The County Line
- Volume 51, Number 5 - 2007
And, you think you have troubles...
One of the favorite movies around our house is “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” It is quoted – and misquoted – often by just about everyone who comes through the doors. The one-liners help interject comedy into tense situations.
There are disagreements about the idea for the movie. But, it seems to be loosely based on Homer’s “Odyssey” and a 1989 writing by Howard Waldrop that retools the labors of Hercules into America in the hot summer of 1937. Though it is sometimes hard to follow, the movie captures many traits of Southern characters I’ve known over the years.
For whatever the reason, the movie crossed my mind often the other day when sitting at a table with 10 citizens appointed to serve on a “landowners’” committee in Elmore County. The committee was called together to resolve differences that had arisen between the landowners and the county regarding the implementation of revised subdivision regulations.
The commission asked if I would help kick off the first meeting. Participation in such a committee might, I thought, be good for me and, perhaps, I could interject an “outside perspective” that could help resolve some of the areas of disagreement in a positive way. So I drove to Wetumpka and sat down.
“O Brother,” as we call it, is wonderful entertainment — if you let your imagination run a bit. The three main characters travel through depression-era Mississippi in search of a nonexistent treasure that holds the key to their future. On more than one occasion the main character, Ulysses Everett McGill, responds to seemingly uncontrollable circumstances by announcing to his companions, “We’re in a tight spot.”
There are fires, unpleasant prison guards, gun-wielding police officers, floods, fists to the head, and all other manners of disaster. Each disaster is met with the shout, “We’re in a tight spot!” And somehow, Everett and his buds always get themselves out of those tight spots; though not always without physical or emotional damage. But, real life in Elmore County – and all of Alabama for that matter – is a bit different.
Now, I never felt in danger during the meeting with the landowners’ group. Neither did I consider myself in a “tight spot.” However, I couldn’t erase the visions of the movie while talking with those folks who felt the imposition of development restrictions would somehow limit their ability to use their property for purposes within both their constitutional and moral bounds.
This group is not the first in Alabama – or elsewhere — to express opposition to not being able to “do whatever we want with our property.” I suspect that discussion is held throughout the country almost every day. Those who oppose regulation in any form usually begin the argument with, “It is my property, and no one is going to tell me what to do with it.”
Though that sounds patriotic, such a view isn’t really vested in a constitutional or realistic basis. The truth of the matter is that regulation in order to protect the safety of those who come in contact with your property; to protect your neighbors’ health and property from your irresponsibility; and to ensure the orderly growth of the general community is as basic as the Constitutional Amendment authorizing the publication of a free press.
But, sometimes emotion overcomes clear judgment, both in the movies and in real life.
We have very little land regulation in rural Alabama – very little. Should any Alabama county push the limits of the current subdivision regulation statute so that it adopts the most restrictive of provisions regarding subdivision road and draining construction, lot size or acceptable road access into the county-right-of-way, we would still be way behind all our Southern neighbors.
In fact, Alabama is the only Southern state that does not provide some level of land use regulation in the unincorporated areas.
Today, there is little to keep a person from establishing a junkyard across the street from a church, which could be across the street from a new manufacturing plant, which could be next door to a fast food restaurant, which could be next door to a water treatment plant. Under our current law, planning for traffic, health and all other concerns is left for another day.
When we find ourselves in a “tough spot” because of our lack of planning, one must assume we’ll get to work on it then. Or, we’ll just ignore the situation and hope it is solved through blind luck.
The problems experienced in Elmore County are not unique. And, those participating on that landowners’ committee have body-doubles in counties all over our state.
Most folks, especially those who have lived most of their lives in unincorporated areas, don’t like regulation. Until, of course, something happens right across the road from their property.
Let their neighbors sell property to someone who plans to build a prison, or a landfill, or a rock quarry, or a junkyard, and those same property owners will be in the courthouse calling for the county to “do something.”
Or, let someone sell them a two-acre lot on a substandard road that is not wide enough for a school bus, and then they will be in the courthouse demanding that the county widen the road. It is not right, they will say, for their child to stand outside in the rain and wait for the school bus ‘cause it can’t get into their neighborhood.
I guess that’s why the scene from “O, Brother” wouldn’t leave my mind the other day.
Those folks in Elmore County are in a danged “tight spot.” But, unlike Everett, they aren’t willing to work with their friends. Nope, they’ve chosen to blame their problems on the very buddies who could help them untangle themselves.
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