An American Town

May in Dunwoody comes with a flurry of endings and beginnings, each tinged with an old-fashioned red-white-and-blue aura of small town life. Final exams, awards and honors programs, neighborhood block parties, festivals, season-ending games, Mother's Day, planting vegetables, yearbooks, spring cleaning, college acceptances, vacation planning, fundraisers, school dances, Scout crossover ceremonies, high school graduation, concerts .... May is the busiest month of the year.

It's exhilarating. And exhausting.

Of all the celebrations, perhaps one of the most heartwarming was our neighborhood block party, held to celebrate the end of a long and hard fought battle against a detrimental rezoning decision. Our wonderful neighbors surprised Terry with warm words and a gift, neither of which he expected. We lingered late into the evening, enjoying catching up, sharing news, and sampling an amazing array of foods. 

The stressful, stunningly expensive effort - more than $20,000 shared by neighbors and community supporters to fight a large daycare playground behind our homes - has become a template for other groups and communities facing similar decisions. We learned much about our city and legal system as well as just how complex our relationships can be.

Life lessons:

• Friends, neighbors, colleagues, and fellow volunteers will sometimes find themselves on opposing sides of critical issues. How we deal with each other has far-reaching consequences. I choose civility, setting aside disagreements for the sake of congeniality and progress in other arenas. 
• NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) is a term used with scorn by folks who are not directly impacted by eminent domain, rezoning decisions, and misdirected development. Take care. You may need those same neighbors someday when it's your NIMBY concern.
• The City's code of ordinance should not force citizens to expensive court actions rather than an intermediary Council veto.  I don't know how much our City had to spend on the legal action, but it was wholly unnecessary.  Even if the Council was aware that its rezoning committee's decision was deeply flawed, its own code of ordinances prevented it from taking action or intervening.
• Placing volunteers in powerful and influential committees such as Rezoning and Community Development without training and oversight is disingenuous and dangerous.

There are life lessons to be gained in every experience, particularly the hard ones. Mine is that you can love a town and want to help it thrive even when sometimes it lets you down.  I value the gadflies, those people who stand at the public speaker microphone, write letters to the editor, blog, and send emails because they are active, engaged, and concerned enough to speak up.  I am grateful for volunteers who are willing to take on overwhelming and sometimes thankless roles in policy-making. And I appreciate community leaders like John Heneghan, who listen to diatribes and disagreements with courtesy and respect.

It isn't easy, but it's quintessentially American to be a community of individuals, not head-nodding sheep.

And now, a few highlights from the Knitternall family album as May builds to a crescendo of activities before it bows to more leisurely summer pace.

Going to the Renaissance Faire means pulling an ensemble together from the family costume stash.

The PCMS Band's Spring Concert drew a huge crowd; it included a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society in memory of beloved teacher Keith Davis, who passed away this Spring. Both of our kids had Mr. Davis for 7th Grade Language Arts.

Dunwoody High School recognizes its college-bound students ... so many, they circled the gym nearly twice.

Peachtree Charter Middle School recognized its top students in academics, music, character, drama, and more.

There's a big playground trying to take root in my back yard. Practically.

A daycare center (a Goddard franchise) wants to build a ginormous, 9,000 - 11,000-square-foot playground a few steps from our back yard. Within the stream buffer of our creek.

I love kids. I have a couple of my own. I work happily in the chaos of summer camp at Dunwoody Nature Center. Children roam across the yard and down the street as they play and ride bikes and sell lemonade and Girl Scout cookies. But the thought of a playground spilling raucous cries of frenetic children from 7 am to 6 pm is . . . not good. When the leaves come down from the lovely hardwoods that buffer our home from the village, we'll see nothing but playground, with its hard-metal curves and less-than-organic shapes. My very elderly neighbor next door, trying to live as many independent years as possible in the home she's had since the early 1970's, is in tears. The couple down the street, ready to downsize and sell their home to recoup some retirement funds, is very, very worried because their house is closest to the new daycare center. And the wonderful path that takes us from neighborhood to village, will disappear.

As we neighbors attempt to make the playground "go away," or at the least move to the other side of the building, I have discovered once again that the wishes of the many (the city's planning department and ever-yearning search for tax dollars) outweigh the needs of the few (our little neighborhood).

Nothing can make you feel more helpless than to have a government entity take away your quality of life. Our town's planning department thinks the daycare center (the 5th in the one-square-mile center of our town) is a great idea and is working with the developer to make it work. We neighbors, who have to invest in an attorney and struggle through contradictory zoning and codes, fervently disagree.

Yes, we bought a house next to the village. We wanted a "walkable" life in the heart of Dunwoody.

Yes, we knew there were offices across the stream. They're very quiet, with businesses that are open from 9 to 5 and generate modest traffic.

Yes, we voted to make Dunwoody a city so zoning fiascoes by DeKalb County would stop. We thought that our town would be more reasoned and farsighted.

Growing pains, I guess.

One of the silver linings of the neighborhood's opposition to the rezoning has been a comfortable bonding across cul de sacs and down past the curve in the road. We're waving to each other even more and stopping to chat during our evening strolls. I've always loved living in this neighborhood and enjoy it even more as we come together to protect our peace.