Most people I know are kind, caring people. I pride myself on being kind to others. I try and make a point to be kind to everyone. We all need a smile or hello from people, or all need a little help now and then. You never know what is going on in their lives. I’m not perfect; in fact, far from it. I do slip here and there when I get mad. Again, not perfect. No one is.
I love our little small-town life here in Clarke County. For the most part, we have a nice, safe place to raise our children and/or retire to. I love it here and chose to stay here after college to raise my children here. Maybe when they get out of school and off to college, I’ll move to the beach which is where my heart is. But for now, I’m a Clarke Countian, by choice.
Working at the newspaper since high school graduation, I’ve seen many people come and go, and many changes in this town. It’s been on my mind lately about how small towns work and how they keep going. It’s most important to support your local businesses first.
If you don’t support your local businesses and economy first, we all fail. We fail our neighbors and friends who own businesses; we fail our local economy, and down the line, we fail ourselves. How can we stay afloat in this day and age if we don’t support our own economy? How can we try to grow if we can’t stay afloat?
With all that being said, I now have a complaint about something I witnessed last week. I went to the Quitman town hall meeting Thursday night at the Depot. A mobile home park company was here from Denim Springs, LA, with a proposal to build a mobile home park on Long Blvd. with 51 brand new trailers. The proposal sounded really good on paper. It sounded way better than the dump that is at the current location.
So, I went to the meeting not only to cover it for a story, but because I was generally interested to hear their proposal and what the company had to say. Hey, someone wanted to invest money into Quitman instead of pulling their money out.
What I did see and hear was disheartening. A room full of community members wouldn’t even give this man a chance to speak about what he wanted to bring here and what he could do for our community. Every word out of this man’s mouth, IF he even had a chance to get the words out, was met with opposition, and some were not nice about it. I was embarrassed - embarrassed for him and embarrassed of our community acting the way it did. They said no before he could even get through his speech.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled his proposal out of Quitman and high-tailed it somewhere else. I’m sure there are plenty of other small towns that would be more welcoming to something new. And I wouldn’t blame him. There’s a way to respectfully disagree with something, and this wasn’t it. I’m ashamed of how this man was treated and the name we made for ourselves Thursday night. Why would anyone want to bring something new here and be treated like that?
