My mind often starts to wander when some learned person begins talking about how this or that philosopher would have viewed some of our modern problems. With that in mind, I’m asking for a bit of leeway here.

I was standing upstairs in our house the other day, and my eye wandered to the old book shelf and the paperback collection with many volumes that date back to college. I came across a book by the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was born in Switzerland but spent much of his life in France. The text I was looking at, written in the late 1700s, suddenly seemed relevant to issues I’ve been covering here in Western North Carolina recently.

I’m no great student of philosophy, but some concepts provide good fodder for discussion and debate. Rousseau’s The Social Contract discusses the relationship between man and government. One of his arguments, as I remember, is that when governments or societies are formed, people give up some freedoms in order to become a member of a group that is striving for a greater good. In other words, when one becomes part of a society - be it a governmental unit as large as a country or as small as a village - we sacrifice the right to make some choices (hopefully voluntarily). We agree to live by a new set of rules, which we believe will make us prosperous or more fulfilled. To be a member of such a group requires that we give up rights to do as we please, as we would in nature.

This philosopher who held several jobs before settling down and who lived 200 years ago could have been listening in on some of the recent meetings I've been attending in Western North Carolina. If your property becomes part of a town, new zoning regulations and other ordinances take effect. Town property owners who join Municipal Service Districts (downtown taxing areas) agree to heavier tax burdens and perhaps a more complex set of zoning regulations. Each step in the process requires living by new rules, which is one way of saying giving up a little more freedom.

Maggie Valley began the public phase of its annexation process last week, and those who want no part of the town are making their desires known. Waynesville has concluded a series of meetings to develop a land-use plan, and those outside of town heaped criticism upon the town and have gone to the county seeking representation. Downtown Sylva has considered creating a special taxing district, but property owners and elected officials say a recent tax increase makes that a bad idea. In Macon County, Franklin aldermen are considering a re-write of zoning ordinances that is sure to make many mad, while the county is looking at developing its own land-use plan.

Each of these cases is very different, but each has a striking similarity - local government, in one form or another, wants to extend its reach. In each case, many of those affected won’t have much of a say in whether they want to take part.

The hand of government in each case, however, is controlled by aldermen or commissioners - neighbors to many of us - who believe their intent will help the public good.

That is really the essence of the land-use debate that never ends in Western North Carolina. A lot of energy is spent on whether the government has the right to enact land-use laws, zoning ordinances, or new taxing districts. In all the cases, the right does exist. It is either granted by North Carolina statute or supported by case law.

The more important question, perhaps, is whether the public good will be served by what each of these towns and counties is considering.

In Waynesville, citizens went to their county commissioners to protest the development of Waynesville’s land-use plan. Their premise was that they do not have representation on the task force creating the plan. The town, subsequently, has agreed to allow county representation on the task force.
But that won’t solve the real problem, which is simple - there is a differing philosophy about how government should act. Those who went to the Haywood commissioners complaining are large landowners, a group that is certainly a small minority. But their argument for less governmental control is shared by a large percentage of mountain residents, regardless of whether they own land or not. Government control, in this scenario, equates to more taxes, more control, more intrusion, more red tape and less personal freedom. Putting two county commissioners on the land-use task force is not going to solve this problem, which is at the root of many of the land-use debates currently being dealt with in Western North Carolina.

In this country, we have gone irrevocably down the road of representative government. Many of those boards of elected representatives are beginning to see the value in putting some controls on how people can use their personal property. These leaders see a greater good being served, though some individual property owners see it differently.

Rousseau said something else in his writings. He believed the majority was not always right. Many communists and socialists used his writings to support their political arguments. That thought - minority rule - doesn’t go over well with most Americans.

It does, however, sound like a decent idea when one belongs to the minority group. Resolving land-use debates means someone has to lose, and it will inevitably be the minority viewpoint. In most cases in these mountains, the “no-planning” and “no-zoning” advocates are winning the debate. But the tide is turning, and hopefully it will happen before we lose too much that is valuable.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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