My task in this assistantship was to write case studies about the decisions of the Stumptown Planning Commission. The community started an urban renewal program that became my chief focus. Nobody anticipated where that urban renewal program would lead.

Stumptown was a one-industry town based on a declining industry. It did, however, attract a number of retired people because of its low taxes.

The planning commission had one member who represented organized labor. The others more or less represented the downtown merchants. Those were the people, after all, who had the most to gain or lose by what decisions were made. Ideological differences were not apparent in their decisions. All of the members pretty much agreed: What was good for downtown was good for the community, and professionalism enabled planning consultants, public health officers, and similar experts to give advice which was above politics.

Practically the only time I saw them seriously divided was when one householder built a carport right up to his property line without getting a building permit. Many of the planning commission members said, “What the heck. Since his neighbors don’t mind, let’s give him a variance after the fact.” A majority, however,ruled that he must tear it down, because if rules weren’t enforced nobody would follow them. The man appealed to the city council and they let him keep the carport. This was the first issue dividing the professional planners from the people who said, “A man’s home is his castle.” It was to prove prophetic.

When my assistantship started, Mayor Stan Olson was serving his sixth term in office. He did not intend to run again. Several council members aspired to the position, and he thought that any of them would do a decent job. He hadn’tcounted, however, on C.K. Lewis.

Lewis had graduated from a top Eastern law school, then come out to Backwoods and taken a job selling feed and seed. Why on earth would anyone do that? Stumptown found out five minutes before the filing deadline for the position of mayor, when Lewis filed a petition with the required number of signatures. He had been selling himself along with the feed and seed, and built a strong political following.

This was a different kettle of fish from the mayor turning over the reins to a lieutenant whom he had brought up in city government, and the mayor found that he couldn’t stomach it. Too late to file, Olson announced he would run as a write-in candidate. He overwhelmingly won another term as mayor.

Later Olson told me he had nothing against Lewis, he just didn’t think that a person should start at the top. He would appoint Lewis to some advisory positions, and if he did well then Olson would support him next time around.

Olson’spopularity did not mean Stumptown did not have problems, only that its leaders were pretty well agreed on what they were and what to do about them. These included unpaved streets, inadequate parking and lighting, an outmoded city hall, and serious sanitation problems. Most of the city did not have storm sewers, and many of the houses were on septic tanks or cesspools. Runoff ran in open ditches beside the streets. It contained more than a little sewage. The city health officer lived in dread of an outbreak of hepatitis.

Serious as they saw these problems to be, the city leaders did not think that much could be done about them. More and more people were going to the larger community nearby to do their shopping, and raising taxes to pay for improvements would just drive the struggling Stumptown enterprises out of existence.

It was the planning consultants who came up with a solution, and that solution was Urban Renewal.     

Urban Renewal was not well known in the middle 1950’s. People who did know about it associated it with large Eastern cities. The planning firm of Langston Dean, however, was exceptionally well informed and knew that the legislation had been written so that a community of any size could apply. If Stumptown did an urban renewal they could put in all the improvements that they needed and get the federal government to pay almost all the cost. What could be better? ……

At this point I left the state for several years to complete my doctorate. When I returned, I found a fascinating situation in Stumptown. The urban renewal had gone forward, and C. K. Lewis had become mayor, as planned. Then, however, the community had become outraged. Many people had learned that their houses were going to be torn down. In the meantime, they could not sell them even if they wanted to, for who wants to buy a house that will soon be condemned? And,although new housing was going to be built to replace the houses, most of the homeowners could not afford what it was going to cost.

When the urban renewal was being planned, I heard Langston Dean say, “No matter what kind of shack a person lives in, you’ve got to give them a couple of thousand dollars for it.” A couple of thousand dollars was more money in the late 1950’sthan it is today, but it was not enough to find alternate housing if you were suddenly displaced.

Stumptown was a conservative community, and it was the Political Right that provided the leadership in opposing urban renewal. “A man’s home is his castle” became their watchword. The voters recalled half of the members of the city council and replaced them with self-avowed members of the John Birch Society.

So,there sat Lewis at the head of the table. Down one side sat the council members who had started urban renewal, and down the other sat the ones elected to stop it. And, while excavations filled with water and construction machinery rusted in the streets, they fought it out all winter…..