It’s spring and in Fairhope one’s thoughts turn not to love, but to ARTS & CRAFTS!! The annual festival is among the region’s top ten events – a “Must Do.” And lots of people did. The city of 16,000 hosted somewhere around 200,000 artsy, craftsy or just plain hungry, visitors. As usual the downtown streets were closed and BRATS buses hauled folks in from the far reaches of Greeno Road (US 98 to outsiders and “The four-lane” to Fairhopeans), crawling along in traffic created by those hard-core drivers who would never think of giving up their cars for public transportation. Not even when there isn’t a place to park within a day’s hike of their destination.
And it is here that we have a hint of Fairhope’s future – and the future of all of lower Baldwin County. More of everything: people, houses, stores, cars and, hopefully, money, ‘cause the first four are going to demand a lot of the last – and fast.
Right now Baldwin County is the 100th fastest growing county in the country. Right now there is a need for more roads and schools and parks and sewer treatment plants and…
With high-rise building permits along the Gulf being granted faster than approvals for Mardi Gras parades, and new subdivisions being platted and authorized even faster (5,000 new lots in the Daphne-Fairhope area so far this year, I’m told), we need all this infrastructure now. And unless there is some incredible, unforeseeable, unimaginable change in the growth trend, there will be continued demand for infrastructure: more and more, year after year. Demands for costly investment, with up-front money needed before the revenues from all these “mores” start pouring in. Without investment now, the Eastern and Gulf shores will turn into a grid-locked, polluted southern version of northern New Jersey (sorry Jersey, but you’re an easy target and since “The Sopranos” it’s a comparison people everywhere understand).
Quality of life issues and even storm safety call out for regional, integrated planning and execution. The fight over Wal-Mart stimulated a little of this, but one store is a drop in the bucket compared to the tsunami that is approaching. Individual city governments don’t know how to address what needs to be done, and if they could, they wouldn’t.
Their job ends at the city limits, or at most it goes to the point where police jurisdiction ends. That’s from where they’re elected and where they spend their community’s money. The Baldwin County commissioners have neither the authority, limited as it is by the Alabama constitution, nor the focus to take on these urgent growth issues that affect only a small portion of a very big county. Coastline is hot property and everybody is trying to get a piece, or – since Katrina – a piece of not-so-close-to-the-water property with “access.” That means lower Baldwin is growing like mad – generally along the water or within 10 or 15 miles of it – and the other parts? Well, have you looked into land, say, in Rocky Hill? The whole place has been available since around 1850.
What we need is a new political entity to encompass the cities, towns and unincorporated sections of this area of Baldwin County. Think about it – we could take the LA concept down one level and label this high-growth area with a cute contraction like LoDa and WeMo. Let’s call it BeBaM – Below Bay Minette, pronounced as “Bee-Bam.” An aside: The name has a sharp, closed final consonant sound that fits the speech patterns of the immigrants who settled (and are still settling) here. A further aside: Note, in contrast, the languid open vowels of those cross-the-bay, short-hand names that flow beautifully – not trippingly – off the tongues of the Mobile-born. Last aside: For the record, I’m one of those loud, harsh-toned immigrant types.
The name may be tongue-in-cheek, but the idea of a regional authority that has the mission and resources to plan for the future of this high-growth section of the county (and execute those plans), is an idea whose time has come. The communities in this area have common needs that are not shared by any other part of the state or even other parts of the county. Lillian and Fairhope – seemingly dissimilar – have far more in common with each other than either has with Frisco City or even Bay Minette.
Not an easy sell – no government ever wants to give up control. The folks in charge will happily add subordinates, but never – hardly ever – superiors. Making things potentially more difficult are the divergent paths the communities in our newly named BeBaM have chosen, but this is also an underlying strength. This diversity in community visions would remain and even be more sharply focussed and refined, all under the umbrella of a local governing body responsible to the entire region. Further, if done right, there should be an offset to the cost of an added layer of bureaucracy by reducing duplication of staff and functions at the city level and below.
There has to be a fix to the fragmented and short-sighted planning that is the standard in lower Baldwin County – local councils and commissions focus only on the problems within their limited authority; everything else is left to fall through the gaps all around them.
BeBaM might not be the answer, but some organization has to take this on. And what else sounds so trendy – as in, “Yes, when we were in New York we ate in SoHo, but it couldn’t compare to BeBaM – they didn’t even have hush puppies!”
Try BeBaM: The new look in government – locally developed for the needs of our growing community.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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