Letter to the Editor

Downtown and its problems

Friday, December 18, 2015

To the Editor:

Not only does the city not need a tree board, but it doesn't need an arborist. The tree issue started at a town hall meeting about a year ago when a resident expressed concern about how his trees were trimmed and another resident said "And they didn't charge residents for cutting trees on private property." Imagine how different it would have been if Kaplan had said, "I'll check into it and may have to send a truck out to correct it," and "it was a one-time thing and was right after the ice storm, was only on the side of the street where utility lines would be downed by trees and was for the benefit of the community, not the homeowner." An arborist's focus is on the health and safety of the tree, the tree trimmers focus is on the health and safety of the town in high winds and ice storms. If the city adopts rules that hinder the utility department and let the trees grow above and overhang the lines, then when the next ice storm comes, give the tree board and arborist a hard hat, chain saw and bucket truck and after they've been out in the cold for over a week and risked their lives, by limbs and whole trees being uprooted, they'll let the utility department and tree people do their jobs.

When you drive around town most areas are growing and expanding but the downtown is another story. Progress has been made to bring activities to the downtown area, but the most pressing problem is chronic unemployment and related poverty, and a slam and bang approach to historical preservation.

Every town has crime, neglected houses, abandoned animals, but whether you live in Detroit or here, when these problems are so obvious and pervasive they are directly related to loss of jobs. Take crime as an example. About a year ago the newspaper and KFVS said that Poplar Bluff, Sikeston and Cape to a lesser extent have more crime "per capita" than some metropolitan areas. Take abandoned animals as another example. The DAR did an article about animal control, and they said they had to euthanize over 150 pets and adopted out over 150, probably in one year. Do you really think people here are less feeling than people elsewhere? People only abandon their pets for the most part when their unemployment benefits run out or they have to move away, or they have to choose between feeding themselves or feeding their pets.

If you have lost 1,000 jobs at two factories and you have one as a warehouse and one pledging to hire 70 people, and Briggs adding 200 jobs, you still have 700 people looking for jobs and several moving away. These were being replaced by jobs in retail and then the Chamber of Commerce among others brought a man here that used words like "corporate welfare" and "cannibalizing" to describe two of the newest retail businesses and sent a clear message to businesses "you're not wanted here."

The second most pressing problem for the downtown is that there are no interactive activities (house tours, garden tours, house museum activities) to encourage an appreciation of the town's historic homes and its history. This year Doniphan and Cape restored one-room schools, Poplar Bluff lost the county's one-room school. Towns this size like Cape and Jackson have house museums. Poplar Bluff sold its and had a chance to get a grant and restore the Colonial Revival house given to the town by Wells Fargo, they sold it. A neglected Colonial Revival home on Main Street made the DAR front page as being on the endangered list, and was rescued only to be followed shortly by an older neglected but more stately Queen Anne house on Poplar Street being torn down. The Downtown Revitalization coordinators said two people at city hall should be trained to recognize historic styles and develop a thorough "local" registry of historic buildings to be used if an issue arose with a historic home by a preservation board, or historical commission to impress on the owner the importance of the building to the community, and to get the building secured and a schedule for repair.

I have a question for city hall. After years of being in a revitalization program, is "blame the owner and haul out the wrecking ball" the best revitalization approach they've developed? Look at the four buildings on the front page of Tuesday's (Nov. 24, 2015) paper and you'll see the culmination of several years in the program. A hundred and fifty-year-old town's most valuable resource is its historic buildings. If it's possible, call the preservation planner that came here when the program started and ask for guidance. Please, ask for help.

I'm wasting my time, but I would suggest that people rise above their petty personal concerns and ideologies and instead focus their efforts on helping solve the underlying problems downtown.

Jack Johnson

Poplar Bluff, Mo.