|
“Smart
Growth” Task Force Met in Louisville July 31
by
Theresa Fritz Camoriano (8-6-01)
Kentucky’s
“Smart Growth” task force held a meeting at the Holiday Inn on
Hurstbourne Parkway last Tuesday evening.
Several of the task force members were present, sitting at a long
table that was raised two feet above the rest of the audience of about 300
people. The physical position
in which the committee members placed themselves above the people was very
symbolic of the position the committee apparently believes the government
should have over the people – with the power to enact policies that
control where and how people will live and work.
The
meeting began with a slide show. All
the people were given a brochure of twelve photocopied pages including 46
photographs of various scenes throughout Kentucky. The photographs were displayed on a large screen, and the
people were asked to rank the scenes on a scale from negative ten to
positive ten as to whether they liked what they saw.
The photographs included pictures of large strip shopping centers
with large parking lots, photographs of quaint neighborhoods, and homes of
various types, from the typical suburban subdivision to a house trailer,
to homes in the city. The
audience filled in their ratings and then turned in the brochures and were
told the results would be tabulated.
The task force also explained that the Kentucky landscape is a
precious asset to the state and should be preserved in order to promote
“smart growth”.
Then,
people who had signed up to speak were called up five at a time and began
speaking in turn. Donna
Mancini, former Libertarian candidate for congress, brought Soviet flags,
sporting little hammers and sickles, and several people waved them,
apparently wanting the committee to feel more at home.
Mancini spoke about the absurdity of government dictating to people
where they should live and how they should live.
Richard Lewis, Ed Parker, and John Riley spoke on behalf of free
markets, freedom, and respect for people and their property.
John Riley said he is a real estate appraiser, and you can’t fool
the market. People will pay
for the things they want. Both
Richard Lewis and Ed Parker pointed out that they fought in wars to
protect Americans and others from communist governments that would take
away their property rights.
Some
speakers suggested that maybe the counties who did not have zoning did not want
zoning. Rosetta Fackler spoke
of the need to protect the environment.
Many people from the Gardner Lane area, including several elderly
people, spoke about the noise from the interstate that disrupted their
ability to enjoy their homes. They
pleaded for the state to erect concrete noise barriers and invited the
committee members to visit their homes at any time of the day or night to
witness what they had to endure.
Although
this was touted as a forum for the public, at least half of people
speaking were government officials, who praised the committee for all its
good work.
I
also spoke. Below is an
attempt to reproduce what I said:
I
would like to make three brief points:
1.
If you pass laws giving political appointees the power to
drastically change the value of property or the power to make large
expenditures of tax money to buy up development rights, then you are
creating an invitation for corruption.
When you take the power to control property away from the property
owner and give it to political appointees, with all the money that is at
stake, you are begging for corruption.
You may not engage in the act yourselves, like the prostitute, but
you will serve as the pimp, creating the environment and the temptation
and setting the stage for corrupt activities, which will surely follow.
I don’t think that is what we want for Kentucky.
2.
It is interesting the way you control the use of language.
You call your plans “smart growth”, so those of us who disagree
with you, and who believe in respecting private property, must believe in
“stupid growth”? I
don’t think so. We already have a plan for “smart growth”, and it is
called respect for the rights of property owners.
Nobody has a greater incentive to maintain the beauty of a property
than the owner. If you
listened to the people who spoke here tonight, the vast majority of the
problems of which they spoke were caused by a failure to respect the
rights of property owners. The
job of government is not to dictate to people how they should live or
where they should live but rather to respect and defend the rights of
property owners to make their own choices.
3.
I think your slide show presentation was very arrogant, to be
rating people’s homes and businesses.
My mother taught me never to criticize or judge the clothes people
wear or the homes in which they live, because it is very disrespectful.
People do the best they can, and they should be treated with
respect. You should not be creating regulations that try to herd us
around like a bunch of cattle. First,
government enacted one set of regulations that pushed us to the suburbs,
and now you are trying to create a new set of so-called “smart growth”
regulations to try to push us back into the city.
We are not cattle; we are people.
Government ought to butt out and respect the choices that we make
for our own lives.
That
talk was applauded by most of the audience.
Perhaps it caused them to think for the first time about the real
implications of this so-called “smart growth” plan. I can only hope that it did.
|
