Paula East deserved better

Irked.

That’s what I was when I read Liz Fabian of The Macon Newsroom’s latest report on the Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission, which had decided in early May to punish a 95-year-old Maconite for replacing windows on her historic slate row home on Walnut Street some 20 years ago.

As I said in my column last week, the entire matter seemed petty and made Macon’s planners and zoners look like busybodies. I took some flak for those comments — one reader called my take on the commission’s silly move “simplistic” — but I stand by them even more so now.

We send our print product to our press in Perry on Wednesday afternoons, and it’s mailed to subscribers and appears on newsstands on Fridays. A lot can happen in two days, which is one of the perils of print. So, by the time the print issue was circulating across Macon, there was a major development in the window affair.

Paula East is the historic homeowner who apparently defied our planning czars. I was sitting in my home office on Friday morning when I got an email from “Flora C.” with a window-related subject line. I sighed. I had already been raked over the coals by several readers upset with my opinion on the commission’s pane problem. I expected more of the same and clicked on the message.

It was nothing of the sort. Instead, Flora is Paula’s granddaughter, a resident of Miami who has frequently traveled to Macon to help her grandmother fight this matter. She wrote about a big development in the case and asked me to give her a call, which I did within minutes. What she had to say was indeed shocking.

The commission’s entire case against Paula hinged on her failure to get their approval before she replaced her windows more than two decades ago. A neighbor, Edwin Atkins, took offense to the vinyl windows, saying, according to meeting minutes, they have “taken away from the … beauty and historical elements of the … homes.” The county’s design review board, which reports up to the planning and zoning commission, reviewed the matter and said it should be left alone.

The commission rejected that recommendation and, with much grandstanding, talked about how Paula had openly defied them. They ordered her to, within six months, replace the vinyl windows, even as neighbors and friends said such a project could endanger Paula’s health. That was of no consequence to the majority of the commission, which threatened the 95-year-old with fines or even jail time for noncompliance.

I was again irked as I listened to Flora talk about her grandmother’s embarrassment over this entire ordeal. Paula has also been in and out of the hospital, the granddaughter told me, due to stress over the issue. Flora then upped the ante, telling me the entire thing was resolved, anyway, as planning and zoning staffers had recently found Paula did, after all, get approval to replace her windows.

She did everything by the book and has still been dealing with, at an advanced age, a bureaucratic nightmare. I told Flora we’d follow up, wished her and Paula the best, and, like any good journalist, sought to verify this information. The commission’s executive director told me it was indeed correct. Paula had sought and received the appropriate approvals before replacing her windows. They’d be issuing a refund, he said.

And I guess that’s that. I wrote up an update and pushed it online Saturday. It quickly gained legs, with thousands of views and social media comments. Erick Erickson, the former Macon City Council member and popular talk radio host, even shared the article, adding some fiery planning and zoning commission critiques.

As a journalist, I’ve spent years covering power imbalances, whether those be citizens versus government or patients against health systems. You cover these cases to the best of your ability and then move to the next thing. You try not to dwell on an issue or think too hard about how unfair life can sometimes be.

Sometimes, though, a story can stick with you. A good therapist — or a friend with a few well-timed gin and tonics — could probably find many of those haunting me. One I’ll think about for a while is Paula’s. Her advocates can tell you much about the dancer’s many community contributions and kindness. For now, all I can think about, though, is how systems failed her.

Paula did everything right. She requested approval, got it and then spent some of her final years on God’s green earth being told otherwise by the very body that approved the windows in the first place. Her case is a reminder that behind every agenda item, every complaint filed and every certificate number is a person — a neighbor, a family member, someone’s grandmother. They deserve to be met with compassion and basic decency, not the puffed-up outrage of officials who seem to love the authority of their offices more than the people those offices exist to serve.