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What Actually Happened at the Ansley Park City Planning Commission Hearing on Thursday, August 6
- 1 day ago
- 42 min read
Updated: 11 hours ago
The Woodstock Planning Commission met on August 6. Here is the record, and here is the document that contradicts it.
On Thursday night, the Woodstock Planning Commission took up Case A#132-26: a request by Weekley Homes, LLC to annex 31.47 acres at 200 Dupree Road and 681 Stone Bridge Parkway into the City of Woodstock, rezone the land from Cherokee County R-40 to City of Woodstock R-4, and grant three variances that would allow 220 detached single family homes on the site.
That land is currently Ansley Park, a manufactured home community of roughly 130 households.
Fourteen people signed up to speak in opposition. One person signed up in support. The room was full.
And at the end of nearly two hours, the Commission approved both of the things that decide whether Ansley Park can be saved, denied the one that only decides how big the subdivision replacing it will be, and stripped every condition off what it approved.
The vote
Commissioner Smith made the first motion: approve the annexation, deny the rezoning, deny the variances. No one seconded it. That motion died on the floor.
He then made a second motion: approve the annexation, approve the rezoning to R-4, and deny all three variance requests. Commissioner Rob Hogan seconded. It passed.
Chair Brandon Williams voted against it. He said plainly he would have denied the entire application.
Then Community Development Director Melissa Sigmund asked the Chair to confirm something on the record: did the approval carry the sixteen conditions that staff and the Development Process Committee had recommended?
The Chair said no.
So the recommendation now heading to City Council on August 24 is annexation plus R-4 zoning with zero conditions attached. That strips out all sixteen, including:
The cap limiting the site to 220 units
The requirement that the developer build the ten foot multi use trail along Dupree Road out to Stone Bridge Parkway and the I-575 bridge
The connection to the Town Lake Pass Trail
The ten percent cap on rental units
The requirement that open space be owned and maintained by the homeowners association
Condition 12, the condition addressing an agreement with existing residents on relocation assistance
The commissioners who spent the most time that night expressing concern about the missing relocation agreement voted for a motion that deleted the condition requiring one. Sigmund flagged it. The Chair confirmed it. It went forward anyway.
Why the variances failed
Not on principle. This matters enormously for August 24, so read this part carefully.
Three commissioners said outright that the annexation makes sense under the growth boundary agreement with Cherokee County. Chair Williams said "I think R-4 fits there." Commissioner Smith said the zoning fits the surrounding area. A third commissioner said he had no problem with the annexation and no problem with the zoning.
What sank the variances was that the applicant showed up unprepared.
Attorney Joel Larkin of Sams, Larkin & Huff appeared in place of Parks Huff, who had a scheduling conflict. He brought no elevations. When the Chair asked to see what the finished homes would look like, given the applicant was asking to cut the minimum lot size by more than half, Larkin said he thought they had been submitted and could not produce them. Only after the public hearing had closed did he return to say they had located elevations previously submitted to the Development Process Committee (DPC), which staff then put on the screen.
When the Chair asked directly what hardship justifies reducing the minimum lot size from 5,500 square feet to 2,500 square feet, Larkin's answer was that I-575, the floodplain, the creek buffer, and the topography squeeze the site and together make it "impractical to develop it in an efficient way."
That is the entire case for the variances, and it is the weakest part of the application.
Georgia variance law requires a hardship arising from conditions unique to the land that the applicant did not create. Every condition Larkin cited was on that property before Weekley Homes ever looked at it.
Speaking first in opposition, NGA CAN founder Martha Jean Schindler put the test to the Commission directly: ask them which one of these hardships was not visible the day they contracted for this land. The flood zone, the I-575 buffer, the topography. All of it was there first.
She also dismantled the application's central sworn claim. The Applicant Response Statement swears there is "no reasonable use" of the property except the proposed development. As she pointed out, it has been a working community for decades, and the owner can sell it to another park operator tomorrow. He would simply make less money. That is not a hardship. That is the price of doing business.
Chair Williams put it his own way: "If we're gonna approve these things, we need to know what we're actually approving."
Another commissioner put it another way: "The zoning might let you do 7 units an acre, but to me, I don't like a bunch of variances to get to 7 units an acre."
Denying the variances does real work. Without them, R-4's 5,500 square foot minimum lot size applies, the 220 unit site plan in the packet is not buildable as drawn, and by Schindler's estimate the site yields roughly 100 lots instead of 220.
But be clear about what that is. It is a smaller subdivision on the same land. It does not save Ansley Park. The next section explains why.
The application admits the hardship is self created
We went back through the packet after the hearing. The applicant's own written variance response answers the self created hardship question, and the answer is worse than anything said out loud on August 6.
Woodstock's variance criteria require an applicant to address, among other things, whether "the condition from which relief or a variance is sought did not result from willful action by the applicant." That is criterion 9 in the applicant's own lot size response statement.
Their entire answer: "The applicant is seeking a prospective variance and is not seeking forgiveness."
That is not an answer. It is a sentence about timing. Asked whether they created the condition, they responded that they had not built anything yet.
Now read criterion 1 of the same document, where the applicant explains the request in its own words:
They ask to allow lot sizes of 2,500 square feet instead of 5,500. Their stated reason: "In researching market trends in the area, there is a demand for detached for sale housing in close proximity to Downtown Woodstock, so the Applicant changed its original townhome plan to detached homes."
Read that again. The applicant had a townhome plan. Townhomes are an attached product that fits on smaller lots by design. They changed it to detached homes because detached homes sell better right now. Detached homes in R-4 require 5,500 square foot lots. So they are asking the city to cut the lot size requirement by more than half to make their own marketing decision work at the yield they want.
That is not a hardship arising from the land. That is a product choice. Larkin came close to admitting it at the podium when he said the plan was "an effort to do detached product, but try to get a yield out of it that makes economic sense."
Georgia law is clear that a hardship cannot be self imposed, and that purchasing a constrained property confers no right to develop it at a preferred intensity. Weekley did not create the floodplain. But Weekley did create the plan that does not fit, and then asked the city to change the rules rather than change the plan.
Council should ask one question and require an answer on the record: what specifically about this land, as opposed to the applicant's chosen product type and unit count, makes 5,500 square foot lots impossible?
The agreement that does not exist
Two separate public bodies asked for one.
Cherokee County issued its no objection to the annexation with three conditions attached. The first asked the applicant and the City of Woodstock to engage with current residents of Ansley Park to find suitable living arrangements.
The Development Process Committee voted 5 to 1 on July 8 to recommend approval, and did so subject to receipt of the owner's agreement with existing residents.
On August 6, staff reported that no such agreement had been completed.
Schindler told the Commission that Exhibit E, the resident protection agreement the application itself references, could not be found in the packet. Neither could a household count. What exists is a verbal promise.
Charlotte Loudon of Wedgewood Court, who has spent her career selling to residential homebuilders and knows Weekley Homes professionally, asked the Commission the cleanest version of the question: has the city required the applicant to submit a publicly available, legally binding resident relocation plan? And if not, why is the Commission being asked to recommend anything before those protections are in place?
Commissioner Smith would not let it go either. He said he was "miffed" that two bodies had asked and nothing formal had been presented to either one. He said the case "almost feels rushed to me." And he said the absence "carries some weight" in his decision.
And the numbers do not work. The highest relocation offer NGA CAN has been able to document is $10,000. Valerie Wharton of Stickley Oak Way told the Commission the same figure from what she had heard across the street.
Against that, Schindler told the Commission what the move actually costs. Families have been quoted up to $20,000 to move a home and get into another mobile home park, and that assumes they find one. Most nearby parks have no space. Many will not accept an older home at all.
Wharton added something the dollar figures leave out entirely: some of these homes cannot be moved at any price. And residents in their eighties who have lived at Ansley Park for three and four decades were counting on it being their last address.
So the offer tops out at $10,000, the cost runs to twice that, and there is nothing in writing behind either number. That is not a relocation plan.
The Owner's Designated Happy Representative
Property owner David Greene did not attend. In his place came a man who told the Commission he had been "designated his happy representative."
We could not catch his name for certain. The meeting recording renders it three different ways, and we are not going to publish a name we cannot confirm, so we are using his own description of himself, the Designated Happy Representative, or DHR, and will update this post once the minutes are published.
DHR told the Commission he did not need to read the owner's letter into the record because the commissioners already had it. He summarized it instead. He said it was "shocking" to hear the owner vilified, because the owner "intentionally sent notice to his residents prior to any public notice, before anything was filed, before anybody knew anything." He said it was "paramount to him that he have a meeting with him and his residents to explain to them what was gonna be happening." He said the owner "intentionally went out of his way to give his residents as much notice as humanly possible."
Commissioner Smith cited that characterization directly when explaining his vote. He said the owner "did go above and beyond state requirements" and had "tried to be a good steward."
DHR made two other claims worth recording, because both will resurface on August 24.
He said the park already operates at roughly 6.5 units per acre, so 7 units per acre is "not a drastic change." He was explicit about the method: he compared "the number of units there and the amount of acreage that is developed," excluding "quite a bit of undeveloped land that is on this site."
That is two different denominators. Roughly 130 homes across the full 31.47 acres is about 4.1 units per acre. The proposal is 220 units across the same 31.47 acres, which is 6.99. Measured consistently, that is roughly a 70 percent increase on the identical parcel. And the land DHR left out of his math is the floodplain, the creek buffer, and the interstate buffer, which is the same land the applicant elsewhere calls unbuildable and uses as the basis for its hardship claim. It cannot be excluded from the denominator and counted as the constraint at the same time.
He also said Ansley Park "is not the only affordable housing option in the City of Woodstock. There are other options." No source was offered and no inventory was cited. Woodstock's own comprehensive plan states that housing in the city "has become unattainable for a small but steadily growing portion of the community." If Council is asked to accept that other options exist, Council should ask where they are, how many, and at what rent.
The letter
Residents have the notice DHR was describing. It is on Ansley Park letterhead, signed by David Greene, and it is dated May 6, 2026.
It says, in Greene's own words, that "a rezoning request has been submitted."
Past tense.
Here is the filing sequence from the application packet. All of it is public record.
Date | Event |
September 4, 2025 | Greene executes a power of attorney giving Steven Barton authority over real property |
April 27, 2026 | Adam Cornett signs and swears the application, disclosure statement, conflict of interest certification, both tax verifications, and the water and sewer inquiry for Weekley Homes |
April 29, 2026 | Barton signs the property owner authorization for annexation, rezoning, and variances |
April 30, 2026 | Parks Huff signs as attorney for the applicant |
May 1, 2026, 4:07 p.m. | City of Woodstock stamps the application RECEIVED |
May 6, 2026 | Greene's letter goes out to residents |
May 8, 2026 | City of Woodstock formally accepts the application |
May 11, 2026 | City notifies the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners |
The letter went out five days after the application was already in the city's hands.
One part of what DHR said is true. Two parts are not. It matters which, because the applicant will draw that line on August 24 if we do not draw it first.
DHR said the owner sent notice "prior to any public notice, before anything was filed, before anybody knew anything." Take those one at a time.
"Prior to any public notice" is true. Public notice in a zoning case means the legal ad in the newspaper and the sign posted on the property. For an August 6 hearing, both came months after May 6. The city's own public input meeting on this case was May 21. Greene's letter did come first, and it invited residents to a meeting on May 11. Give him that.
"Before anything was filed" is not true. The application was signed and sworn April 27. The owner's authorization was signed April 29. The city stamped it received May 1 at 4:07 in the afternoon. The letter went out May 6.
"Before anybody knew anything" is not true either. Greene knew, Weekley Homes knew, their attorneys knew, and the City of Woodstock's Community Development Department knew, because the paperwork was sitting on someone's desk there.
Greene's own letter proves it. He wrote that "a rezoning request has been submitted." He was telling residents, accurately, that this was already underway.
That distinction is the difference between telling people early and telling people after the decision was already in motion at City Hall. Commissioner Smith cited the owner going "above and beyond" on notice as a reason for his vote. He was told the second version.
Two more things that letter does
It promised residents a year and a half. Greene wrote that "many steps remain, and it's going to be a lengthy process to close the sale. This process could take up to one and a half years."
The Planning Commission hearing came three months later. The City Council vote comes eighteen days after that. Whatever residents did or did not do to prepare, they were working from a timeline the owner handed them in writing, and the actual schedule has not come close to honoring it.
It is the only written relocation promise in existence, and it promises nothing. The letter says: "if we reach a deal in the future, I plan to offer you financial assistance to move your mobile home to a new location."
If. Plan to. No amount. No timeline. No terms. No signature from anyone but the seller.
That is precisely what Cherokee County and the Development Process Committee (DPC) asked to be turned into a real agreement. Three months later it still has not been. When Commissioner Smith asked DHR why not, DHR's explanation was that giving residents a firm timeline might lead someone to think, in his words, "Oh, sweet. I've got that amount of time. I'm gonna start violating my lease. I'm gonna start causing a public nuisance. I'm gonna start doing whatever I want and cause all kind of problems."
The room began to boo him. The Chair had to call for quiet.
Consider what had just happened in that room. Speaker after speaker had described Ansley Park as a quiet, safe neighborhood. A woman who lives directly across the street said she walks past it downtown because she feels comfortable doing so. A Meals on Wheels driver who delivers there described residents in their eighties who have paid rent for decades. A woman said her aunt lives there and gives her herbs from her garden.
And residents of that community were sitting in the room listening to the owner's own representative explain that the reason they cannot be told when they have to leave is that they might respond by trashing the place.
That is the argument for why there is still no written relocation agreement.
What the applicant's own paperwork establishes
Almost nothing in this section is our number. These come from documents Weekley Homes filed with the City of Woodstock, most of them on a form Adam Cornett signed under oath, attesting "subject to criminal penalties for false swearing" that the information was true and contained no misleading information.
Nobody has to win an argument about these figures. The applicant swore to them.
2,105 daily vehicle trips. That is the applicant's own traffic generation estimate, calculated on the application form using standard Institute of Transportation Engineers rates. Dupree Road, Stone Bridge Parkway, and Main Street absorb all of it. Woodstock's own comprehensive plan already projects the corridors around this site declining to the worst grades on the traffic scale planners use, where roads are rated A through F the way schoolwork is, by 2050 and before a single one of these homes exists.
160 new students. Same sworn form, calculated with the city's own multiplier of 0.725 students per detached home. Those students enter Cherokee County schools.
And no impact fee can offset a dollar of that. The application states that "any applicable impact fees from the development will fund improvements," in a sentence about schools. The City of Woodstock's own impact fee page says city impact fees may be used for exactly two things: parks, open space, and recreation facilities, and roads, streets, bridges, and related transportation improvements. Schools are not on that list and cannot be. Georgia's Development Impact Fee Act does not authorize school impact fees anywhere in the state. A 2024 effort to change that passed the state Senate and did not become law. The city's policy is at https://www.woodstockga.gov/your_government/departments/community_development/impact_fees.php
What the homes will cost, from the builder's own website. The application contains no price. Gopinath Govindaraj of Riverside Lane, an eleven year Woodstock resident, told the Commission the replacement homes would run $450,000 to $500,000.
That number came from our research, not from the filings. And having now checked it against David Weekley Homes' current published pricing, it was conservative.
The applicant is Weekley Homes, LLC, 100 Mansell Court East, Suite 100, Roswell. The engineering plans in the packet list the owner as David Weekley Homes at that same address. Same company. Here is what they are charging right now in and around Woodstock, from davidweekleyhomes.com:
Community | Location | Distance | Starting price |
Maple Grove at Towne Lake | Woodstock | 1.9 miles | $494,990 |
Havencroft | Woodstock | 6.5 miles | $700,136 |
Crescent Pointe at Great Sky | Canton | 7.2 miles | $461,740 |
Grandview Terrace | Canton | 7.2 miles | $349,000 |
Maple Grove at Towne Lake is the closest, less than two miles from Ansley Park, on Strawberry Lane. Floor plans there start at $494,990 and run to $557,990. Those are base prices. The homes actually finished and available at Maple Grove right now are listed at $654,973, $685,468, $700,204, $731,135, and $761,147. Homeowners association dues are $295 a month plus a $1,950 initiation fee.
There is no David Weekley community in the City of Woodstock starting under $494,990. The only one under $400,000 anywhere nearby is in Canton, seven miles away.
Two fair caveats, because the applicant will raise them. Maple Grove is a 55 and over community under Weekley's Encore brand, and product type affects pricing. And the Dupree Road proposal is on smaller lots than a typical Weekley community, which could pull the base price down.
Neither caveat gets anywhere near workforce housing. The comprehensive plan character area the City of Woodstock adopted for this exact site calls for "stable workforce housing" and "moderate-income neighborhoods" serving "a cross-section of incomes." A builder whose nearest Woodstock community starts at $494,990 and sells finished homes at $655,000 to $761,000 is not the instrument of that policy.
Council should still require the applicant to state a price range on the record, because the applicant has never done so. Anything they say will either confirm this or contradict their own website.
Two different minimum lot sizes. Staff and the applicant's written narrative both say the variance reduces the minimum lot size to 2,500 square feet. The engineering plans prepared by BGE and dated April 13, 2026 say the proposed minimum lot size is 2,700 square feet.
The applicant will likely explain that 2,500 is the requested floor and 2,700 is what the current plan uses. Fine. Then the requested variance is 200 square feet per lot larger than the project needs, across 220 lots, and it runs with the land permanently. If Council grants any lot size variance, it should grant the number the plan actually requires and condition it there.
A density number nobody reconciled. The City of Woodstock's Development Standards Table, the one that sets the rules for every zoning district, lists R-4 at a maximum density of 4 units per acre, a 5,500 square foot minimum lot, a 15 foot front setback, a 5 foot side setback, and a 15 foot rear setback.
The applicant's engineering plans list "MAXIMUM DENSITY: 7.0 UNITS/AC." and "PROPOSED DENSITY: 7.0 UNITS/AC."
Those do not match, and the difference is 220 homes versus roughly 126.
Look at the same table one row up. R3-C, the townhome district, carries a maximum density of 7 units per acre. R-4, single family detached, carries 4.
Now recall what the applicant wrote in its own variance response: it "changed its original townhome plan to detached homes" after researching market trends. Townhome density is 7 per acre. Detached density in R-4 is 4. The plan in front of Council is a detached subdivision carrying townhome density.
The applicant requested variances for lot size, front setback, and side setback. It did not request a density variance.
Woodstock has treated density as a separate request before. A 2024 staff report on a different case describes the application this way: "the request to rezone to R-4, reduce the minimum lot size to 3,500 SF, and increase density to 5.4 dwelling units per acre." That applicant asked for three things. Weekley asked for two.
We are still framing this as a question rather than an assertion, because we are reading a published version of the standards table and ordinances get amended. But it is a question staff can answer in one sentence, and nobody asked it on August 6: what is the maximum density permitted in R-4, and what provision allows 6.99 units per acre there?
The floodplain used as a hardship and a construction site at the same time. The applicant's variance narrative says the northern portion of the property lies within the Zone AE special flood hazard area, that the property slopes downward from Dupree Road toward a flood hazard area, and that this "severely limits the practical buildability" of the site. That is their stated justification for cutting lot sizes.
Then, in condition 13, they ask permission to regrade that same floodplain area for stormwater infrastructure.
So the floodplain is simultaneously the constraint that justifies packing homes closer together and the ground they propose to disturb. Smaller lots and smaller setbacks mean more of the site covered in roof, driveway, and pavement, and less bare ground to soak up rain, on a property that drains toward a creek, toward the trail, and toward the neighborhoods below it.
Kaylee Justice of Stickley Oak Way lives in one of those neighborhoods, directly across the street in the Village at Town Lake, and walks the nearby trail regularly. She told the Commission it has flooded more this year than she has seen in a long time.
Stormwater engineering gets reviewed later, at site plan stage, after entitlements are granted. The density that generates the runoff is decided now. August 24 is the last point at which anyone can reduce it.
We read the plans they kept citing. They do not say what the applicant says they say.
The applicant's closing argument was an appeal to authority. Larkin asked the Commission: "Do you trust your comprehensive land use plan? Do you trust your staff who's vetted this and worked out conditions?" Three commissioners echoed some version of it, pointing to the growth boundary agreement with Cherokee County as the reason the annexation makes sense.
So we pulled both comprehensive plans and read the relevant sections. Here is what they actually say.
The Woodstock plan calls for workforce housing in this character area
The applicant's response statement claims Woodstock's Neighborhood Living character area "prescribes small lot single family housing as its primary land use," citing page 82.
Page 82 lists four primary land uses, not one: small lot single family housing, small scale apartments, live/work units, and senior housing facilities.
And the stated intent of the character area, in the plan's own words, is to create moderate density housing for "empty nesters, singles, small families, and stable workforce housing and to create moderate-income neighborhoods that provide a choice of various housing types that accommodate a cross-section of incomes, lifestyles, and life cycles."
It continues: "Infill or redevelopment of parcels within this character area will provide greater lifestyle housing choices, but should be respectful to existing neighborhoods."
Workforce housing. Moderate income neighborhoods. A cross section of incomes. Respectful to existing neighborhoods.
The proposal is 220 detached homes from a builder whose nearest Woodstock community starts at $494,990, replacing 130 working class households. Whatever else that is, it is not what page 82 asks for. The applicant cited the page and quoted four words from it.
The city's housing element says the same thing at greater length. Woodstock's own plan states that housing in the city "has become unattainable for a small but steadily growing portion of the community," that the city "has expressed a desire to maintain itself as a community inclusive of different incomes," and lists as an adopted need: "Incentivize the creation of workforce and/or affordable housing in the City." The city's Short Term Work Program for fiscal years 2023 through 2028 includes, every single year, "Identify ways to encourage and/or facilitate the development of affordable housing in Woodstock."
The seven units per acre figure is a ceiling, not a recommendation
The applicant also states that the county's plan "specifically recommends a density of eight (8) units per acre" for Neighborhood Living.
It does not. The Cherokee County 2023 Comprehensive Plan lists Neighborhood Living at "3.0 to 8.0 units per acre." Eight is the top of a range that starts at three. The plan's Character Area Summary Table says the same: 3 to 8 dua (no, not Dua Lipa, dua means "dwelling units per acre").
Woodstock's own Neighborhood Living character area states no density figure at all.
Concede the obvious point before the applicant makes it: 6.99 units per acre falls inside a 3.0 to 8.0 range. Nobody disputes that.
The problem is what the applicant did with the range. They took its ceiling, called it a recommendation in a sworn filing, designed to it exactly, and then requested variances because the ordinance that implements the plan will not produce that number without them.
A development at the middle of the actual range is roughly 170 units. At the bottom, roughly 95, which is close to what speakers estimated the site yields under R-4 standards with no variances at all. Every one of those is equally "consistent with the comprehensive plan." The plan does not tell Council to pick the top of the range, and it certainly does not tell Council to waive its own development standards to reach it.
Two character areas went in. One came out.
Cherokee County's staff analysis in the agenda packet lists this property's Future Development Map designation as "Neighborhood Living and Nature Preserve." The preserve portion sits at the northern end, along the creek and the floodplain.
The city's annexation notification, signed by the Community Development Director and sitting in the same packet, says "The proposed city Future Land Use for the subject properties is Neighborhood Living." Singular.
Woodstock's comprehensive plan has a rule for exactly this. Its Annexations section says a character area "should be assigned to that area based on its designation in Cherokee County's comprehensive plan," and Table 9 provides the conversion. The first row: county Natural Preserve becomes city Natural Preserve.
City Natural Preserve is described in the plan as covering "flood plains, wetlands, watersheds" and other lands "not suitable for development of any kind." The first of its three development strategies is to "maintain natural, rural character by not allowing any new development."
Meanwhile the applicant is asking, through condition 13, to regrade that same floodplain ground. Staff explained why on August 6: "the grading required for the storm water and other site improvements will require disturbance of that area."
The applicant has answers available. The plan says "should," not "shall." The preserve area looks like a modest share of 31.47 acres. And Cherokee describes these parcels as "protected by easement or acquisition," which this one is not.
Fine. Then let staff say so out loud.
The question for Council: the county identified two character areas here and the city carried forward one. Under Table 9 of Woodstock's own plan, what happened to the second, and on what authority?
And note what this application requests. The public hearing form has checkboxes. The applicant checked Annexation, Rezoning, and Variance. Comprehensive Plan Amendment sits unchecked. Georgia law does not require zoning to match a comprehensive plan, but a city that wrote its own conversion table should be able to explain why it is departing from it before it votes.
Gated private streets contradict the character area
One more. Woodstock's Neighborhood Living development strategies, under Transportation:
"All developments should connect to adjacent public rights-of-ways and other neighborhoods, especially to existing stub-streets, forming an interconnected street network in the area." And: "Substantial internal connections should exist within a development and to adjacent land uses. External connections should include both motorized links and trails. Cul-de-sacs or other unconnected roadways are discouraged."
The Weekley site plan is built on private roads with proposed entrance gates. Condition 11 exists specifically to set those gates back far enough for cars to maneuver. A gated private street network is the opposite of the interconnected public network the character area calls for.
The applicant cannot claim conformity with a character area while proposing the one street pattern that character area explicitly discourages.
The growth boundary agreement is not what the commissioners think it is
Three commissioners cited it. Here is how Woodstock's own comprehensive plan describes it:
"In April 2022, the Woodstock City Council and the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners approved a new Growth Boundary Agreement and Map that defines the limits future growth for the city. While not legally binding, the city generally agrees to limit its annexations to areas inside the boundary, and the county generally agrees not to oppose annexations there. The agreement shall remain in place through June 2028."
Read the second half of that sentence again. Under the growth boundary agreement, the county generally agrees not to oppose annexations inside the boundary.
Which means the county's much cited "no objection" to this annexation was not an evaluation of this project. It was the county doing what it agreed in 2022 to do for every annexation inside that line. Larkin told the Commission it was "very notable" that the county did not object, because "they look at these kind of applications very closely." The county agreed four years ago not to look closely at applications inside the growth boundary.
The agreement is also, in the city's own words, not legally binding. It obligates Woodstock to nothing. It permits the city to consider an annexation here. It does not require the city to approve one, and it says nothing whatsoever about density, lot size, or variances.
What all of this adds up to
Both comprehensive plans are guides, not entitlements. Cherokee's says so directly: character areas "serve as a guide in the determination of future development approvals," and "Character Areas are not regulations so it allows flexibility during project review."
But the applicant did not merely rely on a guide. The applicant characterized both plans inaccurately in a sworn application, took a range ceiling and called it a recommendation, and quoted four words from a page that asks for workforce housing. And the Natural Preserve designation the county identified on this property has not been addressed by anyone, in any filing, at any point in this process.
And conformity with a comprehensive plan, even real conformity, is an argument for a rezoning. It is not an argument for a variance. Those are separate questions under separate legal standards. If the applicant cannot reach its target density while following R-4's development standards, the answer under the plan is fewer homes, not smaller rules.
What the state law staff cited actually says
A commissioner asked staff whether the community, which does not conform to R-40 now, would be forced to conform if the property sells. Staff said no, that its nonconforming status survives a sale and annexation, and that Georgia law protects existing manufactured homes through a change in zoning or ownership.
That sounds like reassurance for the residents. It is not. The statute is O.C.G.A. § 36-66-7, and it protects the property owner's right to keep operating. It contains no relocation right, no notice right, and no protection against closure.
But read what that means for August 24. Georgia law would let David Greene keep operating this community under City of Woodstock R-4 zoning indefinitely. He has owned it since the 1980s and could have closed it at any point in forty years. Closing it would be a choice, not a consequence of the rezoning. And the same protection would carry to a preservation buyer, a nonprofit, or a resident owned cooperative, which is the legal floor under every scenario in which Ansley Park survives.
That protection does expire, and sooner than the statute implies. The state law defers to local ordinance, and Cherokee County Zoning Ordinance Section 13.5 sets the period at six months, not twelve. Which is why the missing relocation agreement is structural rather than sentimental: a zoning approval is permanent and a denial can be reapplied for, but a nonconforming use ends quietly, with no hearing and no vote, when the use stops.
Why the annexation and the rezoning decide everything
This is the part that got lost in the room on August 6, and it is the reason we have been asking for three denials in this order since the beginning.
Under Cherokee County R-40, this land is worth a fraction of what it is worth as City of Woodstock R-4. R-40 is a one acre minimum lot district. On 31.47 acres that is roughly thirty houses. R-4 with variances is 220. No national homebuilder pays a 220 home price for a thirty home entitlement. An entitlement is simply the legal permission to build a given number of homes on a piece of land, and it is what a builder is actually buying.
Homebuilder contracts on manufactured home communities are commonly written subject to zoning, meaning the builder is only obligated to close if the rezoning is granted. We have not seen this contract and we do not claim to know its terms. That is an inference from standard industry practice. If Woodstock denies the annexation and the rezoning, the entitlement premium evaporates and the deal very likely dies on its own contingency. What is left is a property valued on what it actually earns as an operating community, which is the only price range where a preservation buyer, a nonprofit, or a resident owned cooperative can realistically compete.
Denying only the variances does not do that. It caps the subdivision at roughly 100 homes instead of 220. The land is still entitled. The premium still exists. Ansley Park is still gone. A smaller subdivision is still a subdivision.
So when the Planning Commission voted to approve the annexation and the rezoning and deny the variances, it approved the two decisions that determine whether this community can be saved and denied the one that determines the size of what replaces it. That is not a partial win. That is the entitlement being handed over with a cap on it.
Ansley Park has not been sold. It is under contract. That distinction is where the opening is.
Greene is still collecting rent, and residents report new tenants moving in after the property went under contract. That is not the behavior of someone who has decided to close a park. It is the behavior of someone selling one, who collects rent while the buyer works through entitlements. Closure is downstream of a sale closing, not a decision already made and unmakeable.
Weekley has not bought it either. Whatever the contract says, Weekley Homes is a national builder that underwrites to a yield. Their own application says they abandoned a townhome plan for detached homes because detached sells better, and their attorney told the Commission the plan was an effort "to get a yield out of it that makes economic sense." Their engineering plans list a maximum density of 7.0 units per acre and a proposed density of 7.0 units per acre. They designed to the ceiling with no slack in it.
An entitlement that does not pencil is an entitlement a builder walks away from. And a property that comes back on the market as a functioning community with rental income is priced on that income, which is a number a preservation buyer, a nonprofit, or a resident owned cooperative can work with. Greene still gets paid. He gets paid less than the entitled price, which is the point.
Zoning runs with the land, not with the applicant. If Council approves the annexation and the rezoning and Weekley Homes then walks away because the variances failed, the R-4 zoning does not walk away with them. It stays attached to the property permanently. Greene, or whoever he sells to next, now owns 31.47 acres of city zoned R-4 land instead of county zoned R-40 land, with no hearing required and no public process to reverse it.
The next builder inherits an entitlement this community spent months fighting. They can build up to R-4 standards by right, meaning automatically, with no variance needed and no public hearing at all. Or they can come back in eighteen months, with elevations in hand, a signed relocation agreement, and a hardship narrative written by someone who watched what happened on August 6, and ask for the variances again in a quieter room in front of a Council that has already voted once to say this is an R-4 property.
That is how these fights are actually lost. Not in a packed room with fourteen speakers. Later, on a thin agenda, to people who were never in the room. A variance denial is temporary and can be reapplied for. An annexation and a rezoning are permanent.
One qualification. As noted above, § 36-66-7 would let a future owner keep operating this community even under city R-4 zoning, so approval does not legally foreclose preservation. It prices it out. A property entitled for 220 homes is worth several times the same property valued on lot rent, and no nonprofit, land trust, or resident cooperative closes that gap. After an approval the barrier is not the law. It is the number.
Four reasons to deny that come straight from the city's own documents
Some of the people deciding this were not moved by the 130 households. That was tested on August 6.
So here is the case built entirely on things the City of Woodstock has already adopted, voted for, or published.
1. The city collects nothing toward the 160 students this creates. The sworn application projects 160 new students using the city's own multiplier. Georgia's Development Impact Fee Act does not authorize school impact fees, and Woodstock's own impact fee page confirms the city may collect only for parks and recreation and for roads and transportation. Cherokee County School District absorbs 160 students and receives nothing from this development to do it with. Every Woodstock resident who pays school taxes covers the difference.
2. The city takes on the service load and gets gated private streets in return. Annexation obligates Woodstock police, fire, and stormwater responsibility for this development. The 2,105 daily trips land on city and county roads. And the internal network is private and gated, which means the city gets none of the connectivity its own Neighborhood Living character area requires while carrying the service burden anyway. Woodstock's adopted Goal 7.7 is to achieve efficiency in beneficial growth "while minimizing the burden on existing residents." Goals 5.8 and 7.8 direct the city to "discourage growth where the overall impact on the public will be negative."
3. Approving a 55 percent lot size cut by variance tells every future applicant how to get one. Woodstock's Goal 3.3 commits the city to ensuring "that land development is predictable, fair, and cost effective." A district standard that can be halved on request is not a standard, and the next applicant will cite this case. Council is not just deciding one subdivision. It is setting the price of admission for everyone who files after it.
4. It destroys workforce housing on the site the city designated for workforce housing. This is the one that only applies here.
Council adopted a comprehensive plan in October 2023 that designates this exact site Neighborhood Living, and defines that character area's intent as creating housing for "empty nesters, singles, small families, and stable workforce housing" and "moderate-income neighborhoods that provide a choice of various housing types that accommodate a cross-section of incomes."
Council's own adopted housing needs include incentivizing workforce and affordable housing. Its Short Term Work Program commits to identifying ways to facilitate affordable housing every year from 2023 through 2028. The plan states that housing in Woodstock "has become unattainable for a small but steadily growing portion of the community" and that the city "has expressed a desire to maintain itself as a community inclusive of different incomes."
Ansley Park is 130 units of the most affordable housing in the City of Woodstock's growth boundary. The proposal removes all of it and replaces it with homes from a builder whose nearest Woodstock community starts at $494,990.
That is not a project the plan failed to anticipate. It is the precise opposite of what the plan asks for, on the parcel the plan asks for it on.
Approving this does not just fail the residents. It fails the document Council voted for.
Every way the Planning Commission failed on August 6
The commissioners got the variances right and gave away everything else. Here is the full list, because Council is being asked to ratify a recommendation produced this way.
They approved a rezoning while saying out loud they did not know what would be built. Chair Williams: "I think R-4 fits there, but I don't like rezoning when I don't know what is gonna go there." Commissioner Smith: "I don't know that the rezoning makes a whole lot of sense if you don't know what's going on." Both men stated the reason to hold the zoning. Then one moved to approve it and the other seconded a version that did.
They stripped all sixteen conditions. It took about twenty seconds and it happened because the motion did not mention them. Staff had to ask the Chair twice to confirm. The recommendation now in front of Council carries no unit cap, no trail obligation, no rental cap, no homeowners association open space requirement, and no relocation condition.
They voted on a recommendation whose own precondition had failed. The Development Process Committee recommended approval on July 8 "subject to conditions and pending receipt of the owner's agreement with existing residents." Staff reported on August 6 that no such agreement had been completed. The Commission voted on that recommendation anyway. Nobody stated on the record that the condition the recommendation rested on had not been satisfied.
They reopened the floor for the applicant after closing it to the public. The public hearing was closed. Then Larkin returned to the podium with elevations that had not been presented, delivered a full rebuttal, and handed off to DHR, who made new factual claims about when the owner notified residents. When a member of the public asked to speak during deliberation, the Chair declined because the hearing was closed. Procedurally defensible, and the consequence is that an inaccurate statement about the notice sequence went unchallenged in the room and had to be corrected afterward with a document.
Three signed up speakers never got to the podium. Fourteen signed up in opposition, one in support. The Commission granted an extra fifteen minutes, which was the right call and which happened because it was asked for. Even so the clock ran out with three people still waiting, while the applicant received two separate turns.
They discussed granting buffer relief nobody applied for. Staff stated plainly that the applicant had verbally requested modification of the 25 foot landscape buffer condition, that no variance had been requested to reduce the buffer width, and that no alternate buffer proposal had been provided. The Commission nonetheless discussed revising condition 13 to permit regrading of the floodplain area. A body cannot grant relief from a standard through condition drafting when the applicant has not applied for that relief.
They never resolved the lot size discrepancy. Staff and the application narrative say 2,500 square feet. The applicant's own engineering plans dated April 13, 2026 say 2,700. Nobody asked which number the vote covered.
They never asked about density. The city's development standards table lists R-4 at a maximum of 4 units per acre. This project proposes 6.99. No density variance was requested, and the question was never raised.
They never asked about the Natural Preserve designation. Staff presented the Future Development Map designation as Neighborhood Living. Cherokee County's own staff analysis in the packet says "Neighborhood Living and Nature Preserve." Woodstock's comprehensive plan says annexed land should be assigned a character area based on its county designation, and Table 9 converts county Natural Preserve to city Natural Preserve, whose first development strategy is to allow no new development. Nobody asked how the second designation disappeared.
They accepted the county's silence as a finding. Larkin: "it's very notable, I think, that this went to Cherokee County for consideration on the annexation, and they did not object to it. As you know, they look at these kind of applications very closely."
Under O.C.G.A. 36-36-113, a county's only binding tool against an annexation is a formal objection filed within 45 days, which triggers a state arbitration process. Cherokee County received notice May 11. The window closed June 25. Staff answered no to every material burden question and no objection was filed.
But the deeper problem is in Woodstock's own comprehensive plan: under the growth boundary agreement, "the county generally agrees not to oppose annexations there." The county pre committed in April 2022 to not objecting to annexations inside that boundary. Its silence in June 2026 was the terms of an agreement being honored, not a judgment about this project.
What Council has to do on August 24, and why it cannot be fixed later
Two things separate City Council from the Planning Commission, and both matter here.
The Commission is appointed, unpaid, and advisory. Its members can say "Council decides," and they do. Council is elected by ward, its vote is final, and its members' names go on the ordinance permanently.
The other thing is asymmetry. What Council approves on August 24 is permanent. What Council denies, the applicant can reapply for with a better case. There is no version of this where a yes vote can be walked back, and no version where a no vote forecloses anything.
Deny the annexation. This is the one vote with no external constraint on it. No statute, no agreement, and no plan requires Woodstock to take this land, and the growth boundary agreement is not legally binding by the city's own description. But once the city takes it, the city owns it permanently: the service obligations, the road impacts, the stormwater responsibility, and the zoning that comes with it. There is no mechanism by which Woodstock hands this property back to Cherokee County.
Deny the rezoning. R-40 to R-4 converts a manufactured home community into a 220 home entitlement, and that entitlement attaches to the land, not to Weekley Homes. If this deal falls apart later, the next buyer inherits R-4 with no hearing and no public process to reverse it. Two commissioners said out loud they did not want to rezone without knowing what would be built there, and then voted to rezone anyway.
Deny the variances. The applicant's own written response admits the plan changed from townhomes to detached homes for market reasons, and its answer to the self created hardship criterion is a non answer about timing. Nothing about this land requires 2,500 square foot lots. The applicant's chosen product and unit count require them. And a district standard that can be halved on request is not a standard. The next applicant will cite this case, and Council will have given away the ground it would need to refuse.
Restore the conditions or reject the recommendation outright. Adopting the Planning Commission's recommendation as written would annex and rezone 31.47 acres with no unit cap, no trail obligation, no rental cap, no open space requirement, and no relocation condition. Council would be giving away more than the developer asked for, and conditions cannot be added back after the ordinance passes.
Require the agreement before voting, not after. Cherokee County asked in June. The Development Process Committee conditioned its recommendation on it in July. It is August, and what exists is a five sentence letter that says "if" and "plan to." Once the entitlement is granted, Council has nothing left to condition it on. A relocation agreement is worth something before the vote and nothing after it.
Resolve the Natural Preserve designation first. Woodstock's comprehensive plan says annexed land should be assigned a character area based on its Cherokee County designation, and Table 9 converts county Natural Preserve to city Natural Preserve, whose first development strategy is to allow no new development. The county identified two character areas on this property. The city carried forward one. If part of this site should be Natural Preserve, applying R-4 across the whole parcel is a plan change nobody requested and nobody advertised.
Answer the density question. The city's development standards table lists R-4 at a maximum of 4 units per acre. This project proposes 6.99, and no density variance was requested. Staff can settle this in one sentence, and Council should not approve a project at a density the ordinance may not permit and the applicant never asked for.
Get the lot size number straight. The application says 2,500 square feet. The applicant's own engineering plans say 2,700. A variance runs with the land permanently, so approving 2,500 when the plan uses 2,700 hands over 200 square feet per lot across 220 lots that nobody justified and nobody will recover.
Consider how this application has treated Woodstock
Read that list as a whole. A substitute attorney with no elevations. No answer to the hardship question. Two adopted comprehensive plans characterized inaccurately in a sworn filing. No price on the record. A packet that contradicts itself on lot size. A density the applicant never requested. And no relocation agreement three months after Cherokee County and Woodstock's own Development Process Committee both asked for one.
Then the closing argument: do you trust your comprehensive land use plan, do you trust your staff. Which is a way of asking Council to stop asking questions.
An applicant who files a complete, accurate, well documented application is an applicant who expects to be examined. This is not that. This is a company that read Woodstock as a formality.
Council decides whether that read was correct.
If a majority is not ready to deny, table it.
Tabling is not a denial and it is not a favor to anyone. It is the ordinary response to an application that arrived without elevations, without a hardship answer, without a price, with an unanswered density question, with an unresolved character area designation, and without the one document two public bodies have now requested.
The application will still be there in September. The entitlement, once granted, will be there forever.
What we're doing between now and then
Open records requests, filed this week. The traffic study behind the 2,105 trip figure, which the city's own application checklist requires for residential projects exceeding 200 units. The May 21 public input meeting records, including the notice letter, the applicant's report, and the sign in sheet, to determine whether Spanish language notice was provided in a community where many residents are Spanish speaking. And the correspondence showing who asked to move this hearing from early July to August 6, and when. Georgia's Open Records Act requires a response within three business days.
Putting the plan analysis in front of Council in writing. The comprehensive plan findings above are being packaged with page citations and delivered to every council member and to staff, so the Natural Preserve and density questions in particular are answered on the record before the vote rather than after it.
Documenting what residents have told us. Multiple residents report being told they cannot sell their own homes until the owner sells the land. If that restriction exists in writing, it eliminates the only equity these families hold and forces abandonment instead of sale. We are working to document it at the property and lease level, without exposing any individual.
Building the speaker slate. Small, disciplined, one argument each, no overlap.
What the applicant will say on August 24, and the answer
Sams, Larkin & Huff might come back prepared this time. Here is what to expect and how to respond, so nobody in our slate gets caught flat.
"This is a private matter between a landlord and his tenants. You are not being asked to close a park." Correct, and beside the point. Nobody is asking Council to referee a lease. Council is being asked to approve an annexation, a rezoning, and three variances, each with its own legal standard. The application fails those standards on its own terms.
"The density conforms to the comprehensive plan." It falls within a range of 3.0 to 8.0 units per acre. So does 95 units. So does 170. Conformity with a range does not select the ceiling, and it is not an argument for variances, which are governed by an entirely separate standard.
"We did not create the floodplain, the interstate buffer, or the topography." Also correct, and also beside the point. The applicant created the plan that does not fit them. Their own written variance response says they changed from townhomes to detached homes after "researching market trends." That is a product decision, not a land condition. Ask them to identify one physical feature of this site that makes 5,500 square foot lots impossible rather than less profitable.
"Cherokee County did not object." Under the growth boundary agreement, the county agreed in April 2022 not to oppose annexations inside that boundary. Woodstock's own comprehensive plan says so in writing. The county's silence was a contract term being honored, not a review being conducted.
"The owner gave residents notice before anyone knew anything." He gave notice before public advertisement. He did not give notice before filing. His own letter, dated May 6, says a rezoning request "has been submitted," and the city stamped the application received on May 1.
"The relocation agreement is complicated and we are working on it." Cherokee County asked in June. The Development Process Committee made its recommendation contingent on receipt of it in July. It is now August and what exists is a letter that says "if" and "plan to." Council can vote when the document arrives.
"We are agreeable to all the conditions." The recommendation in front of Council has no conditions attached. The Planning Commission stripped every one of them. If the applicant is agreeable, the applicant will not object to Council re attaching all sixteen, in writing, before any vote.
"Denial is a taking. There is no reasonable use of the property." Their sworn application says exactly that. The property is a functioning community with roughly 130 occupied homesites generating rent, which is a reasonable, income producing use, and O.C.G.A. § 36-66-7 protects the owner's right to continue it. Under Georgia law, purchasing a constrained property confers no right to develop it at a preferred intensity.
"Woodstock needs housing." It does, and Council has already said what kind and where. The comprehensive plan designates this exact parcel Neighborhood Living and defines that character area's intent as "stable workforce housing" and "moderate-income neighborhoods" serving "a cross-section of incomes." Removing 130 of the most affordable homes in the city and replacing them with houses from a builder whose nearest Woodstock community starts at $494,990 is not housing policy. It is the reverse of the housing policy Council adopted.
Why this is still winnable, and what we need from you
Something worth crediting first. The Commission's bylaws allow fifteen minutes total per side. With fourteen speakers signed up in opposition, that is about a minute each. Schindler opened by asking the Commission to extend public comment, noting it was within their purview. A commissioner moved for an additional fifteen minutes, Ali Najafi seconded, and it passed 5 to 1.
They doubled the community's time on the record because someone asked. That is what working the procedure looks like, and it worked.
Now the harder part.
This is not over, and here's why.
The land has not been sold. It is under contract, contingent on entitlements that have not been granted. City Council holds the final vote and is not bound by the Planning Commission. The Commission's recommendation is advisory, and it arrived carrying no conditions, resting on a Development Process Committee (DPC) recommendation whose precondition failed, built on a record with a factual error about resident notice, an unresolved lot size discrepancy, an unanswered question about whether the density even complies with the district, an unaddressed Natural Preserve designation, and a request for buffer relief nobody applied for.
Council can approve it. Council can deny it. Council can table it. Nothing about August 6 constrains any of those.
And here's the argument we're asking you to make.
We are not going to ask Council to do the right thing because 130 families live there. That case was made on August 6 by people who live across the street, by a Meals on Wheels driver who delivers to residents in their eighties, by a woman whose aunt grows her herbs there, by an eighteen year old who has lived in Woodstock her entire life. It was made completely and it was made well.
The body heard all of it, said the human question was "a separate issue," and voted to hand over the entitlement.
So we are going to make the argument this body is required to answer.
A council member who votes to approve on August 24 is voting to approve an application whose sworn variance response admits the plan changed for market reasons and gives a non answer to the self created hardship criterion. Whose conformity argument misstates two adopted comprehensive plans. Whose own engineering plans contradict its own application on lot size, and propose a density the city's development standards table does not appear to permit. Whose Natural Preserve designation has never been addressed under the city's own annexation rule. Which carries no conditions at all, including the relocation condition two public bodies have now requested and not received.
That is not a vote about compassion. That is a vote a council member owns, in writing, with their name on it, for as long as this project exists.
What to do this week, if you are a City of Woodstock voter
Email your own ward council member first.
The six council members hold the votes. Mayor Michael Caldwell presides and breaks ties. The council decides this.
Not sure which ward you are in? The city has a lookup tool: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/d0968c00628e4f818b03e7976cde4b6e
To reach all of them at once: mayorandcouncil@woodstockga.gov
Position | Name | |
Ward 1 | Warren Johnson | |
Ward 2 | David Potts | |
Ward 3 | Colin Ake | |
Ward 4 | Tracy K. Collins | |
Ward 5 | Brian Wolfe | |
Ward 6 | Rob Usher | |
Mayor | Michael Caldwell |
Ansley Park residents live outside city limits and cannot vote in city elections. They have no ward member to write to. That is exactly why the rest of us have to.
Keep it short and make it about the record. Something like:
I am a resident of Ward [X] at [address] and I am asking you to deny the annexation, the rezoning, and the variances in case A#132-26 on August 24. The applicant's own variance response states the plan changed from townhomes to detached homes for market reasons, which is a self created hardship. The application misstates both comprehensive plans. The packet contradicts itself on minimum lot size, and the project proposes 6.99 units per acre in a district the city's own development standards table caps at 4, with no density variance requested. The Natural Preserve portion of the site has not been addressed under Table 9 of the city's own comprehensive plan. And the Planning Commission forwarded this with no conditions attached, including the relocation condition Cherokee County and the city's own Development Process Committee both requested and never received. At minimum, this application is incomplete and should be tabled.
If you want to speak on August 24, read this first
August 6 taught us some things about how these hearings actually run, and we would rather share them than have anyone learn them the hard way.
The clock is the constraint. The Commission allows fifteen minutes total per side, worked through a sign in sheet in the order people signed. Fourteen people signed up in opposition. Even after the Commission generously granted an extra fifteen minutes, three people never reached the podium. Some of them live in Woodstock and vote here.
That is not anyone's fault. It is arithmetic. But it means the order of that sign in sheet decides who gets heard, and right now nobody is managing it.
The second thing is what these bodies can act on. A Planning Commission, and City Council in a zoning hearing, decide land use cases against ordinance criteria. That is the authority they have. Arguments outside those criteria are real and they matter, and this is not the room where anyone can act on them. Every minute spent there is a minute someone else does not get.
So here is what we are asking for August 24.
If you want to speak, get in touch first. We are building a slate: a handful of speakers, one argument each, no overlap, written and timed in advance. Every point in this post has an owner. If you want one, we will give you one, along with the source documents to back it.
If you are not on the slate, consider not signing up. Fill the room instead, and send your argument in writing to your ward council member, which is where volume actually moves a council vote. If you do sign in, sign in behind the slate rather than ahead of it.
If you sign up, please show up. A name on that sheet that does not reach the podium is a slot that could have gone to a resident.
And if you do not live in the city, consider yielding your time. Your presence in that room matters and so does your voice. But council members answer to their own constituents, and on August 24 the most valuable minutes belong to people who live and vote in Woodstock. Everyone else can put it in writing.
Whoever gets the floor, ask staff this. The city's development standards table lists R-4 at a maximum of 4 units per acre. This project proposes 6.99, and no density variance was requested. So: what is the maximum density permitted in R-4, and what provision allows 6.99 units per acre on this property?
There is no comfortable answer. Either the table means what it says, in which case the application is asking for something it never requested. Or a provision permits it, in which case staff should name it out loud so everyone can read it. Either way the reasoning ends up on the record where it can be checked, instead of inside a site plan nobody questioned.
We had 1,573 people sign our petition and 203 trackable emails sent, and more we could not track. Our volunteers and Latino Outreach of Cherokee County canvassed thousands of homes and did not find one person who wants this development.
The support is there. What it needs now is to be aimed at the standard this body is required to apply. Everything in this post is aimed there. Come work with us and let's deliver it that way.
The vote
City of Woodstock Mayor and City Council
Monday, August 24, 2026 at 7:00 PM
The Chambers at City Center, 8534 Main Street, Woodstock, Georgia 30188
The Planning Commission's recommendation is advisory. Council holds the final vote. They can restore the variances. They can restore the conditions. They can table an incomplete application. They can deny it outright.
They will do whichever one we build the strongest record for.
North Georgia Community Action Network is a volunteer led civic organizing collective serving Cherokee, Pickens, Bartow, Forsyth, Cobb, and Fulton counties.
Case documents referenced here are public record. The application packet, staff analysis, and Cherokee County annexation review for A#132-26 are available through the City of Woodstock Community Development Department at https://www.woodstockga.gov and in the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners agenda packet for June 16, 2026.
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