County residents have wondered for over six years why Vance County commissioners really want to steal our property rights and take control of everyone’s land by zoning the county.
The official reasons we’ve been given by our leader were re-stated in the September 3 Daily Dispatch Opinion. The anonymous author regurgitated the same old tired and often refuted pro-zoning talking points, saying, “…it would allow the county to use land for its best purpose, protect and maintain property values, protect the environment, provide for more orderly development, and attract more business and industry.”
First, privately owned land is not the county’s to use. It is the owner’s decision on how best to use his/her property.
Second, zoning is but one of the many variables that impact property values. And zoning frequently lowers, not raises, property values. Just look at Henderson.
Third, zoning does not protect the environment. Again, look at Henderson. Besides, there are myriads of state and federal environments protection laws and regulations already on the books.
Fourth, what development zoning does allow is determined by a handful of special interest appointees and placed where their masters desire. Good stuff is placed near the wealthy and politically connected. Unsightly stuff is placed near the rest of us, where the wealthy and politically connected don’t have to see it. Again, look at Henderson.
Fifth, zoning is near the bottom of the list of things prospective businesses consider when looking at a community and pales in comparison to taxes, quality of life, education, crime rate, work ethic, teen pregnancy, drug use, and cleanliness. In fact, the argument that companies won’t come here unless we’re zoned is patently false.
So far, then, of the five official reasons for zoning the county, not a one passes the truth test.
But there is a real reason, one that the cabal of people who want zoning were told never to reveal. Although most of the county has known it for years, the zoning proponents did their best not to mention the real reason, until recently, that is. On WIZS’s Town Talk a couple of weeks ago and again at the recent public hearing on zoning, Chamber of Commerce President Bill Edwards let it slip. Attempting to sell the unsellable, he said, “We need zoning in place so that we locally have control over who comes here. Right now, we’re at the mercy of someone that we don’t know to come in and buy a parcel of land and do whatever they want to with it in the county.” His words speak volumes about our leadership, elected and unelected. The handful of people who want the county zoned are terrified of losing the economic stranglehold they have had for decades. They want to control the county the way they have controlled Henderson. They want to turn our county into a larger, more frightening version of Henderson. They have profited greatly from poverty, crime, moral decline, and racial strife and they want to keep that profit stream going by only allowing outsiders in who will do business the Henderson way. Much like the Mafia, these people want to make sure that everything that comes into Vance County goes through and keeps on filling their wallets. They are a gauntlet of special interest insiders that have lined the way into Henderson for fifty years and now want to line the way into Vance County.
Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, responded, “That’s where the money is!” Those who have taken all there is to take from Henderson, leaving the city morally and fiscally bankrupt, have set their sights on the county, because “that’s where the money is!”
Rusty McMahon