GUEST COLUMN: Think About What You Don’t See When You Go To Vote This Tuesday

*The following is an opinion column submitted by Northport resident Jack Roberts. Want to have your voice heard? Email submissions to ryan.phillips@patch.com.

NORTHPORT, AL — My phone whistled at me two or three weeks ago to tell me I had a text message.

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But the message wasn’t from a friend or family.

It was a slick, professional, political ad — exactly like the ones we spent all of last year constantly deleting from our phones.

But this ad wasn’t for someone running for national office.

It was a candidate in the Northport Municipal Election — which will be held this coming Tuesday, August 26th.

And like I said, this text message was upbeat, positive and clearly done by an expensive, professional marketing firm that specializes in political messaging.

A few days later, equally slick, well-produced ads for incumbent city councilmembers started popping up all over Facebook.

And as I was driving across the bridge from downtown Tuscaloosa yesterday, I couldn’t miss the beaming smile of another incumbent on the massive digital billboard welcoming me to Northport.

Looks to me like some rich developers suddenly got a clue a few weeks ago and realized their hand-picked candidates are about to lose this election.

Badly, if I’m reading the tea leaves right.

And I guess they figured they’d better throw some big bucks at their candidates to try and maybe-somehow get them elected or reelected before it was too late.

But you know what is funny about all of those slick, glossy, carefully worded political ads?

Not a single one of them mentions the $350 million University Beach resort, currently being built in the swamp behind the Tractor Supply Store.

It’s going to the premier resort destination of the Mid-South, don't you know?

And it’s going to bring billions of dollars into Northport, too!

It’s weird. You’d think the incumbents running for reelection, and the new candidates who have let it be known they will support University Beach if elected, would tout the resort as a primary reason to vote for them.

On the other hand, you sure don’t see big-developer money backing the opposite slate of candidates running for the Northport City Council.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

What you do see when you look at those candidates are lots of unpaid citizens — your friends, family and neighbors- spreading the word on Facebook and endorsing them.

You see those same friends, family and neighbors donating to a GoFundMe page — give whatever they could — to fund a lawsuit that forced the Northport City Council to turn the University Beach development plans and contracts over to the people.

For the first time, Northport citizens were able to see exactly what in those documents.

You sure didn’t see any rich millionaire developers donating to that effort. I can guarantee you that!

You also see a lot of grassroots support for these candidates with rallies, barbecues and candidate meet-and-greet sessions.

You don’t see any of that with the candidates the developers want to put into office.

These rich developers think you’re stupid.

They think you’ll either be too lazy or too busy to bother and vote this coming Tuesday.

They think Northport is their own personal piggy bank they can dip into any time they want someone to fund a massive project and make themselves even richer.

And of that development causes traffic problems or flooding problems or strains Northport’s law enforcement and emergency forces to the limit — they don’t care.

Because another thing you don’t see are the homes and the families of those rich developers here in Northport.

They don’t care how much chaos their projects inflict on Northport, Alabama.

Because they don’t live here. This isn’t their home. This isn’t where their children are raised and go to school.

They’re already rich. And they’re using us to get even richer.

And they don’t care about the mess they’ll leave behind them when they’ve finally sucked every lost dollar out the Northport treasury. They’ll just fine some other city council in some other little town, and repeat the entire process all over again.

But, together, we can stop them here.

All you have to do is go vote next Tuesday.

Jack Roberts is a native of Northport. He is a professional journalist and a freelance writer. The views and opinions expressed in this opinion column are his and are in no way reflective of the views of Tuscaloosa Patch or its parent company.