Gilmer County’s Flawed Comprehensive Development Plan

Submitted by Jerry DePlancke:Ladies & Gentlemen:

Please find attached below, an in-depth, independent analysis and report on the Gilmer County Joint Comprehensive Plan.

The planning issues exposed in the report are vital to the welfare and viability of both Gilmer County and its residents, and may also be applicable to other counties.

The report concludes that “The Plan” is deeply flawed and should not to be adopted or approved as written.

A few excerpts from the report include:

“It would be a mistake to allow the opinions and projections of people who write comprehensive plans for a living, to determine the fate of Gilmer county and its residents.”

“So without Plan participation, counties wither through lack of state grants, loans and permits.
And with The Plan, they wither through onerous controls, stifling regulations, and crushing debt.

Counties are being given their choice of poison.”

“Some of the Plan’s recommendations are simply absurd.
Did anyone actually read this thing when it was originally presented back in 2004, or since?”

“That’s the great tragedy of Gilmer’s Comprehensive Plan. It’s 300 pages of arcane statistics meticulously arranged in multicolor tables, and then 3rd grade arithmetic is used to project the essential KEY number: the Population. This is then accompanied by page after page of mere unsubstantiated opinion disguised as analysis, all based on their erroneous projections.”

Thank you for your consideration of this critical matter,

Jerry DePlancke
Ellijay, Georgia