"On Earth as it is in Heaven" Per Matthew 5:44, one loves opposition yet has no obligation to love that which one opposes. This is why people love to eat yet prefer to avoid being eaten.
In an anthropomorphic sense, hell may be viewed as Heaven's excrement, which brings us to Wednesday night's Murfreesboro Planning Commission's vote to unleash hell on Earth by approving a plan to build a future inner-city Baltimore in what is part of Rutherford County, by voting first to appropriate county land as city limits, then by approving a zoning change on that land to build an urban ghetto inside a rustic, even historic, rural community.
All that glitters is not gold: the argument presented [this is no inner-city Baltimore; this is a beautiful project] may appear bright and shiny on the surface (now) but so too does a fishing lure right up until the fish swallowing it encounters the hook in its mouth.
Consider Lucifer, once known as the "angel of light," and what became of him. The appearance of "new" quickly wears off.
Cramming 60 homes into an inner-city postage stamp will only lead to nuclear fission as domestic crime and drug rates inevitably escalate. The current zoning map reveals the relative density of homes: roughly 1 home per acre for the larger lots, 1 home on .69 acres across the street (Asbury Lane) and an immediately adjacent property has one home on 5 acres, with a nearby, historic property on a 19+ acre deed with only one home (the McGregor House.)
The city has yet to fix traffic flow- Asbury Lane's hazardously narrow width and critically dangerous curve and (at times) the impossible left (east) turn into town onto Medical Center Parkway.
Essentially, the land owner and site developers are hoping to rake in cash by turning rural beauty into an urban bomb, effectively planting a seed of darkness in an otherwise radiant community.
Even though the Vice Chairwoman Kathy Jones abstained from voting due to familial ties to the project, abstention is NOT the same as protecting the community from carpetbagging.
FEMA's floodway and floodplain regulations make it a federal crime to import dirt into these areas. Proponents of the 10.6-acre site propose to have 51% green space, which means they intend to cram 60 homes on 5.194 acres of land, translating into roughly 11.55 houses per acre, effectively building a human rat colony.
While I do not begrudge the property owner for attempting to capitalize upon natural resources, let us remember that cancer (as well as Shari'a no-go zones) also represents nature gone awry.
Richard Silk, former resident of Asbury Lane, now of Scottland Drive
