By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-Large

Fayette County Planning Commission is looking into possible changes to the county's tree preservation ordinance, and the process is engendering some interesting discussion.

For instance, what's a conservative county like Fayette doing with so many development regulations? It's clearly much harder for a developer to do business in Fayette than in any other county I can think of.

I covered Henry County for about a year, and it blew my mind to see developers coming forward with plans for 750 homes on 200 acres with only minimal protest from neighbors.

In Fayette, you can usually count on a long zoning meeting if the request is for anything smaller than two-acre lots, and it's not unusual to see vehement protest when someone wants lots of three acres or more.

Generally, one concept that's associated with conservatism is the idea that business people should be allowed to do their thing and make their profit without a lot of government interference.

But here you are, a conservative county, requiring that anyone who wants to build a house or a store here jump through all manner of government-required hoops.

The explanation is that conservatism is not the knee-jerk anti-regulation philosophy that some may think it is. Being conservative means that when new government regulations are being considered, the burden of proof is on the regulation.

And it means that we vest more power to regulate business and individual activity in our local governments and less in state... even less in federal governments. State and federal governments, along with the courts, do provide some balance, though. Among their most important functions is keeping local governments from trampling on the rights of the minority in their zeal to carry out the will of the majority.

But within a community, within reason, we decide what life should be like, and we choose elected representatives who will enforce our vision. And if that means hampering developers in their natural tendency to bulldoze every living thing off a piece of property before starting construction, so be it.

The difficult thing is to achieve balance. If we use the basic formula: trees good — bulldozing trees bad, we end up with some pretty goofy legislation.

If you're going to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs, and if you're going to have houses and stores, you have to lose some trees. The key is to require that some big, old ones be saved so the entire landscape isn't carpeted with dinky little Bradford pears, to make sure trees are dispersed as evenly as possible throughout each development, and to still let the business do its job and make a profit.

Tree preservation isn't the only area in which we can get a little crazy. Knees also tend to jerk whenever the subject of residential density comes up.

I know this is going to shock some of you, but density is not always bad.

Fayetteville's plan for the McElwaney property is a good example.

The city is working diligently to create an upscale, pedestrian-friendly, viable, vibrant, culturally interesting center of town, and the 110-acre McElwaney tract, just off the Courthouse Square and sandwiched between Ga. Highway 54 and Fayette County High School, is a key element in those plans.

Fill that property up with one-acre or half-acre residential lots, and all you gain is traffic. Under the plan that consultants Cooper Carry came up with, developers will be allowed to pack some very small residential lots, plus businesses, offices, parks, maybe a church, even a hotel into that space, creating a sort of central village that will contribute to viability in Fayetteville's downtown for decades.

City leaders blanched at the proposed density and cut back on it some, and in my opinion they did some harm — hopefully not fatal harm — to the overall concept. In this case, having large numbers of people in this small space is what makes the plan work. It creates a true downtown, a residential focal point for the community that makes Main Street more than just a governmental office village.

Government-sponsored community activities also seem a little strange in this bastion of conservatism. Spending tax money for entertainment? How could we! But in the local context, if a community decides to spend its money that way, why not? It's part of the delicate balance that makes a community.

To get any idea of the quality of entertainment and community activities in Fayette County, you have to visit similar activities in other areas.

Having done that, I can report that you don't see top-notch groups like the Buckinghams at most towns' festivals. You're getting entertainment at events like July Jam and at Peachtree City's Brown Amphitheater that's on a par with such venues as Lakewood Amphitheater and Chastain Park.

Saturday's festival, topped off by the concert, was another example of the quality of life in Fayette that is not only better than average, but also constantly getting better.

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