By Richard Arena

Although the election for mayor and several council seats are still months away, there is plenty of ink in the local press about what promises to be a contentious campaign. Why all the fuss? Roswell is truly at a crossroads.

Thirty-five years of rapid growth has produced a city with superb parks and excellent public services, but we made one big mistake along the way and the consequences of that mistake are undermining the quality of life in the city and threaten its future viability.

The mistake was developing in the sprawl model – disconnected pods of dedicated use properties emptying onto too few collector roads and main arteries. Before you jump to the conclusion that Roswell’s long time mayor, Pug Mabry, and the council people who served with him during those heady days of rapid growth failed the community, consider the context.

At the end of World War II millions of veterans who left boys, came home men ready to settle down and raise a family. A baby and housing boom ensued. America needed a massive amount of affordable housing – and quickly. Developers reached out beyond the boundaries of the cities to the inexpensive rural land beyond. They were not looking to build cities, complete with a sophisticated transportation infrastructure, they were selling the “America Dream” as defined by the consumer at the time – a nice house on a plot of ground where you could grill out, put up a swing set and escape the crime, congestion, pollution, taxes and racial tensions of the city.

In the early days of the sprawl boom, subdivisions were often built in unincorporated areas that were not subject to the building codes of nearby towns.. The homes were not on sewer lines, nor were there sidewalks, street lights, curbing or in many cases, fire hydrants. The idea was to offer a lot of house and land for the money in comparison to what was available in the city. After the development was in and the houses occupied, the nearby town would annex it for the tax revenue.

As small towns, like Roswell, reached out and annexed those subdivisions, the missing infrastructure was retrofitted over an extended period of time, all that is except a connecting street grid.

By the late 1960’s and 1970’s sprawl was the default development pattern throughout the country. Few if any municipalities even considered the traditional mixed-use grid model.

By the 1990’s the short comings of sprawl had become painfully obvious; too many cars on too few roads. So back to the question, do Pug Mabry, Don White, Frank Wilbanks and the other folks who served in elective office while Roswell’s land was being consumed by sprawl deserve our ire? I think not. Even if they knew better, which I doubt, they could not have forced developers to build in the traditional grid model because it would not have been competitive at the time.

Enter stage left our present mayor, Jere Wood, who campaigned his way into office on the slogan, “Stop the Sprawl.” Many who supported Wood back then, took him at his word, yet during three terms in office the land that was left within the city was developed in the … you guessed it, the sprawl model – including a large piece sold off by Wood’s family.

In 2005 the City adopted a comprehensive transportation plan. Championed by Councilman Kent Igleheart and brilliantly facilitated by Transportation Director, Steve Acenbrak, the plan meticulously analyzes the transportation challenges Roswell faces and it sets out practical, elegant solutions that received copious citizen input. In summary, the plan calls for mixed-use redevelopment and the retrofitting of a street grid.

Getting the message, the council, lead by Lori Henry and Kent Igleheart, passed mix-use ordinances.

Roswell had a plan and the enabling code. The stage was set for redevelopment that would, over time, mitigate the worst of the evils spawned by sprawl.

So what happened? That’s when Mr. Stop the Sprawl, champion of neighborhoods, the advocate of limited terms decided that Roswell needed to become a high-rise urban center. Many wondered why Jere Wood would make such a dramatic about face. Was he looking for a monument to his time in office? Did he need the support of those who would profit from high-rise development to propel a stalled political career? Did he really really believe that Roswell would collapse if we didn’t go high-rise? Who knows.

Thus confronted with Wood’s “vision” that would undo much if not all of the comprehensive plan, the council and staff wasted two years and a ton of your tax dollars investigating the so-called Charlie Brown project. The voters put a halt to the debate at the ballot box where Wood’s candidates went three and out.

In a recent interview with The Beacon, Wood said he heard the voters so he no longer supports high-rise development. Of course, those who have watched Wood in action over the years know that he’s a master of resurrecting pet projects – even those that were soundly rejected by the council, the people and even the Supreme Court, so you never say never when it comes to Wood.

Contemplating a fourth term, Wood says he’s trying to figure out what the voters want to hear so he can campaign under the color of a slogan that resonates. Given his history, you can only take that to mean he’s going to tell us what we want to hear, but don’t count on that being what he’ll actually do if we’re foolish enough to put him back in office for a fourth term.