Blog Post 3
Garrett Thrash
4/12/2022
PS 101
Dr. Jenkins
Blog Post #3
In the small town I grew up in, the population barely topped one thousand people. In a town like that one would think that growth would be at the forefront of everyone’s mind to make the community better for everyone; however, not everyone looks forward to the economic and social growth of the town. The members of the community who have a derogatory feeling towards growth of the town were exposed during a town council meeting a few weeks ago, but this time they had much more support behind them. The town council brought forth the preposition of rezoning a complex owned by one of its citizens, Mr. Chad Williamson, from agricultural to a commercial lot to build a 200-unit apartment complex known as the R3 development plan. The name of the complex proves slightly problematic once members of the community were informed of its meaning and the controversy it would cause. The zoning of a commercial lot as an “R3” lot deems that he future plans for the lot must include “multi-family” housing. This would lead over 440 people introduced to the city, but the key controversial subject in the ordeal was the type of people multi-family housing bring into a community. Traditionally, these apartments are known for housing poor, uneducated, low-income families due to the cheap rent created by housing multiple families and allowing them to share a unit.
Believe it or not, the largest outcry of disproval stemmed from the teachers at the local school system. They were adamantly expressing their beliefs that this zoning would bring in lower-income families, which would be detrimental to the towns’ welfare as well as their own. As one would expect, this created an outrage on social media platforms since teachers were blatantly stating their negative, classist opinions on low-income homes; however, they might have had a point. Although it may be immoral and unethical to shut down a project to reject a certain part of the population from moving into town, the teachers were voicing this opinion to save their jobs and already detrimentally low salary. Teachers in our area already struggle with low-test scores due to low funding, which would receive even more cuts if the state testing scores dropped below certain levels. Once the test scores dropped and funding was cut, most of the teachers would receive a pink slip, which is the state or counties way of “nicely” asking the teacher to find another job because they are fired from their current one. On the other hand, many of the families that make up the area are termed low-income, blue-collar households as many populations of rural schools in Alabama are. These families were upset that their children’s teachers were speaking negatively about people only slightly more impoverished than them. Another problem some of the residents had with the apartment complex is that this kind of zoning can easily be zoned as a “group home” which the area has plenty of already.
The outcry against the rezoning and building of the apartment complex had surpassed the realm of social media like Facebook and was put on flyers and posters on the side of the road and inside restaurants. The public’s opinion of the project began swaying in favor of the dismissal of the rezoning contract despite the economic growth through taxes the influx of citizens would generate for the community. Although many of the citizens are classified as low-income households, the information and statistics presented at the consecutive town hall meetings by the teachers of the area opened the citizens’ eyes to the damage prevented of the school system by rejecting the proposal by Mr. Williamson after he acquired the lot. Just last week to the relief of the area’s educators, the town council voted to reject the rezoning and building of the R3 apartment complex. To respond to the task of promoting growth within the town without putting the local educators’ job at risk, the town council could promote commercial zoning for other attractions that would generate an influx of citizens as well as revenue for the entirety of the town. For example, in the lot proposed as the R3 zoning Mr. Williamson could create a proposal for the building of adequately middle-class town homes instead of the apartment complex. The creation of social attractions, such as theme parks, restaurants, or even museums celebrating the historical landmarks left by the trail of tears and the civil war.
References
https://southerntorch.com/community/rezoning-denied-for-rainsville-development/
http://rainsvillealabama.com/city-ordinances/
https://whnt.com/R3zoning-Rainsville-Developement