As you can see from the map above, Lenoir city officials aren't letting up on bringing as much residential development into the city as they can. Do you think that a single city council member or the mayor have given a minutes thought as to what they're doing to the city and the county? Do any of them care? It's obvious, they do not. The question always comes back to the same thing, why are they doing it?

The city has approved 4,547 new residential homes in the last two years by plat or rezone, 1,768 apartments and rentals and 1,579 single family homes. The city council has approved every one of these developments, unanimously. This doesn't even include several smaller developments. At the same time, they have taken no actions to address the impact these developments will have on life in the city or the county for that matter. Of course, the biggest and most immediate impact will be on the schools. The county is already making plans for a new school on the upper end of the county to accommodate the growth. Other impacts are already being felt on roads, police, fire and utility infrastructures.

Mayor Tony Aikens' new favorite saying now is, if a city doesn't grow, it dies. He obviously doesn't understand that if a city grows too much and too fast, it also dies. He seems not to care or that's his plan. Why else would he stand by and allow this to happen? Anybody have any idea?

Some of the developments above are completed, some are under construction and some have only been rezoned, the first step in the development process.

Just imagine if all these city developments, combined, average just one school age child per unit. That would be double the children that are currently enrolled in the entire Lenoir City school system and nearly as many as are currently enrolled in the county system. At a local cost, our property tax dollars, of $5,000.00 per student, that would be an additional cost to the local school systems of $22,735,000.00. Does the city council have a plan to pay for that? Have they even thought about that?

Just know this, when the land is all gone, it's gone. Have you ever seen a housing development destroyed and dozed over to make way for farm land or forests? Maybe some day. 

Below are more details on the city developments.

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