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A massive effort is underway to persuade citizens of Greenville County that it is necessary to have a law that imposes severe restrictions on the use of real property by its owner. Citizens are bombarded with propaganda beginning in government schools and in the dominant media that is designed to persuade them that it is necessary to deprive property owners of freedom in order to preserve trees and thereby save the planet to be used as seen fit by an environmentalist political movement seeking power, influence and wealth at the expense of others.
Citizens who love liberty need to recognize that the Greenville County Tree Ordinance is more about loss of freedom for property owners than it is about preserving trees and saving the planet.
One of the first acts of a Communist dictatorship is to seize private property from private owners. The United States of America has remained free from tyranny for much of two centuries due to the Natural Rights from God protected by our Constitution and described in the writings of Samuel Adams as “a right to Life, Liberty and Property; together with the right to support and defend them.”
Our Founders described these rights as part of the “Duty of Self Preservation,” commonly called the first “Law of Nature.” No external power has been able to deprive citizens of the American republic of the right to own property; however, a strategy of “gradualism” advocated by a group of European socialists has proven effective. They have discovered that many Americans do not react to loss of freedom until it impacts them personally and financially. Preserving trees seems innocent enough to those who do not see it as a loss of freedom, because they are not the victims.
Three years ago, members of the environmental movement, according to ethics reports submitted by candidates, invested heavily in the campaigns of several candidates for Greenville County Council. Once elected, those elected officials began appointing leading environmentalists to influential positions in Greenville County Government. In fact, one of the leading environmentalists in the Upstate was recently appointed to the Planning Commission and is now chairman of the Greenville County Planning Commission. The same individual was appointed to the advisory committee that drafted the proposed Tree Ordinance that will be up for Second Reading on Tuesday, November 6, 2007, following a public hearing that same evening.
We are being told that the original version of the Ordinance has been drastically revised and that the current version is acceptable to a diverse segment of the local population as reflected by the diverse Tree Ordinance Advisory Committee.
In fact, the 22-page Ordinance, when revised, numbered 37 pages. The changes were made to satisfy the “Home Builders” represented on the advisory committee. There were no representatives of a property owner’s group or taxpayer’s organization appointed to the advisory group. As a result, their views were not considered in the so- called “unanimous” decision of a “diverse” advisory group supposedly representing each segment of the County.
All of the major provisions objectionable to the Greenville County Taxpayers Association and to local land owners remain in the proposed Ordinance. “A 50 ft. undisturbed buffer shall be established on each side of the top of bank of all intermittent, perennial, and blue line streams,” is required. It is also prescribed that “wheeled or tracked machinery will not be allowed in this buffer area for any reason.”
The Ordinance still requires that the County hire Arborists and Inspectors to administer and enforce the provisions of the Ordinance, and the penalties for non-compliance remain the same.
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