The Price of Dissent

Montgomery Village isn’t a perfect community.   That should come as no news to any thinking person.   It’s relatively easy to be a critic.  All you have to do is complain and derogate, and if you’re less careful, libel and slander good people for trying to do something. 

Among many definitions, “snipe” can mean “to shoot from a long distance away” and a “person of low or questionable character.”  Sniping is “in” these days – all the communications technology we have at our disposal means that we can fill our lives with the whining, clamoring, and bickering that has done so much for our national politics.   And we can repeat it all here, or we can rise to the occasion and take a different path.

Take for, example, the item that Montgomery Village was ranked 41st in a national survey of small town places to live.    The article hadn’t been out very long when the attacks began.  And the nay-sayers were voluble.  They cited crime, housing conditions, and the general awfulness of anyone they disliked.

As I said at the beginning, this isn’t a perfect community.   My own opinion is that’s in desperate shape, given the county’s plans for paving it over.  The recent reaction to one of my posts proved a point I was trying to make: some (not all) in this community are intent on fighting the last war to the point where the future is ignored.   Not all the reaction took this tone,  most of it was thoughtful and some was indeed provocative.  But there was enough back biting to make me sad.

 It seems to this author that at least a few of the self-appointed champions of public morals and civic behavior miss some very important things as they trumpet our failures.

1. The desirability of the community to prospective buyers is directly linked to the publicity we get.   A community that brooks no dissent is moribund, but a community that allows the few to tear down the accomplishments of the many risks its future.

Let’s put that in concrete terms.   Once upon a time, there was a part of a village that was home to some problem neighbors – and they literally attracted vermin of the four-legged variety.  The homes corporation responsible for that neighborhood poured more resources into that section of the property than all the others for years on end, and made some small progress, but frankly not enough to satisfy some of the residents.    They ended up taking their case to a national publication, which frankly didn’t distinguish between “problem neighbors” and “problem neighborhood.”   The story they ran wasn’t flattering to anybody, including the self-styled “community champions.”

At the time, the price of houses in that area was between $175,000 and $225,000 per unit.   If just ONE sale was lost as the result of that publicity, the effect on the sale price of remaining homes might run as high as $2,500 per property when others in that same neighborhood wanted to sell or refinance their units in turn.  The same technology that allows us to vent also gives a megaphone not just to legitimate criticism but also to embittered narcissism.   How can a prospective buyer tell the difference?  

As all the publicity had no net impact on the problem, what would this display of pique be worth to your friends and neighbors let alone to you?

2.  Whether we like it or not, we are part of the American national economy.   If you’ve tried to get re-financing or take out a home improvement loan for a really worthwhile project, you’re going to find that it’s tough to get, especially if your financial position is worsening from a combination of higher costs and lower income expectations.    Most of our residents don’t have the job skills to act as their own contractors, let alone the resources to serve as their own banks. 

A friend suggested a while back that the “cure” for some of this was to take all the properties in the Village condo, so that a small elected group could not merely decide our standards, but actually have the power to enforce uniform maintenance. Simple, easy, superficially appealing and something this author doesn’t see happening anytime soon.   The legal costs alone would be prohibitive.  But there’s also the political cost of the proposal, and its cost to the community at large.

Indeed, some of the people who would object most loudly are the same folks who would point out that THEY have showplace properties, and that it’s up to the rest of the community to live up to THEIR idea of how everyone ought run one’s life and property. 

If some of the critics would put down their vitriol-fueled keyboards, pens, and telephones for a minute or two, they might organize a community labor trust, or find a way to help a good neighbor fallen on hard times, or to aid those who can’t keep up to the standards someone else might choose.  Then, we might have both a better place and a better community. 

Most of us have enough trouble keeping a job, seeing to the needs of our families and children, and stretching the paycheck to cover huge increases in energy prices, utilities, and taxes, however. 

Talk all you want, the ideal and the real have diverged.   If we want to turn that around, it won’t be by punishing otherwise good neighbors in tough times.  Yes, we should encourage, and do everything we can.   But a bankruptcy filing is also bad for a neighborhood, maybe even more than some (not all) bad practices.  Lastly, whether we may approve in any particular case, even bad neighbors have civil and procedural rights, which the homes corporations must respect under law.  That’s part of the American system.  If you want another judicial model, that’s a wholly different conversation. 

If you’re so angry that you live here, consider whether or not anyone is profiting by the current arrangement.   If not, come out and help – and be prepared to work, not just criticize and pout.   If you can’t be effective in one way, find another.

3. It’s been said that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”  Up to a point.  If the wheel keeps squeaking, eventually we tune out the noise and learn to ignore it.  There’s a risk that even legitimate complaints get drowned out that way – “crying “Wolf!” to quote a popular metaphor. 

I can point to situations in which thousands of state and county tax dollars have been wasted trying to appease certain constituents trying to fix the unfixable, or deal with problems real or imagined, but which cannot be directly addressed under the constraints of engineering or law.

 The cost of diverting scarce public resources in this way harms all of us.

 Yes, Virginia, there is (or at least used to be) a First Amendment.   But the only desirable form of censorship, it seems to me, is self-censorship.  If you claim to put the community’s interest first, then think before you speak or write.   The home value you save could be your own.