The Odell Compromise
A quick personal note
I haven't made a post in more than two weeks, because I've been crazy busy. I'm overbooked at work, my family's business is in their busy season, and it's seems like this is the time for crashed hard drives and crashed family vechiles (my dad was involved in a rollover accident...he is fine). Anyhow, these seats are cheap for a reason, and y'all get what you pay for...this blog had to be ignored because of pressing personal issues. However, I'll be back in full force soon. For right now, I'm squeezing things in when I can.
The Odell Resolution
When we last left our intrepid Odell residents, they were in quite a predicament. Even though they had stopped several developments for a time - the developers were coming back with a lawsuit and their incorporation depended on the Kannapolis City Council, to whom they had been very rude in the past.
The forces at play finally gave way. The developers made a number of concessions like widening Jim Johnson Road, making turn lane improvements on Hwy. 73 and Odell School Road, and phasing development to coincide with school capacity; the County is easing up appeals on a few developments which were in a gray enough area to keep the County Attorney busy for a while; and nobody got everything they wanted. The County got stuck subsidizing more development - these new developments will fill up the schools from the 2004 bonds faster than expected. I'm sure the developers aren't crazy about having to get into the road construction business. The Odell community, whether it becomes the western-most part of Kannapolis or the newest city in North Carolina - will have the type of development that the residents didn't want.
Wherever the West goes, so goes the County
Western Cabarrus County has been to Cabarrus County politics what Ohio has been to the Presidental Elections. While not a clear majority of the citizens in the county, they were a big, somewhat unpreditable force. The major issues like growth, development, zoning, and infrastructure have rest mainly in the western part of the county. With skyrocketing land values and massive new development, the decisions of the County Commissioners and the City Councils of both Kannapolis and Concord weigh heavily on the quality of life in our part of the world. Also, they could always rally around a single issue. In the 90s, it was the airport. Most recently, it was the school bond. Don't believe it? Well, ask Richard Suggs. Most of the spanking he took in the last primary came from Townships 1, 2, and 3 - the Western portion of the County. Joni Juba positioned herself as the pro-education candidate that wasn't going to give the developers anything they wanted. Richard Suggs was a developer and left some pretty serious doubts in the minds of the voters that he actually believed in public education.
What we're witnessing is the first complete political defeat of Western Cabarrus County interests. What happened is that the Odell crowd got too involved in their own issue and bisected what could have been massive political support for thier cause. In the past, the voters in this area could be organized around a single issue. The promise not to stick an airport out here got a few people the Republican nomination for County Commissioner in the 90s. We still got stuck with the airport; but only through some lame duck manuvering. In the last election, schools got voters together and got Joni Juba elected. What happened this time is that the Odell movement focused completely on themselves and not on the region. For some reason, they though that the county should jeopordize the adequate facilities fee, go to court with the developers, and back out of arrangements with Kannapolis and Concord - because some folks just didn't want to call Kannapolis home. The Odell movement lost this battle to themselves.
An Alternate History
If the leaders of the movement had educated themselves a little better on the details of incorporation, been a little more congenial to the Commissioners and the KTown City Council, and crafted their message a little differently - making this a regional fight agains runaway development - I think the outcome could have been more in their favor. However, because they decided to "fight", they made a big gamble and lost. They've sent a message to the rest of the county that they are somehow "better", and as the traffic gets worse here and we get other "infrastructure" like the airport stuck out here - people won't hear our pleas; because the rest of the county knows we won't be one voice. My question to the Odell community is this - was it worth it?
