I would suggest to Mr. Gilmer [“With growth gone, do you like Fayette now?” Letters, Oct. 7, 2009] that the 12 years that he has spent in Fayette County is too long and perhaps he should pack up and move his “... nearly dead in the water” business to a less hostile environment.

But wait, it’s not just Fayette County, is it? The economic downturn is nationwide, so the solution is to throw out all the rules, regulations, land use plans, etc., and let there be a free-for-all for builders and developers.

Yes, we see the half-completed developments, we see the empty store fronts, we see the failed banks and the massive foreclosure section(s) in the county legal organ and we wonder, “What were they thinking?”

They weren’t thinking, and that was the problem.

I am proud of our county’s adherence to the land use plan, because those of us who have been here for 25 or 35 plus years bought and built with the belief that the county’s leaders and voters would have the integrity to preserve the values and setting that led us to Fayette County in the first place, despite the begging and whining of developers and builders that would seek to destroy them.

Growth is not inherently bad, but uncontrolled growth is. If Mr. Gilmer had been here in the early 1970s and compared what Fayette County was then to what it is now, it would be self-evident that Fayette County did not “... thumb our noses at growth.” We just grew with control.

Milt McKnight

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