection for homeowners.
“We’ve hit this pretty hard,” he said. “It doesn’t solve all of the problems people are having, but ultimately it’s the individual owner of the property that makes a decision whether logging can occur. Anything that comes out of that is a civil matter.”
Of course, the problem is that Rapson’s office is usually unaware of problems until a complaint call comes in, and that call is almost always from a neighbor of the person who actually hired the company to do the work.
There is no occupational tax or license required at the county level for companies doing the tree cutting, Rapson said, although a GFC license is required. As for the door-to-door solicitation, that is a county violation and the code enforcement office can deal with it.
“Now that we’ve defined the problem, we are trying to have some solutions to present to the board at the first meeting in October,” said Rapson, who reminded the audience that the meeting would be the first Tuesday in October instead of the usual second Thursday and invited all of them to return that night.
Commissioner David Barlow urged the homeowners to use their video cameras to document the goings-on in their neighborhood, as it could be a big help with enforcement efforts.
Barlow said that he made regular use of video in his former career as a workers’ comp investigator, and judges appreciate the kind of clear-cut evidence that can be presented in that medium. He told the residents that as long as they made sure to stay on public roads or sidewalks, they were within their rights to shoot video of anything happening on another person’s property that is in plain sight.
“Let’s get these people on video, and then we have a tool that law enforcement can use down the road for identification,” said Barlow, adding that pictures of vehicle tags and markings would be excellent to have as well. “I know it sounds rudimentary, but when you get before a judge, video speaks for itself.”
Commission Chairman Steve Brown noted that this was an ongoing problem that the entire board wants to see resolved.
Brown advised all homeowners that they are absolutely liable for any company they bring onto their own property that is not properly bonded and insured.
“If they crash a tree down on your neighbor’s house, if they injure somebody or if they injure themselves on your property, you are going to pay a whopping cost that would far exceed what it would cost to cut those trees down,” he said. “If they can’t show you insurance and some kind of bonding and you can’t verify it, they have no business being on your property. Buyer beware.”
Brown added that any promises to clean up after the job is done are likely meaningless if the right equipment is not present at the start.
“If they say they are going to clean up your property after they are done and there is no chipper attached to what they are bringing in, it ain’t happening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “If all they’re bringing is a logger and there is no chipper, they are not cleaning your yard.”
The tree-cutting epidemic is something that has only surfaced in recent months after years without such a problem, Brown said.
“We’ve got a couple of companies who have seen that there is a gold mine to be had here, and they are unscrupulous and are taking advantage of people, and it has hit us broadside,” he said. “We are going to do something about it.”
Brown called the forestry lobby in Georgia one of the strongest in any industry in the southeastern United States, and he urged the citizens to contact the members of their local legislative delegation and make them aware of the problem as well.
“Let them know how the state forestry laws are hampering your attempts to control how your neighborhoods look in Fayette County,” he said.
