Dalton Daily Citizen - January 28, 2012

NIMBY.

Not in my back yard.

That’s a phrase we hear all the time whenever someone proposes anything new. Too many people want all the benefits of progress, but they don’t want it to impinge on them.

So it is a delight to hear of a couple that so welcomed the city of Dalton’s plans to build a new park in the Crown Mill area that they donated part of their back yard to make it happen.

Kelly and Flora Caldwell recently donated about a third of an acre to the city for the planned Crown Mill park that will run along an abandoned railroad spur between Hamilton Street and Chattanooga Avenue. The city plans to use federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money to build the park.

“The entrance to that property on Chattanooga Avenue is very small, basically no wider than the railroad line itself, just a few feet. It widens out as you go further along because of some property the city acquired when it was thinking of building public housing there 30 years or so ago,” said City Administrator Ty Ross.

“Their back yard touched the old railroad line, and they gave us a portion of it to help make it easier for people to enter the park from Chattanooga Avenue,” Ross said. “It was very generous.”

For such generosity, The Daily Citizen names Kelly and Flora Caldwell Citizens of the Week.