Preserving history not priority in PB

To the Editor:

A Garfield Street Historic District especially with the Wheatley School Museum will showcase some of the talented people that helped build a better town.

There are two big reasons why Poplar Bluff ranked 37th in the state's study and the reasons are: lack of jobs and opportunities and a lame, misguided approach to its historic properties. As long as people complain more about the way trees are trimmed, tall grass and trash than they do about loss of their historic homes then nothing will change.

Poplar Bluff could be a leader in historic preservation, but instead it has a bogus fraud as a preservation policy. If the place is on the National Register it may be safe, if not, it's a sitting duck. This approach renders the historical commission as ineffective and irrelevant. Having the preservation planner in the planning department is a conflict of interest because the purpose of the planning department is development.

When the town was looking for a city manager the only one left out was a member of from the historical commission. That should tell you something.

The Butler County Historical Society is either inactive or comatose or both. Only a tiny fraction of the town's historical homes is on the National Register. The deck is stacked against preservation. The town's long range plan was drawn up by a group that had never seen this place before they got here and the focus was on the grant money they got. The best approach is to see this plan as a flexible guide. The challenge for development should be how do we modify our plan to by-pass all historic properties and still have the parking or service businesses we need. What's good for tourism is good for the town. Tourists don't come to see a show, they come to learn about the area and its people. The town's history started near the railroad close to U. S. Bank and the paper office and fanned out from there. The houses on Cherry Street between 5th and 6th St., some on Cedar Street, more on Poplar between 5th and 9th Street and on Vine Street from 5th to 9th have been here since the town was incorporated. This area on Poplar, Vine, Cedar and Cherry has the highest concentration of the oldest houses left in the town and four houses on Cherry took a direct hit from the tornado and are still standing, only to be under threat from the city's obsession with parking lots and vacant lots. Business as usual will work until the next state-wide study comes out and unless things have changed the town may sink even closer to the bottom in best places to live. A town that lacks jobs and opportunity is only educating its most gifted and talented young people for towns, many in other states that do provide jobs and opportunity.

Jack Johnson

Poplar Bluff, Mo.