Posted on 10/05/2007 5:49:29 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A business owner shot and killed himself during a City Council meeting Thursday night after members voted against his request to rezone his property, witnesses said.
Ronald "Bo" Ward, owner of Bo's Barber Shop, had told the council his business would go under if he couldn't get his home rezoned as commercial. After the 5-7 vote Thursday night, Ward stood and walked toward the council.
"Y'all have put me under. ... I'm out of here," he said before shooting himself in the head with a small handgun.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Excuse me, but you are a jerk
Madison Street is not US Highway 41, but US Highway 41A
US Highway doesn't even go through Clarksville, TN
He does live on Madison St. It is currently a mix of residential and commercial.
I expect that you know what it would do to property values. I have seen a similar situation occur where a person built a very nice (and expensive)house and since he wasn’t smart enough to check zoning restrictions, he ended up with a neighbor just like I mentioned before except this person had a house with license plate shingles and hadn’t seen paint since it was built. When he had to transfer to another city due to his job, he took a big loss on his house. Some may say too bad but I bet if it happened to them it would be a different story.
I understand their intent and find many situations where the intent of zoning amicably settles conflicts before they arise. Unfortunately, the same may be said of socialism and communism. Having lived in Tn, TX, HI, CA, and along the east coast, I’ve found the same arguments used in favor of zoning are frequently resolved by the marketplace in areas without zoning. Those grey areas, where a neighbor moves in with highly disparate use of his property from others tend to result most unfavorably, again in low value areas, while high value areas take care of themselves economically.
Another interesting aspect of no zoning regulations is that I’ve found it actually promotes the arts, crafts, and architectural awareness in communities where the middle class live. In zoned and highly regulated areas, the architecture and environment tends to become cookie cutter cosmopolitan. Same curb and gutter, same faux stone, same strip mall appearances, same horizontal and vertical articulation in elevations, the Home Depot, Sam’s, WalMart, Circuit City, Target, Olive Garden, TGIFs, Bed & Bath, Taco Bell, McDonald’s strip mall every 10 miles in surburbia buried between residential developments of 6 variant floor plans, different shade stucco structures, with 5 ft between 2nd story windows facing the next door neighbor in their McMansions.
One nice thing about Houston is driving down Memorial in residential areas and seeing one historical home, next to a Modern home, next to a French Provential, next to a Tudor, next to a pre-engineered building with gold plated amenities, all of which are equally valued, but reflecting different ways to build a better mousetrap.
The guy who tries to move in with a mobile home, might succeed, but is generally isolated from much further growth, but also becomes a lucrative investment by another party seeking to upscale his lower class real estate.
IMHO, if the neighbor wants to intrude upon how his neighbor lives, then he should work to amicably settle the conflict. One way is to buy him out so he can have the controlling interest in the property.
Placing controlling interest in the property by zoning laws merely shifts the control from local property owners to a political representative or governing body, which might not be just in their interpretation of what needs to be controlled.
For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if the board reviewing Bo’s application, changed procedures such that property owners were not allowed to make their requests in person, but only through representation, so as to avoid such violent situations in the future. All that has happened is the control has been shifted away from the property owner and further removed from the community’s interest. ‘Darkness at Noon’ comes to mind.
See #125
Thanks for the link. I read through all 13 pages of comments, and was especially struck by the last one, from someone who had been through all the deliberations from start to finish.
Apparently, the first two readings of this guy’s petition got a very favorable response. Then, at the final hearing, some people started talking against it and got enough votes to deny him. The mayor then told him he could not say anything about it. He led his wife out of the room, then killed himself in front of the council.
This was going to pass, it was not controversial, and there was no reason to turn it down until—something happened, something behind closed doors, something that no one is talking about.
And now Clarksville is on the map. Very interesting comments on that news thread.
Ya think?
They failed to mention that Ward had been to the planning board twice. That several of his neighbors have recently attempted to rezone their properties to O-1, office, small business, church, barbershops, etc. They have received approval from the planning board but are waiting for final approval from the city council who put a 120 day freeze on rezoning there.
Ward wanted C-2 (Heavy commercial, car lots, etc.) zoning for his property which was inappropriate in the planners eyes. Planners tried to convince him to revise his request to O-1, gave him a 30 day period in which to do so. Ward stuck with his C-2 request and the planning board denied it. All this happened before he even went to the city council meeting.
So it's pretty obvious he knew what the outcome would be. Brought the gun with him and as they say...went out in a well planned blaze of glory.
August 30, 2007
Section: BUSINESS
Page: 5B
RPC tackles zoning issues
By ERIC SNYDER 
The Leaf-Chronicle
The Regional Planning Commission voted Wednesday to deny a Madison Street resident's request to rezone his property, despite his pleas that doing so would ruin his business. Bo Ward wanted his R-1 Single Family Residential property rezoned to C-2 General Commercial.
Ward told commissioners the change would raise his property value sufficiently to qualify for a consolidated loan for his home and business.
Several of his neighbors were granted a request by the RPC last month to rezone to O-1 Multiple Family Residential,(NOTE- There is no O-1 Multiple Family Residential zoning.Reporter error. The "O" designation belongs to the office, professional, civic, etc. zoning.) which the RPC deemed more appropriate than C-2. Ward's case was deferred for a month in an effort to get Ward to reconsider his C-2 request.
In the meanwhile "we've not heard anything from (Ward), and now we're back where we started," Senior RPC Planner Keith Lampkin said.
Ward said he had no intention to sell the property. "The only reason I want this rezoned is to save my business, my home," Ward said.
Ward said his barbershop would soon hit a rough patch when Fort Campbell troop who comprise a large portion of his business begin returning to Iraq next month. "I'm begging you for nothing, I'm telling you the way it is," Ward said.
Before the commission voted 5-to-2 against his application, Ward said his business would be shuttered by December if they did so.
City Council, which voted this month to put a 120-day freeze on the zoning requests made by Ward's neighbors, has final say on Ward's request.
Did you read the rest of my post? Do you really think that the average reader of the Des Moines Register gives a good damn about that level of detail on a Clarkesville, TN, zoning dispute? They didn't "fail" to mention the details of the zoning dispute. They decided, and it was probably the right call, that that information was not of interest to their audience.
It was the wrong call. The story would have changed flavor had they summarized the truth and not the myth.
"He could've done in about a half-dozen of us," Doyle said.
Perhaps Councilman Doyle had condolences, and some sympathy to express about the death of this poor man, that weren't chosen to be printed in the newspaper. But, it struck me as particularly sad that his words that were printed regarding a man that was probably known by many in that town, including himself, appeared self-centered and callous under the circumstances. Mr. Ward could have done many things, but what he did was kill himself.
It is probably a safe assumption that Councilman Doyle voted against the re-zoning request, since 'us' was the pronoun chosen, and 'about a half-dozen' would be five.
There is certain to be much more to the story than we've read so far, so I won't speculate. Prayers for all of the loved ones and friends of Mr. Ward.
Another post, citing the local paper, says that Ward's clientele consisted largely of soldiers from Fort Campbell, and that they are preparing to deploy to Iraq, which is going to be a serious ding to his cash flow. Of course, if he hadn't considered the possibility of troop rotations when he embarked on his expansion, it wasn't a well-thought-out plan to begin with.
If he couldn't service the business mortgage taking on another one probably wasn't going to help.
Restructuring his debt could extend the length of the loan, cutting the monthly payment to something that his now-lower cash flow could support.
It's possible -- though not established -- that the rate went up on the business loan, and no one would refinance without additional collateral. If he was so desperate to raise the value of his home, it seems likely that the house was already pretty heavily leveraged at its current value. Counting on rezoning might have worked, but it looks like a last-ditch effort.
Looks a lot to me like he overexpanded and got overextended. It's the kind of a mistake that makes business go under every day. It is not the city council's responsibility to bail him out for his mistakes.
The barber who killed himself was a wonderful person who supported his local army base, did haircuts for soldiers and their children for free if they couldn’t afford them, and was personally recognized by Gen. Petreus for his generosity and kindness. I don’t want to hear that he was an imbalanced moron. With the current housing and credit markets, good people are being squeezed like never before. I looked into the records of this zoning case and it should have been approved. We see this crap from selfish councilmembers across the land. I hope selfish creeps who denied his zoning request are tormented by nightmares of this for the rest of their lives.
Hopefully his action will be one which has reverberations in town and city councils across the nation, where incompetent little Napoleons misuse the power to both enrich and make poor every single day.
See Post #269. Looks as though the board was working in good faith with this guy, yet he stubbornly refused to do the same.
I don’t get it. What looks dangerous about it?
But it is hard to tell from a single photograph and I'm not a traffic engineer to start with.
What a wonderful lesson for us to teach young conservatives: If things don’t go your way, don’t worry about running for office to make a difference yourself or finding another way to overcome the situation, just kill yourself.
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071006/NEWS01/710060322/1002
Article published Oct 6, 2007
Council based vote on best use of Ward’s land
Mayor tells council members ‘you voted on your conscience’
By ERIC SNYDER
The Leaf-Chronicle
There are few City Council votes that are not scrutinized and debated after the fact.
However, there may never be a council decision analyzed in the same way as Thursday’s vote that prompted a man to take his life on the council floor.
Ronald “Bo” Ward shot himself after he was denied a request to rezone his Madison Street home to C-2 Commercial.
Ward, owner of Bo’s Barber Shop across from Gate 1 on Fort Campbell Boulevard, had said the rezoning would increase his property value, allowing him to secure a loan to offset debt he incurred when he expanded his shop.
The voting members and staff of the Regional Planning Commission had recommended disapproval of the request, saying a C-2 zone would be inappropriate for the area, as its permitted uses are too broad.
Council members received petitions against Ward’s request, and two neighbors asked the council to deny it to allow a Hilldale/Midtown area development group to get under way.
Nonetheless, the City Council voted 6-5 in September in favor of Ward’s request.
Said a tearful Ward last month, “If this (zone change) doesn’t go through, I lose my home, I lose my shop, I lose everything I got.”
Zone changes, however, require two votes.
Ward 11 Councilman Bill Forrester said before Thursday’s vote that “I got caught up in Mr. Ward’s presentation last month.”
In an e-mail dated Oct. 1 to subscribers of his city e-mail list, Ward 10 Councilman Bill Summers said, “It is not the city’s responsibility to be changing zonings to cover a citizen’s financial problems.”
“The purpose of zoning is to put land into a development category that will provide its best use to the owners and community.”
During Thursday’s meeting, Summers said the council could be setting a dangerous precedent by casting its vote based on the applicant’s finances.
Ward had told the RPC and council he had no plans to sell or move from his Madison Street home.
Summers noted at Thursday’s meeting, however, that there were scenarios in which the property could become commercial in use — if the home burned down, for instance, it could not be rebuilt, and if Ward could not get out from under his debt, a foreclosure would mean the property would be sold as commercial.
Summers and Forrester were joined in voting against the rezoning by Ward 5 Councilwoman Diana Ward, Ward 6 Councilman Marc Harris, Ward 7 Councilman Geno Grubbs, Ward 8 Councilman Jim Doyle and Ward 9 Councilman Richard Swift.
Voting for the zone change were Ward 1 Councilwoman Barbara Johnson, Ward 2 Councilwoman Deanna McLaughlin, Ward 3 Councilman James Lewis, Ward 4 Councilman Wallace Redd and Ward 12 Councilman Wayne Harrison.
Forrester and Harris changed their original votes, and Johnson was not present at the first.
Some of Ward’s Madison Street neighbors had also sought in recent months to rezone their homes to C-2, but were persuaded by the RPC that an O-1 Office zoning — with its more limited uses — would be more appropriate for the area.
The council voted to delay those rezonings to allow Ward a chance to reconsider and request an O-1 zone, which was approved for his neighbors by the RPC, and to allow the Hilldale/Midtown development group to get started.
Ward declined, saying the O-1 zone would not provide the additional equity he needed to secure a loan.
-snip-
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