Reflections owner asks Selma City Council to remove fence that has put her shop in ‘jeopardy’ 

The poet Robert Frost famously wrote that “good fences make good neighbors.”  

Selma businesswoman Jackie Smith disagrees.  

Smith asked the Selma City Council Jan. 14 to do something about an unsightly chain link fence that has taken valuable parking spaces from her coffee shop, Reflections on Water Avenue.  

The city placed the fence around the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute next door to Reflections after a window fell out of the museum and onto the sidewalk. Smith said the fence is blocking the sidewalk and is taking up about seven parking spaces, which is disrupting her business.  

She said in a letter to the city council that the fencing has created a “great financial hardship” that has put her coffee shop “in jeopardy.” 

“We have a minimum number (of customers) we need to break even,” Smith told the council. “Since they have erected the fence, I’m about halfway there.”  

She said she sees cars circle the block and then leave because they can’t find a place to park. The fence has also reduced foot traffic to her business. She said pedestrians must walk into the busy traffic on Water Street to get around the fence.  

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Jasmine Robinson, who represented the mayor at the meeting, said she understood that the city building inspector had the fence erected to protect the public from objects falling from the building.  

Smith said in a letter to the council that other buildings in Selma are as rundown as the Voting Rights Museum, but they aren’t blocked off with a fence. She suggested the windows of the Voting Rights Museum could be boarded up rather than fencing off such a large area.   

City Council President Billy Young agreed that the city needs to come with a less intrusive solution before the Jubilee in early March.  

Young said the council would write a letter to the mayor and to the code enforcement department asking the city to come up with a way to make the area “safe and more conducive to business.”  

The city council was not consulted about erecting the fence, according to Young. 

Smith has operated the Coffee Shoppe on Broad Street for 13 years and opened Reflections in 2024. She received the 2024 Phoenix Award from the Small Business Administration in 2024.