Outgoing Monroe County District 4 Commissioner George Emami said countywide internet expansion, tax cuts, and the county’s successful re-opening during COVID-19 are among the greatest achievements of his distinguished seven-year career as a Monroe County commissioner.
Emami, who announced in March 2024 his intention to resign from the Board of Commissioners, will officially leave office at midnight on Nov. 4, one day prior to a special election to replace him. Emami has served as District 4 Commissioner since November 2017 when he won a special election to replace Jarod Lovett.
Emami was subsequently re-elected twice as a Republican, including most recently in November 2022, before deciding to resign from the Board with two years remaining on his current term. Emami said there wasn’t one single occurrence that caused him to know it was time to step down. He said the biggest factor is that at the time he took office in 2017 his real estate business was operating out of Macon-Bibb and did much of its business in other counties. But now his company, PrimePoint Ventures, is based in Monroe County and much of its activities are occurring in Monroe County, which has created more intersection than he would like between his private business and his governmental duties.
Emami said he plans to turn his full attention back to his various business interests, including his new The Preserve at Fox Run development off Thornton Road and his modular home company, Craft Cottage Builders, which recently opened its brand new location off of Indian Springs Drive.
With less than a month to go in his Commission term, Emami reflected on his seven eventful years in office and said the friendships he’s made with his fellow commissioners and county staffers is the thing he’ll miss most about his commission job.
“I’m certainly going to miss the relationships,” Emami said. “There were times when they were strained, but I’m really grateful for the end result of just having made some really good friends and learned and grown from these other men and women who work together through things. You go through a difficult circumstance, or an emergency, or a crisis, and as a county you have a bunch of those. There’s a bonding that happens when you go through stuff like that together, and I’ll miss that.”
Perhaps the most notable crisis that Monroe County went through during Emami’s term was the effects of COVID-19 on the local community and the nation, and the unknown that came with it. About five weeks into the forced nationwide government shutdown, Emami led the Board’s charge to urge Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to halt the state’s shelter-in-place requirements. Despite some initial political and media blowback, Kemp safely re-opened Georgia weeks later, and Monroe County followed suit. As it turned out, Georgia’s economy was one of the fastest to recover from the COVID-19 shutdown.
“The gravity of the situation and the decisions that we were making on the local level were significant,” Emami said. “Balancing the health and safety of our community with the possible effects to our economy was the hardest thing I can remember doing. It was literally a life and death situation. It was a very scary thing to do. And there were times I really wondered, ‘Is this the right thing?’ in the moment.”
Emami said Monroe County was the first county in Georgia to send Gov. Kemp a letter of resolution to re-open and said he believes it helped give Gov. Kemp the courage to re-open in the face of criticism. Emami said the action also later earned him an unlikely British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview, which aired internationally.
The COVID-19 fiasco allowed Emami to put his general governing philosophy to the test, which he likened to a physician’s Hippocratic Oath to “first, do no harm”. The most notable way that Emami sought to do no harm to Monroe County’s citizens is by keeping their property taxes low. Emami did just that. In his seven years on the Board, Monroe County Commissioners maintained or reduced the county’s millage rate every single year. Emami also helped to stabilize a county government that was on shaky financial footing by hiring Monroe County Manager Jim Hedges and Monroe County Finance Officer Lorri Robinson in 2018. Under Hedges and Robinson’s outstanding stewardship, the county has not had to borrow money mid-year to sustain itself in any of the past six years.
“Part of improving things is you first have to know where things are and how they operate and how they hold together, and I think when we (current commissioners) came on this board we were having crisis after crisis,” Emami said. “We were not paying federal unemployment taxes and were penalized hundreds of thousands of dollars. That seems like a distant past now, and I’m proud of being a little part of the team that oversaw that process. We’ve continued to get really good financial reviews from our auditors. I think that’s a good thing.”
But perhaps the most lasting and significant achievement during his tenure was to bring high-speed internet throughout Monroe County. Emami, who moved to Monroe County over a decade ago, said he was stunned by the lack of internet service available in the county’s rural areas. As District 4 Commissioner, Emami made internet expansion his top focus. He created and chaired an Internet Expansion Committee, sending e-mails and letters and making personal visits to various state and federal politicians, as well as speaking about rural broadband deficiencies at local and statewide events.
Emami’s efforts finally paid off on Feb. 8, 2021 when Gov. Kemp invited Emami and other Monroe County leaders to the Georgia State Capitol for the announcement of a partnership between electric membership cooperatives Central Georgia EMC and Southern Rivers Energy and fiberoptic network provider Conexon, LLC to bring high-speed internet to all EMC customers in Monroe County. Monroe County Commissioners teamed up with Monroe County Schools to contribute over $1.3 million to assist with the estimated $30 million project. Emami said the day Monroe County celebrated at the Capitol was the “zenith” of his time in office.
“I think internet was and is such a big deal because as a conservative it’s something that can equally serve every demographic,” Emami said. “There’s no special interest group. Every citizen in this county has a special interest in access to the internet. And for those that don’t have it or have a low speed, it’s such a detriment. It was important to me because I came from another area that it was just taken for granted. You could not understand how bad it was here unless you came from somewhere else. . . It was one of the main things I ran on because I felt like individuals by themselves, individual homeowners and constituents, had no voice. It was not enough power to make a change by yourself. Not to say I singlehandedly turned it around. I’m grateful that it worked out the way it did. And I’m grateful the Board supported it.”
Other major achievements in which Emami took on a leadership role included: the creation of a new Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) that sets guidelines for future development and zoning in Monroe County as well as the recently completed transformation of the old Falls View Restaurant into a sparkling new High Falls fire station. Emami said serving District 4 has been an “honor” and a “pleasure.”
Emami said he will miss his twice-monthly public interactions with his fellow commissioners, each of whom he regards as a friend. Emami said District 3 Commissioner John Ambrose brings “fun and enjoyment” to the board. He said District 2 Commissioner Eddie Rowland is the “best listener” on the board and often takes time to listen to him vent. Emami said District 1 Commissioner Lamarcus Davis is a “great-hearted guy,” and he said he respects former District 1 Commissioner Larry Evans’ 30+ years of service to the Board even more now after serving for seven years. But it is his friendship with Commission Chairman Greg Tapley that Emami perhaps values the most because it was not always easy.
Emami said, “With Greg, I look at that relationship as a huge victory in my life. . . He and I have fought vigorously. I remember multiple hour-long, duke-it-out sessions over different things. We’re both kind of Type A personalities. And there’s some regrets that I have from things I may have said during a time publicly, but at the same time I’m proud of both of us for working through a lot of that. I feel like we both have a lot of respect for each other. And even though we’re both coming off the Board, I feel like I gained a friend as a result.”
Emami said he’s going to stay out of the five-man race to be his successor and allow the citizens of District 4 to make that decision. Emami said he’s got too many business interests that may come before the Board of Commissioners in the future to try to influence the District 4 race. However, Emami said he’s not closing the door on an eventual return to politics.
“I would say that at some point if a state position opens up, I’d probably look at that,” Emami said. “I’ve got too much going on in Monroe County to solely represent the City (of Forsyth) or Monroe County, but I think if I were operating at the state level, a lot of those pressures would not be nearly as bad.”
As for now, Emami said he’s ready to spend more time with wife Denise, college-age daughters Mara and Maddie, and son Baylor, a Mary Persons High School senior. Emami said he wouldn’t have made it this far in his political career without his family’s support, especially from his wife of 24 years.
“Denise has never been one that naturally wants to go and do a lot of public-facing functions and that kind of thing,” Emami said. “But she’s always supported me with it. And even let me, as a spouse, vent and explain difficult circumstances. She’s always done a great job of counseling me and helping get some perspective. And to calm down at times when I just needed to take a chill pill. I couldn’t have done it without her. I’m not a complete enough individual to have done this or had any success with it without her.”
