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GRIST FOR THE MILL


OLD UNTERRIFIED

GRIST FOR THE MILL
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5 April 2007--I almost bought a fine product last night. It was well designed, tailored, with a lot of work put into it and reasonably priced. Unfortunately, I didn' t need it. I am not talking about buying a cashmere coat in July. But about Town Council s pitch for SmartCode--a plan that proposes annexing land in a ten mile radius of Shepherdstown and building high density residential property. Its purpose is to protect us from... guess what, high density sprawl. It is based on a fear that the County was out to consume us.  In actuality, the county zoning proposed low density housing and countryside zoning. With the options of fighting fire with fire, or amputating an arm to safe the body politic , we probably need to seek out a second opinion. The fact is  that there has been no real growth inside our tiny town for two years. Real estate is stagnant, housing prices are down 7 percent , and the southside of town still does not want to be part of us with all that we have to offer. So revenues are down and the new marketing plan is to go McDonald's with real estate-- a lot of low cost housing, with square footage the size of a postage stamp, in order to produce revenue to save a town that might be better off being absorbed by the county in the first place. Keep in mind this plan was put together primarily, by  fairly well off, white men who are in construction, real estate and development, who admit to have  little formal training in  urban planning. With the cost savings of relinquishing citydom (you would not recognize the original Shepherdstown anyway after SmartCode), we could purchase green space surrounding town, generate tax income from residents with a variance to run businesses from our historic homes  and not have to deal with the arbitrary nature of the Planning Commission. Before we go out and buy that cashmere coat in July--by the way, you don' t even need  a cashmere coat here in January--perhaps we should check out what the county has to offer,  whether they really  have Widespread Massive Development Plans,  whether hilltop removal for the mining of town revenues is necessary. Let us think of  possible options to saving Shepherdstown outside of McShepherdizing the last good place on the Potomac. Zenia Kuzma

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