Loud and Logic

A few years ago, the Fort Smith Board of Directors rejected a feasible, responsible and appropriate commercial development adjacent to the corporate headquarters complex of Arkansas Best Corporation. Why? Because a few homeowners across the street raised Holy Hell about the deal. The episode was yet another exhibit in the argument that Logic is no match for Loud — especially when dealing with municipal legislative bodies.

The obvious question of that decision is this: If one can’t build a well-designed commercial office project that is near a corporate headquarters campus, on a five-lane commercial thoroughfare, less than 200 yards from an interstate interchange with a mix of gas stations and retail, and less than 200 yards from a retail strip center, where can one build such a space in Fort Smith?

A possible answer is, “You can build it wherever city board members won’t suffer a neighborhood group nipping at their backsides.”

Here we go again.

Folks who live along Williams Lane in north Fort Smith oppose the construction of a 57-unit single-family affordable housing in a mixed income area. This proposed project is similar to what was approved by the city on North Sixth Street with the North Pointe development. The property is presently zoned to allow this development, and the Fort Smith Housing Authority has spent about $150,000 to prepare the project.

The Williams Lane group, led by Reva Stover, seek a patchwork zoning change that restricts high-density housing development now allowed by current zoning rules. They don’t want a low-income housing development near their neighborhood because such developments bring an influx of reckless and irresponsible poor people who are probably not white and have no real skills other than working the welfare system to their advantage.

They don’t say this, of course. Instead, they complain about the horrible increase in traffic, ponder woefully what the influx of people will do to their quaint little neighborhood and even go so far as to suggest the whole thing is somehow rigged to pour vast amounts of money into Richard Griffin’s bank account. (The federal government spent six months investigating a potential conflict of interest between Griffin and the Fort Smith Housing Authority. They found nothing. Stover asked for a second investigation. The feds rejected the request. When asked to separate fiction from fact in her allegations against Griffin, Stover noted: “I hope to address your questions about the C.O.I. soon.” To be sure, a subset of any Loud overcoming Logic effort is in pushing Perception over Proof.)

The natural and superficial response is to be sympathetic to the concerns of Stover and her neighbors along Williams Lane. We all want our worlds to be without change.

But at the end of the day, this is a classic Not-In-My-Back-Yard scenario fueled by an exaggerated fear or unrealistic expectation for avoiding adjacent change — or both.

This Fort Smith Housing Authority development represents a new approach to transitioning the poor among us into an environment requiring responsibility and accountability with the goal of fostering their desire to pull themselves and their families out of the vicious circle of poverty. Several area residents — Lacy Hill, Neal Rice, Cynthia Adams, Valenia Weathersby and Cynthia Shaw — who benefited from North Pointe and other similar public developments in Fort Smith recently told members of the Fort Smith Planning Commission how such transitional housing helped them stabilize and/or enhance living conditions for their families.

According to minutes of the Planning Commission, Shaw “expressed her concerns relative to some of the things she had been hearing from (Williams Lane) property owners — such as if this type of housing is allowed, what kind of people will we have living in our neighborhood. Ms. Shaw stated that she hopes the type of people this development will bring will be human beings with the same hopes and dreams for their children as anyone else would have.”

The Planning Commission rejected Stover’s rezoning request.

Kathryn Stocks, an attorney with Warner Smith Harris who represents the Fort Smith Housing Authority, authored a sizzler of a memo that lays out several examples of case law in which zoning chicanery often finds governments in trouble with the courts.

Stocks notes several problems with the Williams Lane rezoning request.

“Ms. Stover’s application picked only selected properties to rezone that are not adjacent. ... A forced rezoning would certainly appear to be spot zoning without a legitimate purpose.”

“We also believe that rezoning at this point may be a violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act since the primary purpose seems to be to keep any low income families from living there which has a discriminatory intent.”

“The land is available, the housing need is great, and the current zoning supports the quality, mixed-income housing planned. Property rights are an important consideration and as stated in the attached letter “the legislative body must act in good faith and cannot act arbitrarily or capriciously; and a rezoning measure will be set aside if it is unreasonable or confiscatory, or discriminatory.”

Stocks closes the memo by suggesting that the housing authority is “fully prepared to defend our property rights” if the city board sides with Stover. Which is lawyer talk for: “I just laid out the reasons why this rezoning is legally suspect, but if you want to push it, we’ll be happy to rub your nose in it in front of a judge.”

This all is scheduled to come to a head Tuesday (May 5) night at the Fort Smith board of directors meeting. To be sure, there are many points to consider on both sides, but the big picture issue is whether we have an objective and disciplined board with the ability to hear the Logic through the Loud.

Here we go again.

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P.S.: There is some Karma involved in this morass. As a then city director, Ken Pyle voted for the wishes of the Loud neighborhood group and against the Logic of the aforementioned commercial development near Arkansas Best. Maybe he was swayed by the neighborhood group, maybe he wasn’t. But now, as head of the Fort Smith Housing Authority, he finds himself on the other side of the Loud versus Logic fight.