RALEIGH – There’s an old joke about the guy who comes to the door, knocks, and says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
No, that’s it. I guess if you think that joke needs a punch line, you aren’t going to get it.
I was thinking about just how “helpful” government can be after reading a story in Thursday’s Hickory Daily Record about proposed new land-use regulations along the Highway 321 corridor between Hickory and Lenoir. I’ve driven this route quite a few times, as have many other folks from North Carolina and beyond who are either looking for furniture deals or heading up into the hills for fun. It never occurred to me that Hwy. 321 was a string of junk, a virtual hellhole from which government busybodies needed to save us all.
Lots of local residents and businesspeople seem to be just as aesthetically challenged as I am. They are steaming hot over proposed rules that would reduce allowable signage and force property owners to plant trees and shrubs in front of new developments to screen them from the penetrating gazes of passing motorists.
Avis Gachet, who owns a bookstore located along the highway in Caldwell County, didn’t hold back her fury at the regulations. “Requiring a row of trees in front of your store is ridiculous,” she said. “The planners have an attitude of standing on Mount Olympus. No one wants to have stone tablets hit you over the head. Some common sense needs to be brought to bear if you’re trying to encourage the economy.”
Although Gachet’s existing facility would be grandfathered in, a gesture by local regulators towards the disgruntled business community, she pointed out the obvious downside that imposing regulations on the next user of the property reduces the value of it to her – the value in exchange. As another business owner told the Daily Record, much of the value of a piece of commercial property next to a highway is that it is visible from the highway! If it isn’t, it becomes less attractive for future retail or office use.
Government officials are defending the proposed rules on two grounds. The first is traffic. Hwy. 321 is already butting up against its planned capacity, but I have a hard time understanding how the new rules will address that problem directly. The “problem,” actually, is that a great many people apparently want to traverse this highway. Given that Caldwell currently has the second-highest jobless rate in the state, I’d say that is a much better problem to have than the opposite. And it should be addressed by adding capacity, either to Hwy. 321 or an alternative route.
Indirectly, I suppose that rules reducing the ability of businesses along the highway to prosper would reduce traffic, by hampering economic activity, but surely that’s not what regulators have in mind. Their real agenda, it seems, is to “clean up” the corridor. “It’s a double-edged sword, it just depends on how you look at it,” said one planner. “The idea is to get a corridor appearance, a visual break of buildings and asphalt. We don’t want to put more restrictions on property owners, but we need some requirements that, with help, guide good development on 321.”
Who decides what good development is? As an actual customer of developed property, I’d like to have a hand in that if you don’t mind, sir.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.