How the Hall County Commissioners violated the people's Federal and State constitutional rights

Hello everyone,

My name is Michael Albert Miles of 1661 Friendship Rd. Hoschton, Ga., and I would like to address this commission concerning issues about the August 28 decision to put a moratorium on high density zoning. 

My wife and I are residents and property owners in South Hall County, my wife has been here since 1963 and myself since 1990. We reside on the same piece of property that has been in my wife’s family for generations. South Hall is no longer the rural community that we have loved for years. In 2000 I was the original activist to Keep Hall Small. This was before State Rd. 347, sewer, Reunion, or any other development out where I live except for Chateau Corners and Chateau Glen. We even still had working chicken houses out here back then until State Rd 347 came along. I managed to get 93 signatures on a petition to stop State Road 347 and cut down on the growth in Hall County then. It seems that my speech fell on deaf ears of the county commission in the meeting held on January 27th of 2000. My family has remained silent since those days as the damage had been done, and we as a community had been ignored.  However, at least we tried our best. Since those days this county has:

1. Harassed and threatened my family
2. Allow crimes against my family to go uninvestigated or ignored
3. has forced us to defend ourselves and our property because the county would not.
4. Arrested us and tried to prosecute us for protecting ourselves
5. have denied us emergency services from the fire department
6. has unreasonably raised our taxes as they have more than doubled in the last five years

One would think Hall County hates the Miles family, wants to get rid of us and make us impoverished. We have lived here about as long as we can stand it and afford to. To that end we put our property up for sale with the intention of moving on. South Hall County has been developed and grown up around us – it is the part of the County where all of the growth and development has taken place.

After talking with our realtor and reviewing what was the County’s goals for how our property should be used, we began to market our property based on County land use plans and maps. In March of 2024 our property went under contract with a buyer, David English. Since then, we have worked with the buyers and the county to make sure all utilities and zoning requirements are met.

In April of 2025 the buyer ran into a problem concerning sewer access and emergency access for the county fire department. At that time, as the property owner, I got involved in this process. I contacted county officials to help me resolve these issues, specifically Kathy Cooper, the sewer department and GADOT District 1 in Gainesville.

Kathy Cooper was great. She very promptly resolved the issue concerning the sewer. (see pdf Commissioner EMail) She also advised me to talk with the GADOT folks of District 1 in Gainesville. (see pdf DOT Emergency Access) As a result, the emergency access was resolved satisfactorily and approved by the Hall County Fire Marshall. (see pdfs Hall County Fire Marshal 1 & Hall County Fire Marshal 2 & Beth Garmon EMail)

The buyer’s application was accepted by the Planning & Zoning department. (See pdf Beth Garmon EMail and Planing & Zoning Staff Report)The buyers have already had meetings with Planning & Zoning.  Planning & Zoning has already given the buyer approval for this type of development on my property if it were 12 units per acre.  We were set to close on this property by the end of the year, and this moratorium threatens this active contract.  This took away the buyers contracted real property and cost them tens of thousands of dollars. They will never have an opportunity to see a return on the money they have invested so far due to the moratorium.  It also violates my family’s 5th amendment right under the US constitution to be able to pursue a better life.  All this was done without due process of any kind and has adversely affected the lives of everyone hit by this moratorium. As a veteran of the US Armed Forces, I am ashamed of this entire community’s willingness to trample the US and Georgia state constitution.

I want to reiterate that my wife and I were here first – we were here before Reunion, we were here before Friendship was doubled in size, we were here before the self-storage facility that abuts our property.  We never protested, contested, or tried to keep others from using property which abuts us.  We are simply trying to sell our property and leave, like almost every other homeowner on this part of Friendship.

In conclusion I would request that this commission remove the moratorium as it applies to developments that have been in the works and allow the accepted applications to be processed by the zoning laws that existed prior to this action. I make this request based on that fact that this action has violated the 5th and 14th amendments of the US constitution and Article I, Section 1, Paragraph I along with Article 1, Section 3 of the Georgia Constitution.  Commissioner Powel was correct in his assessment of this situation which can be found in the August 28th,2025 meeting minutes.

Thank you for your time to listen to my plea.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.