They made the wrong decision, and for all the wrong reasons. It was entirely predictable that the City Council in Conover, North Carolina was not going to go along with the recommendation of its own Planning Board. We reported on August 31st that Wal-Mart had lost its first key vote in Conover — but we also made it clear that the city’s planning staff really wanted the project, and some city councilors were already foreshadowing that they would approve the plan. On September 6th, the City Council voted unanimously to let Wal-Mart in — with reasons that wouldn’t hold up in a North Carolina breeze. The Council voted to rezone 38 acres of land, and give the retailer a special use permit. Both decisions are appealable to the courts — if local people are on the ball. One local resident, apparently oblivious of her legal rights, told the Hickory Record, “I’m appalled to think it’s gotten to this level before this came to our attention. The only recourse we have is election time, and I intend to not re-elect every one of you.” She has a more immediate recourse to the court system, which could derail the supercenter for six months to a year. Residents repeated their concerns that a huge supercenter was incompatible with the city’s 1998 NC 16 Corridor plan. The Planning Board said that an economic impact study needed to be done, but members of the City Council had made up their minds, and didn’t want to be confused by the facts. One Councilman repeated Wal-Mart Gospel that the new store would create “new” jobs. “The main thing for me is the creation of 350 jobs,” he said. “$9.75 an hour might not mean a lot, but when you don’t have a job, and you have to feed a family, it’s a good thing.” That City Councilman had no figures available on how many retail jobs will be lost, has no firm data on the $9.75 an hour claim, and no sense of how many families will be hurt by his superficial reading of the economics of superstores. Wal-Mart’s PR front man told the newspaper, “Obviously, we’re pleased with the vote. We’re very grateful to all the citizens who came out here to speak. It’s typically a silent majority of the people who support it.”
This is a classic example of city officials entrusted to make decisions who do nothing to find out the real impact of their actions. They make decisions based on “jobs”, yet have no data to back them up. They overturn the vote of their Planning Board, saying we usually go along with them — but not always. They sell out their own property owners, whose residential values and quality of life will be changed now for decades — all for another superstore that Conover did not need in the first place. This is how land use development is done in America. It’s a developer’s deck, and citizens are left holding the cards. In this case, the residents have another key card to play — going to court — but they only have a few weeks to get their act together.
