Column for Aug. 27, 2008

Are we letting Selma become a third world nation?

I truly want Selma to become "A Charming Place to Be". I am sure most of us who pay attention and especially pay taxes want that for our little town. Sometimes I wonder if this can be accomplished, though. Recent observations make me wonder. After visiting the homes and neighborhoods of friends in Garner and Clayton and then coming home to Selma, I wonder if we can be so charming.

The past couple of weeks have given me some interesting views from the comfort of my own little quarter acre of land. Right across the street from me live some immigrants of dubious legality. There have been some loud parties with plenty of cerveza and Mariachi music until 1 AM. There are chickens running around in their yard (which is contrary to town ordinance), and they do not go to the laundry mat. Instead, they hand wash their clothing in a tub on the front porch, dump out the wash water, and hang their wet laundry on the fence in the back yard. They allow their two or three year old daughter to run around stark naked in their yard and in the inflatable wading pool.

I applaud the industrious nature of the woman of the house in washing clothes. I am just glad that I am not the neighbor with whom she shares a fence. The chickens have not been seen quite as much the past couple of days, so I wonder if they ended up on the grill. I have no problem with little naked children in the privacy of one's own home or way out in the country. Bath time with my five year old features a little naked bottom running around my house. Such is the beauty of having children. He just is not allowed to do that in public, or even in my front yard.

If someone drove through my neighborhood looking for a new home and saw chickens, naked toddlers, a Mexican beer bash, laundry being done on the front porch and/or tossed over the fence, I would be looking elsewhere.

A few other things of which I took note are that the town recently did some tree work right next door. The tree was probably dying in some areas and needed to come down, not to mention being a threat to the power lines. I was quite honestly glad to see the town taking down the old tree. It is a remnant of the whole streetscape concept from a half century ago, so I hear. It demonstrates what can happen to nice ideas for which follow through and long term planning have been neglected.

The tree was taken down section by section, and I could feel the entire house shake when trunks and branches hit the ground. It was a sizable tree trunk. Now there is a sizable stump in the front yard of the neighboring house. There are huge gouges in the lawn of the affected lot from falling branches. The sidewalk has been smashed and a large sink hole is in the sidewalk. I have personally stumbled in it a few times while walking my dog.

I have often lamented the lack of sidewalk maintenance in this town. I find it to be a worse liability than some old, rusted water tower that stood vacant for decades and was torn down two years ago. I used to do risk management and liability mitigation as part of my career. Instead of making the sidewalk better, the town has left the sidewalk in worse shape than it was with the tree standing in place and created a greater walking surface hazard than existed previously, not to mention an unsightly blight upon the already ugly sidewalk and often uncut lawn. I am thinking about going to the tree trunk and counting the rings to find out just how long ago that tree has been neglected. The big, ugly stump and pulverized sidewalk have been there for a few weeks now.

If I was driving around town looking for a new home in a charming place to be, saw the big old tree stump sticking out of the ground, the knee high grass of the abandoned home in front of which the tree was removed, and walked on a broken, sunken sidewalk, I would think twice about buying in Selma. I know that I would certainly think that Selma had become a third world nation if people have to do laundry on a porch in a scrub bucket, there is knee high grass, and chickens roam the streets and sidewalks. I would think that the town does not take care of its infrastructure if I saw the broken sidewalks and a stumpy streetscape.

One aforementioned issue is because of allowing third world illegal aliens to invade our nation. We are in danger of losing our culture if we neglect our duties to the nation, to the rule of law, and have to "press one for English" constantly. We are in danger of losing potential residents if we neglect the enforcement of tall grass ordinances and laws against barnyard animals in the town limits. We are in danger of losing our infrastructure and liability lawsuits if we do not take care of our town assets such as sidewalks and public walking surfaces.

I know we can do a better job as a town. I commented a few months ago upon the strategic plan, as proffered by the mayor's planning committee. The plan had rightly listed a lot of strengths and weaknesses of the town. These are a few of the weaknesses we have, which are mostly self inflicted or inflicted upon us. A little extra effort in enforcement, in making Selma an unpleasant place for illegal immigrants to reside, and in taking care of our own town property can go a long way towards improvements in making Selma "a charming place to be".