Essays From West of 98: the Poor Town and the Dirty Town
Reflecting on 20 years of community cleanup
If you have not read my letter to new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, check it out! If you are new to my Substack, read more about it here. Every month, I summarize my writing and a few good reads and recommendations here. I’m currently revising a (hopefully) important new essay about feeding local communities for publication next week. In the meantime, the following is the second-ever essay that I wrote in November of 2017, updated and expanded to reflect the great gains and progress made in our community in the eight years since I originally wrote about a community beautification effort that had demolished 100 houses at the time.
Almost 20 years ago, a group of citizens in Stamford came together to form a beautification coalition. It would be called “Reclaiming Stamford.” The name was based on the principle that these citizens wanted to reclaim the community’s future from the seemingly terminal decline that afflicted Stamford and so many rural communities like it across America.
The coalition originally took a multipronged approach. It helped eliminate over a dozen illegal dump sites in the community. These were found on vacant lots and roadsides with little traffic and few observing eyes, where years of shingles, mattresses, household garbage, and worse had accumulated. Community clean-up days were sponsored to help citizens in need of assistance or to spruce up city properties that were tough to maintain with limited personnel and equipment. The largest amount of energy was devoted to demolishing dilapidated structures and clearing vacant lots across town.
Stamford is a town that was originally designed for about 10,000 people. The population peaked at 5,000 in the 1950 census. Today, the population sits at around 3,000. That means the town had almost twice as many houses that it needed and even more vacant lots that were never developed. Unfortunately, these were an eyesore, not a joyous contribution to city green space and housing inventory. The vacant lots were largely grown up in mesquite trees and cactus, harboring illegal dumping and collecting litter. The houses were largely older and abandoned and had become fire hazards or a host for illicit activity. Over the years, the increasing number of abandoned houses became a safety and law enforcement issue. It also became a blight on the community that became mentally depressing, a sign of a community that was withering on the vine.
Today, over 400 properties have been cleared. Some of them have been purchased by neighboring residents to expand their yard or by an adjacent business for their own expansion. Some have new housing in the works. One just became a food truck park. One is soon to house the office of a new fiber-optic internet provider. Many others are just awaiting development and if you’d like to build on one, you should call me. We’ll make you a deal. There is more work left to be done, but much progress has been made in these 20 years.
At an early meeting of Reclaiming Stamford, my father made a statement that has resonated through the years and stuck with me ever since:
“You can’t always choose whether you’re a poor town, but you can choose whether you’re a dirty town.”
As rural communities declined in the post-World War II economic order, they did not just lose population and jobs. They lost investment. They lost wealth. They lost their tax base. There were fewer dollars to be used on keeping the community maintained, much less improving it. As the dollars stretched ever thinner, the hems and cuffs of the community became frayed and tattered. A small pot of money can only go so far and a shrinking pool of volunteers only has so many hours in a day. A town that lacks the resources to improve its situation may well be called a “poor” town. And yet, none of these challenges, not even a reshaped global economic order, can be viewed as an acceptable excuse to be a “dirty” town.
When an outsider drives through a poor town, they might not see shiny new retail businesses or freshly-paved streets, but they can see improvements maintained with care, no matter the age. They can see old houses, clearly owned by people without a lot of disposable income, in which the yard is neatly kept and every nook and cranny of the house exudes a certain level of pride.
What about a dirty town? Are the streets and sidewalks overgrown with weeds? Does trash collect on every street and vacant lot? Are broken street signs and park equipment left to linger for months? Are city codes properly enforced? Do the city codes even exist?
Bringing in new retail investment or building new streets can be a substantial financial challenge. But pulling weeds, picking up trash, fixing street signs, maintaining park equipment, and enforcing city codes? Those are a choice.
If rural community leaders desire a better future, outside growth and investment will surely be necessary. But does your town actually attract outsiders? When an outsider passes through, what do they see? Do they see a town doing its best with what it has, or do they see a town that has made a choice to be dirty? And to be clear, inaction is a choice in itself. That choice suggests whether a community cares enough to make their place desirable. Without visible community pride from current residents, it’s hard to expect buy-in from outsiders.
What do you see in your town? Is it a poor town or a dirty town? And if you do not like what you see, are you willing to be part of the choice to make it something better?
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the “Rural Church and State” and “West of 98” podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore with book lists for essential reads here.