A Near Miss

Jefferson County slid by this week and we should consider ourselves lucky. The Tennessee Housing Development Agency announced its list of applicants that would be offered low income housing credits. Hopefully, many will remember that Jefferson County was up for six low income housing developments that could have dumped around 700 economically disadvantaged students in the Jefferson County School System. Poor planning, or rather no planning, could have landed this county in a situation that would have changed the way of life in Jefferson County. Remember, these developments are not for Jefferson County citizens, they are for anyone in the state that meets the criteria. Thankfully, we just missed the mark and will have another year to develop a plan before the developers come calling again.

When I wrote the article outlining the six proposed projects, some said that Jefferson County would never be allocated low income tax credits for more than one development. In the minds of many decision makers, all six developers were competing for one slot that might be awarded to Jefferson County. I said it then and the award documents say it now-that just isn’t the case. This is how close we came to having 5 of the six developments dropped on Jefferson County in one year. Applicants are ranked according to award status. The applicants that will be awarded low income tax credits are coded in gray at the top of the award page. Of the next fifteen applicants, Jefferson County held five slots. What is seriously scary is that those other ten applicants are in counties that were heavily awarded already and there is a cap on the amount of low income tax credit that one county can receive ( granted a high cap but with 4 or 5 new developments it was most likely reached). Realistically, we just missed the cut. Jefferson County could be in the position of Putnam County which received 5 awards or Obion County that will have 4 new low income housing developments. Maybe we would be lucky and only have three developments dropped on our schools like Hamblen and Macon Counties. Plainly, the trend is to award multiple developments within the same county.

I am not against reasonable and appropriate housing but welcoming in developers for low income housing should require much thought and planning. Locations need to be assessed in relation to schools so that one or two schools don’t have the brunt of the influx of students. Overcrowding our schools will impact our tax rate and that is just a fact of life. Demographics will change, property value will be impacted and it will cost this county in services. Any decision that has a broad scale economic and demographic footprint needs to have serious consideration. These are not decisions that should be made on a whim and they should not be made uninformed. And if those with decision making powers thought that developers were competing for only one development award in Jefferson County then they were certainly uninformed.

Now we know and the proof is in grey and white. Jefferson County will certainly see more of these developers come calling. We simply look too good on the rubrics and next time we might find ourselves in Putnam County’s situation. The time to plan is now. Actually, the time to plan was way before the green light was given to 2014’s six developers. Questions we should be asking our city councilmen and county commissions should include which of our schools can handle the influx of 50 or 100 or 200 students and what will the cost be to property tax payers and then, if they can answer those, perhaps can we see the cost benefit analysis of welcoming in these developers.

There are no answers to these questions because there was no consideration given to these issues when ½ dozen developers came calling. But there should be and there should be a plan. They let it roll by us once and shame on them. Now we know and if we let it happen again, I am certain that we will not be so lucky next time.