Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Homeowners - Do your homework!

A question formed the other night as I watched an angry conga line of Henderson residents cha cha to the mike at a City Council meeting and let fly over a movie studio proposed for their neighborhood: What exactly should you get when you buy a house?

OK, a house. And a modest square of land to go with it. What else? How about the view? Air space rights? Peace and quiet? OK, anything else? What about control over surrounding properties or veto power over those intangible quality-of-life factors best summed up by the phrase stuff I don't like?

Those questions pressed more insistently as each resident of Mission Hills -- a ruralish neighborhood at the south end of town -- painted his or her vivid, hyperbolic picture of the mini apocalypse Black Mountain Studio would visit upon them. Traffic! Noise! Pollution! Horses spooked by outdoor filming!

One woman, typical of the rest, said she relocated there two years ago "to enjoy the quiet rural area, to enjoy the stars in the sky." Now, she warned, "we're beginning to question our decision to move here."

News flash, ma'am -- you should have questioned that decision two years ago. The studio land has carried industrial-park zoning since 1994, long before you showed up. So, while I'm no advocate of traffic, noise or spooked horses, this is where my sympathy ebbs. Question: What should you get when you buy a house? My answer: The responsibility to find out what you're buying into. Big empty lot over there? Either check it out or live with the consequences of not doing your homework. After-the-fact defense of your quality of life is whining by another name.

I shouldn't single out the Mission Hills people. Militant homeownerism is a widespread fact of municipal life. Propose, say, an apartment complex near homes -- even if the zoning is appropriate for it -- and residents will bum-rush the joint to protect their view of the hills and safeguard the neighborhood from the supposed low moral character of apartment renters.

Likewise, I'm reminded of the Green Valley residents who, after the Pepcon plant exploded in 1988, were appalled to learn of the industrial zone over the hill. Nobody told us it was there! Or the people who bought homes near an existing pig farm and then complained about the odor. Tough luck, I say, and that goes for me, as well: If I'm unhappy about the high school going up verrrry close to my place -- gads, the roar of Friday night football, the packs of roving teenagers! -- I should have checked it out before I bought.

But it's no use advocating that sensible position; we have the homeowners-association mentality these day, the certainty that our investment in a home grants us the right to meddle in our neighbors' affairs -- quality of life demands it! It stems partly, I think, from baby boomer self-centeredness, as well as the shrill tenor of American life. Nothing is merely unpleasant anymore; it's totally wrong, inarguably bad, unmitigatedly evil. Extremism in defense of horse trails is no vice!

I'm not damning neighborhood activism; believe me, this isn't a brief on behalf of industrial developers. Bad projects -- residential garbage dumps, high-rises next to homes, gravel pits -- should be beaten back. But most projects aren't so obviously wrong, inarguably bad, unmitigatedly evil. We need to inject a note of live-and-let-live balance into these things.

Or not. Official assurances that the studio's growth and activities would be carefully regulated fell on deaf ears. The people went right on saying whatever it took to paint the worst possible picture of what seemed to be a fairly benign project (the council denied the studio because its backers missed payment and permit deadlines).

The Mission Hills squawk and holler wasn't the most egregious I've heard, but it did beg a final question. Why did these folks assume their area would always retain its quiet, edge-of-town character, particularly in a city growing so fast it changes edges almost daily? Angry homeowners can fill me in at the phone number or e-mail address listed below.

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