You've got to hand it to the Signal Mountain Town Council. In their scheme to change the zoning on Signal Mountain from 1/2 an acre to 1/4 an acre they get more creative by the day in coming up with justifications for doing something a majority of their constituents are squarely against.
They started off by hiding behind a poor widow who had fallen on hard times. She had a builder neighbor who gave her an excellent idea of a way to help her finances and help out the Town Council with one fail swoop. She could go to them and ask them to change all the zoning for the whole town of Signal Mountain just so that she and her builder neighbor could do a deal. Somehow the builder must have realized that the Signal Mountain Town Council was looking for an excuse to change the zoning any way, so voila, a humanitarian excuse for the Town Council to do what they wanted to do any. The only hitch is that someone who knows town law pointed out to the Signal Mountain Town Council that changing zoning for one person was against the law.
The Town Council then had to come up with a second excuse. This excuse was that Old Town citizens wanted uniformity in their lots and houses. The Signal Mountain Town Council with a straight face tried to convince the citizens that they had had massive demands from people in Old Town that they preferred having a "row house" concept where every body has the same kind of house on the exact same size plots. Unfortunately, this ludicrous excuse was transparently a total canard as well as the first one, so they came up with a third justification.
The Signal Mountain Town Council then came up with a third excuse. They explained that the citizens of their fair town were all concerned about all the undeveloped land in their community. Maybe the Signal Mountain Town Council with this far-fetched excuse were speaking for a fraction of their constituency.....the Signal Mountain builders, the Signal Mountain developers, and the Signal Mountain realtors......the regular Signal Mountain parents with schools at capacity, or the home owners with sewer issues already with our present density, and those commuters going up and down Signal Mountain on one fragile road, which collapse from time to time might not be as pleased.
This brings us to a fourth reason and that would be revenue enhancement. Well, I hate to break it to the Signal Mountain Town Council, with the 4th justification, their credibility is shot. It is shot also when they trot out Boyd Veal with maps because it make him look official. The poor man tried to tell how many lots would be affected by the zoning change but he was obviously out of his league and could not answer a single question without saying,"I think, but don't quote me on that", or " I believe this to be the case but I can't say for certain". The man was a police chief and a good one, but how in the world does that qualify him to be going over lot sizes and doing the intricate work of town planning that many people have advanced degrees in just because he was appointed town manager?
Does the Signal Mountain Town Council really take its constituents as fools? Well, they might just be right, if they pull this one over their citizens.
Rachel Miller
Signal Mountain