CHAPTER 3
Fields brown the dozer’s tread.
Wood, nails, cement, a pile of bricks—
With every hammer’s fall, a cul-de-sac.
My farmboy throws up his hands. . . .
They are farming houses right up to the creeks.
—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson
I love the old courtroom where the commissioners were to meet that night. Unlike the modern ones in our glass-and-marble annex, it embodies the weight and majesty of what the law should be. This is where I took my oath of office and, yes, a setting like this makes it feel much more binding when you swear that you will judge impartially without fear or favors. Even hardened criminals seem more subdued here.
The floor is carpeted in deep red and gently slopes so that everyone can see any bit of evidence presented to the judge. The benches, doors, and jury boxes are dark solid oak. No drywall anywhere because the walls are lath and hand-troweled plaster. Plaster acanthus leaves fashioned by craftsmen long dead adorn the high vaulted ceiling. Hanging pierced brass lamps cast a soft golden glow that gives a natural solemnity. It’s almost like being in church.
Tonight, however, there was nothing churchly about the indignant buzz that rose from the crowded benches. Some of it came from the people in our community who were appalled that the planning board had recommended approval of a stump dump just west of us. Others were just as upset that the planning board had also recommended a first step toward trying to slow some of the growth until the infrastructure could catch up. Limit growth? How dare they!
It took us a while to get inside and sit down. Daddy doesn’t come into Dobbs all that often these days and it seemed as if every other person wanted to speak to him or shake his hand. Once we were seated, a vaguely familiar face down front caught my eye and I nudged Daddy. “Isn’t that G. Hooks Talbert?”
He didn’t bother to follow my eyes. “Yeah. I seen him when we come in.”
“What’s Talbert doing here, you reckon?”
“The stump dump probably,” said Minnie. “It would affect Grayson Village, too.”
The meeting was supposed to start at seven, but while three or four of the commissioners paid court to Talbert, there was no sign of Candace Bradshaw. At seven-fifteen, when she still hadn’t arrived, the vice chair, Thad Hamilton, called us to order. Half a lifetime ago, Thad tried to put the moves on me after I dumped his cousin. He’s porked up a bit since then, but he still looks good in a white-hair/florid-face Ted Kennedy sort of way. He first ran for the board as a Democrat, lost, changed his registration, and is now into his second term as a county commissioner. The Hamiltons were always comfortably well-off, but the family’s building supply business has made so much money these past fifteen years that there’s talk they’re going to back him for the state assembly.
To my dismay, instead of addressing the stump dump issue first, Thad announced that they would listen to arguments for and against the planning board’s second recommendation. Hands went up all around the courtroom when he asked who wanted to speak and eleven names were put on the speaker list.
“In accordance with our usual procedures, we’ll limit the discussion to one hour,” Thad said. “If my math is right, that means y’all each have five and a half minutes. Be warned right now though that if you try to go over that, I’ll cut you off in mid-sentence, okay?”
The planning board’s core recommendation was for no more than fifty houses per hundred acres, the lots to be configured however the developer wished within the minimal guidelines already set. Those fifty houses could be built on third-or quarter-acre lots and the other seventy-five or eighty acres could become athletic fields or garden allotments or left natural. That was up to the builders.
Three of the speakers would probably oppose the continuation of unmanaged growth, while the rest were from the building trades and real estate industry and would no doubt argue for the county to keep hands off their honeypot.
Both sides were eloquent in their positions. The three who wanted the commissioners to put a few brakes on the runaway developments spoke of vanishing farms, the disappearance of open land, the pressures put on wildlife and wetlands, and the continual need for more multilane roads, schools, and hospitals, which would entail more and more bonds and higher taxes. They asked for impact fees and transfer taxes and adoption of the planning board’s recommendation for better land use, none of which they were likely to get from this particular board.
Seven of the eight speakers for unmanaged growth shed crocodile tears for all the poor working-class people who would never be able to afford the American dream of a home of one’s own in a bucolic setting if building lots had to average two acres. Crocodile tears because all seven of those speakers were either building or selling houses that sat on a quarter-acre and started at $400,000. They spoke of jobs and the larger tax base. They also spoke of a farmer’s right to sell his land to whoever came along with the highest offer because “farmers don’t have a 401(k) to fall back on.”
“Yeah,” said another. “And what if the farmer has only two acres and three kids. You gonna tell him he can’t give building lots to all three of his children?”
I wanted to jump up and ask that real estate dealer to name a single Colleton County farm that consisted of only two acres, but except for some under-the-breath muttering to Minnie, I held my tongue.
They spoke of all the paychecks they were keeping right here in the county. No mention that most of the construction crews consisted of Latinos who were sending the bulk of their paychecks home to their families in Mexico and Central America. No mention that most of the high-end new homes were occupied by white-collars who worked and shopped in Raleigh.
No mention, that is, until the last speaker came to the microphone. She was a commercial developer who had moved here from Michigan and she was the most truthful person to speak for the raw hard realities of growth. She had statistics to bolster her contention that the more houses in Colleton County, the more commerce that would come.
“When we do a flyover, all we’re doing is counting rooftops,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if those roofs are low-end starter houses or high-end mansions on two-acre lots. Every rooftop means at least three or four potential shoppers. The more growth, the more businesses you’re going to have here and the bigger your tax base to pay for the roads and schools and infrastructure.” She glanced at her watch and wound up her argument. “Rooftops, people. The more, the better. I was recently at a commercial trade show out in Las Vegas. When I told them I was a commercial developer in North Carolina, some of those business reps wanted to give me their cards. When I told them I was from Colleton County, they asked for my phone number. They know that this county is one of the twenty fastest-growing in the nation. You start limiting that growth and you’re not going to get your Wal-Marts, your McDonald’ses, or your Targets.”
The whole courtroom burst into applause and yeah, most of them were in support of her optimistic, single-minded spin on how wonderful unfettered building could be, the rest of us were hoping that such a limitation would indeed slow the invasion of chain stores.
Take that, NutriGood!
After a brief consultation among the commissioners, Thad announced that because they were missing one of their members, they would take the planning board’s recommendation under advisement and table it until the next meeting. Half the audience left at that point, having made their feelings known.