The Salt Line, Vol. 130: Let the People Near Bay Minette Decide How Much Zoning They Can Stand
The question nobody on the Eastern Shore was ever asked
Baldwin County has set a referendum for residents near Bay Minette, who will vote on whether to bring an unincorporated area of the county under local zoning laws. It is the second planning district the county has put to a vote, and a county does not usually repeat an experiment it regrets.
Pause on the mechanism, because it is more interesting than the subject. In most of America, zoning arrives the way weather does: somebody files a plan, a map changes color, and the neighbors learn about it from a sign on a stake. Here the people who would live under the rules get to vote on whether the rules exist. Nobody who has ever sat through a county commission hearing about a setback variance will call that a small thing.
It is also an admission. A county that asks permission before planning has noticed that planning, in practice, is a promise to be disappointed on a schedule. The neighbor who wants a fence at the property line, the neighbor who wants a chicken coop, and the developer who wants forty lots where there used to be a field all describe themselves as defenders of freedom. A zoning map is simply the document that forces them to describe it to each other in writing.
My view is that the referendum is right and the outcome matters less than the habit. Those of us at the beach have watched a coastline get decided one hearing at a time, by whoever stayed for item fourteen. A vote that happens in daylight, with a ballot, beats a map that happens at 9:40 at night with the room mostly empty. If the voters near Bay Minette say yes, they will get rules and the grumbling that comes with them. If they say no, they will keep their freedom and, eventually, the neighbor’s idea of what to do with it.
Either answer is legitimate. The only illegitimate position is the one most of us take most years, which is to discover the rules after they are poured.
The drone will arrive before the fire truck, which is the point
Foley has approved drones for police and fire first response. Dispatchers will launch them to both kinds of scenes, streaming live video to first responders before they arrive. The stated objective is to get eyes on the scene as early as possible.
This is the rare municipal purchase whose justification fits in one sentence, and that alone deserves a mention. The remaining question is the one that attaches to every camera a city buys: who keeps the footage, for how long, and under what rules. The council is better placed to answer that now, in writing, than a year from now in apology. Ask early, and the answer is a policy. Ask late, and it is a press release.
Josephine, at a respectful distance
AL.com reports that Subtropical Storm Josephine has formed in the Atlantic, and that it is causing rough weather along the East Coast. The headline asks whether the US is at risk, which is the right question and one a column cannot answer. The National Hurricane Center can.
A coast still stacking storm debris has earned the right to be slightly allergic to the name list. The sensible habit is the dull one: read the official outlook, ignore the person who posts a single model run, and keep an eye on /beach-today/ for the flags.
A plate for a library, and a lot of inquiries
The Baldwin County Judge of Probate has announced that Alabama’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library license plate will be available Nov. 1, after, in the office’s words, “a lot of inquiries.”
Specialty plates are the cheapest form of civic expression we have: a few extra dollars and the whole parking lot learns your allegiance. A plate that funds children’s books is at least pointed at something that outlives the bumper. Few causes are easier to defend than a book in a kid’s hands.
The closer
A county that votes on its own zoning, a city that films its own emergencies, and a plate that pays for books all share one habit: they put the decision somewhere a person can see it. Most of what goes wrong on this coast goes wrong in the part nobody was shown.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
