By: Diane Benjamin
More on this story: https://blnnews.com/2024/09/30/will-downs-choose-flooding-over-people/
Thursday the Board will decide whether to annex a corn field that drains downhill to an area prone to flooding.
Below are a few pictures from the horrendous Shaddyville flooding of 2021. Note the field was able to absorb some of the rain then. Concrete doesn’t absorb rain and will make flooding even worse if Downs annexes the property for development.
This area is very low and already prone to flooding. Residents will be showing up at this meeting. I don’t see anything on the Downs website preemptively moving the meeting to the fire station. They should.
Government does what they want to do. 10 years ago, a large local construction company, where I live, asked to re-zone a tract of land they owned adjacent to an established residential community, to build an asphalt plant. Every single homeowner within a 2 mile radius signed a petition to deny the request, citing increased truck traffic, noise, destruction of residential streets, and most importantly, they already owned an asphalt plant six miles away. The City Council unanimously voted approval. Today the streets are a shambles, the odors from the plant foul the air, and the neighborhood has gone to hell, and the tax revenue from there has declined.
No doubt it will get approved.
I remember back in the 1990’s people living near Shirley fought Stark on a proposed gravel pit.
It was hilarious how they proposed it would look xx years in the future with houses being built around it. All of the housing that would be developed on the SW side. Funny thing is it has never happened. Sandra Scott from zoning bought it all. It also got approved.
What we have are non elected officials in many cases making decisions that shouldn’t be!
It wasn’t Stark.