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; 4 Photos by Micah Green Forsyth bounty News
Steven Fields, below, waits with Emma Chambers and Hayden Kay for the fireworks show to begin
Friday at the Cumming Fairgrounds.
Fireworks show
signals start of
festive weekend
By Kelly Whitmire
kwhitmire@forsythnews.com
Cumming-kicked ~off -its
Independence Day activities Friday
night with a bang, or several of them.
Thousands of people gathered at and
around the Cumming Fairgrounds to
watch the city’s annual fireworks dis
play. The celebration brought out folks
all of all ages to watch one of the only
fireworks displays in the region held
annually on July 3.
Leslie Bearden came with the youth
group and other members of Mount
Pisgah Baptist Church. She said the
group comes each year to watch the
fireworks and prepare for the Thomas-
Mashburn Steam Engine Parade on
Saturday.
“This kind of a yearly thing,”
See FESTIVE | 3A
Businessman disputes stiff penalty for 1-cent tax error
State: Firm must
pay nearly SBOO
By Kelly Whitmire
kwhitmire@forsythnews.com
The old saying goes that a
penny saved is a penny earned,
but one Forsyth County busi
ness is being charged a substan
tial amount for the former.
Volume 106, Number 79
© 2015, Forsyth County News
Cumming, Georgia
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ofl 90994104000 117
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Ross Statham, managing
director for Dogwood
Management Properties, said
the Georgia Department of
Revenue determined during a
recent audit that the firm had
underpaid its payroll taxes by a
cent for the first quarter of
2014. Unfortunately for
Dogwood, the penalty ended up
being quite a few more pennies.
“We’ve been in business for a
number of years, and they
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asked to do a fairly routine
audit,” Statham said. “They
came in and said, ‘OK, well
you underpaid us by a penny.”
“We scratched our heads and
said, ‘Well, we use a major
payroll company.’ ... And they
said, ‘Well, you still underpaid
us by a penny, we’ll send you
an assessment.” We figured
we’d get an assessment for a
penny. We got an assessment
for almost $800.”
3A Family, friends
honor local
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Collapse, flood
occurred in 2013
By Kelly Whitmire
kwhitmire@forsythnews.com
It appears work has begun to repair the
damage caused by the collapse of an earth
en dam more than two years ago.
Scott Morgan, Cumming’s director of
planning and zoning, said the city hired a
firm to help stabilize the stream and bed of
the former Lake Alice and those efforts
passed the muster of the state
Environmental Protection Division.
“The EPD conducted a site visit,”
Morgan said. “They were very pleased with
the stabilization and revegetation of the
Little Ridge Creek and the former Lake
Alice lake bed and the area in the [U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers] flood control
easement down to Sanders Road.”
The city has also issued a request for pro
posal, the first step in the biding process, to
dredge a nearby cove on Lake Lanier that
was heavily impacted by sediment after the
dam collapsed during heavy rain on May.
19, 2013, as well as for streamn remediation
of the arca. Neither bid has been awarded,
Though work is moving forward, several
related issues remain unresolved. One is
with the Mashburn Family Trust, which
owned the dam that washed out.
The city, which owned part of the water
in the lake, and the family trust had been in
agreement on the best course of action to
be taken on cleanup efforts, until the city
issued a stop-work order in 2014. .
That year, the two parties violated a con
sent order when they could not agree on a
lan.
e The Mashburn Family sought to-install a
weir, a step-like structure that allows water
to flow over the top, but holds some back.
“The city wanted to reestablish the stream
bed that had existed before the dam was
built about 80 years ago.
“The consent order that was issued to the
Mashburn Family Trust and the city jointly
See DAM | 4A ;
Recent
- graduates of
Forsyth
Central High
School gather
in a convert
ible at the
fairgrounds
prior to the
show.
According to documents pro
vided by Statham, the
Department of Revenue assessed
a penalty of $758.93, with
$20.97 of interest and a 1-cent
tax, bringing the total to $779.91.
Officials with the revenue
department didn’t return multiple
calls last week seeking comment
on the matter.
.According to Statham, the
company has “always had a great
relationship with the state of
6 A Designer
shares sense
. ofstylein
new book.
Georgia” and that the unaccount
ed for penny was ultimately a
rounding error.
“I was incredulous, just abso
lutely incredulous,” he said.
“First, I told the state in a letter
that I wrote them that I dispute
the penny first and foremost,
because that’s a rounding error
... the state made one calcula
tion, our vendor made another
See ERROR | 4A
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