Contact Your Government Representative
One of the first lines of defense against unwanted, costly residential development is to tell those who have the direct to power to stop it exactly how you feel about it. You’ll find the contact information below.
These are your representatives, public servants who have an obligation to listen to your concerns. If they hear enough concern about residential development in Lisbon and MV, they will be forced to do something about it. Email, write, call, or flag down on the sidewalk members of your city council, planning and zoning commission, or parks and recreation board. (Most often, these issues come before P&Z and city council, but are also voted on by parks and recreation when issues such as “green space” are addressed.)
Here are a few points you could make, adapting them to your liking, in a letter or email:
1) Well over a hundred studies have shown that new residential development virtually always generates less in new tax dollars than it costs to service. (Educational demands, police and fire protection, road maintenance, public utilities, etc.) Thus existing residents actually subsidize new development through their own tax dollars.
2) Even if such development did pay its own way, our town cannot simply grow indefinitely without losing its small town character and environmental integrity. Too much growth and it will no longer be small. Additional growth means additional loss of our natural environment. It’s that simple.
3) Methods of sustainable economic development can nourish our town’s economy. Let’s impose serious residential growth restrictions now, while we focus on improving our economy and saving our environment through such methods, rather than merely expanding through costly, harmful physical growth.
See the links and articles here on the Small Town Project for details on these (and other!) points.
Below are links to representatives’ contact information.
Mount Vernon City Representatives
City Council and Mayor
Planning and Zoning
Notice that no contact information for this group is available on the city site. I’m looking into it. In the meantime, the staff at City Hall will release their phone numbers and addresses on request. Alternatively, contact information for most is in the phonebook or on the Net through a simple search.
Update: I spoke with both Chris Yancey and Mike Beimer about this, and was basically told, “We can’t make them provide their personal contact information on a public website.” Well, perhaps they need to hear from a few more people. All over the country, public servants are supposed to be available to hear their constituents’ concerns. All over the country, politicians and other government officials of every sort make their email addresses as well as other contact information readily available on their web pages. Just look at the links below for Ro Foege and Robert Dvorsky. Do you think our P&Z members should make their email addresses available? (Bear in mind that email is the only way you can contact several of these public servants at once!) Then let them know at city hall: Mike Beimer’s email address and, at the bottom of the page, Chris Yancey’s.
Lisbon City Representatives
Mayor
The Lisbon city website is still under construction and, one would hope, will have this information soon. Until then, simply use your phone book. 
Planning and Zoning
See above.
State Government
On the state level, one factor which strongly encourages ongoing residential development is Iowa’s property tax law. The current law leads many in local government to believe our economies “need” residential development. There is talk in state government about changing the law. You can encourage your representatives to push for this by contacting them to let them know you oppose the way the current system encourages ceaseless residential development.
State Senator Robert E. Dvorsky
