Small Town Politics and political philosophy

For those of you who have followed the discussion about "conservation easements" on Signal Mountain, the Town Council voted on April 14 to donate the right to control our public lands to a private land trust. The vote was 3-2 (Wallace and Gee voted to keep control of our public lands with the public), which might hopefully give the land trust second thoughts about getting into this local battle.

On a practical level, however the effects of this decision are practically nil. There is no development pressure on our public lands and, to my knowledge, there have been no proposals to sell any of our parks. Ironically, the only proposal I've ever heard of to sell Signal Mountain property to private development interests was the proposal by the same majority of Lusk, Robertson and Allen (who supported the easement scheme) to sell the town's ballfields, tennis courts and the Playhouse area to private developers for commercial development back when I was on the council. I was proud to oppose that effort. Just as ironically, it was the loud objections of the citizens of Signal Mountain that shut down that bad idea.

Which brings us to the real problem with this effort and the real attitude behind it. In the Community News this past Wednesday, Councilmember Susan Robertson is quoted as saying "People have asked me, 'don't you trust future Councils?' No, I don't...". Obviously, since our council is elected by the citizens of Signal Mountain, what Ms. Robertson is really saying is that she doesn't trust the citizens of Signal Mountain and is anxious to remove the citizens from the decision making process in the future (and it's important to remember that Ms. Robertson was originally appointed to the council). It is sometimes difficult to argue political philosophy and principle in these local issues, but this is really about the whole concept of democracy and self-rule. Our country is founded on the principle of self-rule and the rights of the people to make the laws, not on the principle of taking those rights away from the people. The fact that the group of us who have been most vocal on this issue (Jeff Duncan, Tish Gailmard, Noah Long, Joe Dumas, Bruce Caldwell and myself) represent the whole spectrum of political opinions from right to left shows that we feel strongly about the principle of self-determination and oppose the principle of one council attempting to bind the actions of a future council.

Since the vote was only to move forward with negotiations, there is still time to stop this misguided, if well-intentioned effort. I think it will also be important to look at the costs associated with this effort since all of these lands will need to be surveyed among other unknown costs. The upcoming budget discussions should be watched carefully for evidence of these costs.