Developers are benefiting from county's growth, and should pay for it

Editor:

Kudos to Angela Mathews, of Evans, who so eloquently expressed exactly how I feel about impact fees, development, and lack of strict storm water control requirements and/or non-enforcement of the pitiful requirements we have (letter, April 16, "Columbia County commissioners 'must stand up and protect' future"). Many other citizens are "on the same page" with Mathews, too.

I will not be voting for a tax-funded $40 million bond without impact fees attached. Surely we have the intelligence to figure out how to implement "complicated" impact fees. I know our county staff is intelligent enough to administer them. Let's hope our commissioners are intelligent enough to understand that we need them.

As The News-Times editorial and Mathews' letter indicated, it isn't fair to make those of us who already live in Columbia County continue to be responsible for paying for infrastructure needs created by newcomers and developers who "make their money and leave the mess for citizens to clean up after."

The developers are the ones benefitting from the growth, they are the ones who need to begin paying for that growth. They will pass it on to the new homeowner, and I don't believe for one minute that higher home prices will have an adverse impact on developers' pocketbooks.

As hundreds of citizens have expressed over and over at county public hearings for new development, "We moved here for the beauty of all the trees and neighborhoods with big lots and to get away from crowded and cluttered conditions. Don't ruin that for us."

I want growth to slow down and I do not want to pay more taxes for more growth that is slowly but surely destroying our trees, greenspace, streams and ponds, and the very reason I, too, moved here in the first place.

If I have to pay higher taxes, I would much rather pay them because of less growth, not more growth.

Jeri Whitworth

Evans