To the Editor:
The law of unintended consequences is the controlling principle of human history, reminding us to be careful what we ask for lest getting it thereby sets the stage for something we consider even worse than what we tried to prevent in the first place.
Had but the neighbors not succeeded in preventing four instead of three houses on the lot between Woodbine and the Ivy Hill cemetery, there would have been even no more objectionable memory care facility. Had the Clover neighbors not failed in blocking subdivision of an odd-shaped lot, on what kind of monstrosity on that lot a few years hence might some well-organized advocates have sold our City Council? For most city councilors nothing is too big if the purported public benefits are commensurate.
The only property right most of our City Council can normally be relied upon to protect is that secured with electoral consequence — whether a flood of emails from some organized pressure group or a pile of campaign contributions. So, while T.C. Williams’ neighbors are quite right to insist city hall honor its compact, they should understand most of the rest of the city’s voters want “lights at TC” and some resent the neighbors’ intransigence.
Normally, abrogated contracts can be bought out, in this instance by compensating impacted neighbors. But what should worry TC’s neighbors is an Old Dominion Boat Club redux — the city threatening nearby homes with eminent domain “to provide an appropriate buffer for the facility.” The neighbors’ objections become the basis for the forced taking by a short conference on the properties’ fair value. The freighted racial history of the site will be drown out by the preponderance of minorities demanding “lights at TC.” The city might even be able to resell, at a modest discount, the properties with appropriate covenants exempting the city from liability for present, proposed, and potential future impacts. So it might instead be prudent for the city to offer the neighbors that discount in exchange for waiving their claims under the pre-existing covenant.
The real problems underlying so much of city hall’s development binge are: (1) The side which does not prevail, often the neighbors, must suffer the impacts without fair compensation, thereby effectively subsidizing the prevailing side, usually the city or the developer the city’s decision has favored. (2) The development’s “hidden costs,” which city hall ignores by not bothering to calculate, estimate, or even acknowledge, are nonetheless borne by both neighbors and the general public. Some of those costs translate into tax-funded expenses months and years later which may explain why the city sees itself so revenue starved. Do, for example, truckloads of construction materials and debris trundled through Old Town make it less desirable a place to shop, dine, recreate, leading to lower business sales tax receipts, to which a development-happy chamber of commerce seems oblivious?
Dino Drudi
Alexandria