Smart Growth & Developers

Wayne Daltry, Director of Lee County's Smart Growth program, was the featured speaker at our April 26 meeting, but if you thought instead that you were watching a hilarious episode of Saturday Night Live you are not alone. This guy belongs on TV or at least on radio. A native of Lee County, he ran through a laugh-inducing history of the county beginning in the early 1950s when it was still part of the Old South though not the romantic South that we may think of as depicted in Gone With the Wind, but instead the un-romantic South as depicted in Tobacco Road. A time of rural poverty, poor health care, and social injustice did change with the coming of World War II, though Lee County was the least advanced of all the surrounding counties, which meant a little farming, gladiolus fields, and a few tourists. Gradually the officials saw what was occurring around them and decided to try to emulate these nearby efforts to change the county environment. People did arrive from the north, chiefly due to the TV ads by the performer Arthur Godfrey who urged northerners to come on down, buy a parcel of swamp land called a homesite, and stop shoveling snow every winter. They did come down in droves and the county grew 150% by 1960, though services to the population lagged. For instance, 70% of high school students did not graduate. So it dawned on the officials that more services were necessary, more teachers, firemen, police, but how to afford them? The only idea they could think of was to sell even more swamp land to the Yankees. And they did! And still do! The county now is home to 1.5 million people and services still lag.


Smart Growth has as its mission to deal with (a) climate change which requires that homes not be built on the shore line or hurricane surge line, (b) energy and the rising cost of fuel and electricity, (c) national and international debt since debt load forces cuts in dealing with issues like services, (d) globalization which in its good aspect has prevented another major war and created a middle class worldwide, and finally (e) the baby boom from the end of World War II to now. Smart Growth seeks to sustain our sense of community. It requires the efforts of all its citizens. Chief among these efforts is to encourage elected officials, to show them how proud we are of our community and how proud we are of their cooperation. Why? Because now the only people our elected officials see on a daily basis are developers!