When Jackson County officials began to put together a plan to deal with development along U.S. 441 near Cherokee, they looked to an unusual source for ideas: School children from elementary grades through high school.
The Jackson County students were given an opportunity to weigh in with their views on what their community ought to look like 30 years down the road. Local officials and educators praised their efforts, but the exercise the children were guided through to help them develop their vision has come under scrutiny.
Critics of “smart growth” fear that such exercises might indoctrinate children into accepting increased government control over the use of private property, while short-changing free-market viewpoints.
Highway 441 is the main artery connecting the town of Cherokee with U.S. 74 and the outside world. For most who visit this tourist-dependent area, the bucolic countryside along U.S. 441 is their first introduction to the town. But officials are worried that new water and sewer lines being laid in the area will lead to commercial development that would harm the image of the region and scare away tourists. Other residents, citing quality-of-life issues, are just happy with the “view shed” as it is and would like to preserve it.
Last year Jackson County commissioners teamed up with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to bring in a Raleigh consulting firm, Kimley-Horn, to create a land development plan for the U.S. 441 corridor.
The Eastern Band operates a number of cultural and recreational tourist attractions in the area and is keen to preserve the rural nature of the land around the road.
Funding for the study was provided by the Cherokee Preservation Fund, a foundation that seeks to preserve Cherokee culture and history but has recently taken on economic development projects as well.
Michael Rutkowski of Kimley-Horn explained that getting schoolchildren involved in the planning was an important part of the process because they would be the ones who would have to live with the resulting development, or absence of it.
He said it was also an educational opportunity for the children. “This helps them understand the process” of community planning, with the emphasis on why it is necessary.
Planning workshops were conducted by Kimley-Horn at Smokey Mountain Elementary School over three days in January, and involved children from most grade levels. The workshops were based on the “Box City” activity developed by Ginny Graves, an art educator, and her architect husband Dean Graves, of the Center for Understanding the Built Environment.
According to Graves, the Box City exercise is designed to teach children and adults about architecture, community planning, “and most importantly, the value of being a responsible citizen.”
Sheree Case, a sixth- and seventh-grade science teacher at the school had only good things to say about her students’ experience.
“It was really well done, and I was impressed with the students’ participation and interest.” She said the students’ ideas varied; sixth- and seventh-graders wanted to see shops, restaurants, a mall and a theme park, while the eighth-graders were adamant that the area should remain “natural” and undeveloped. Case characterized the workshop as “a useful learning experience.”
However, it appears that there was little or no discussion about the balance between an individual’s right under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to do as he pleases with his own property and the needs or desires of the community. Case indicated that from what she saw and heard, the emphasis of the workshop was on the children’s vision for the future, not the politics of land-use regulation.
But such regulations will be central to any development plan the county adopts. According to Jackson County Planning Director Linda Cable, virtually all the land in the four-mile-long 441 corridor is privately held. A memorandum from Kimley-Horn to County Manager Ken Westmoreland, posted on the Web site of the Jackson County planning department entitled “441 Corridor Plan,” outlines a proposed “US441 Corridor Protection Ordinance” that would set standards for building types, sizes, placement, and permitted uses.
What’s worse, from the point of view of property rights advocates, is that the documents define the regulated area as being from ridgeline to ridgeline. Traditional zoning ordinances regulate development activity in more closely defined areas such as a stated number of feet from the road. Thus, the entire valley through which the highway runs could be regulated.
Jackson County has had its share of controversy over development recently, and now there’s controversy over the use of Box City itself. Ginny Graves calls the activity “a process, not.a platform for supporting a certain idea.” Critics counter that there is nothing in the curriculum that leads students to think about the constitutional rights of property owners, either. For example, at no point does the Box City curriculum ask participants to consider the cost to private citizens of public regulations limiting the use of their own property.
In a recent op-ed for the Smokey Mountain News, Dr. Michael Sanera, research director and local government analyst at the John Locke Foundation, said, “Any education program about land-use regulation must be a balanced presentation. The Box City curriculum does not pass that test.”
Sanera pointed out that Box City is a program of CUBE, which lists as its ultimate goal “responsible action” and “knowledgeable community participation,” which in his view means electing pro-regulation, smart growth advocates to office.
In an e-mail, Ginny Graves pointed out that Box City presenters should not “try to lead people to our (CUBE’s or the workshop presenter’s) point of view but to help the group formulate their own point of view.” However, in response to a question about how Box City defines a “responsible citizen,” she wrote, “A responsible citizen votes for responsible candidates even to the point of beginning an initiative to get those who are educated in the issues in office.”
Sanera suggests that involving schoolchildren in the planning business is a way for those who want stricter zoning to make the idea more palatable to the public. “The word ‘zoning’ is the kiss of death [politically] out there now” he said. He suggests that having schoolchildren first attend biased, pro-smart growth workshops is a cynical manipulation of children to influence the public hearings that follow because many children will take their “lessons” home to mom and dad.
Jim Stegall is a contributing editor for Carolina Journal.