Writing

Through My Eyes

We moved into a suburb in Central Florida during the mid-nineties when you were more likely to find thick patches of oak, pine and palmetto than you would a four bedroom with a bonus room. As much as I hated to see the forests cleared to make space for the next development I understood that a community of new neighbors opened the door to new possibilities.

So, for the last seventeen years I’ve been a spectator to this process called community development and I can say from first hand experience that you would be closer to understanding how it all works if you replace the word “process” with “accident.” It’s like that.

Decisions in City Hall are made from a chain reaction of colliding objectives and interests, much in the same way that multiple car crashes occur on the interstate when people drive too fast through foggy conditions. Except that in City Hall, when the last councilman votes for approval, the real calamity begins.

When something does go very wrong you expect a community to come together to clean up the debris and make things right again. What you don’t expect is to see how efficiently they hide the bodies so that no one wises up to the fact that bad things happen here. But as much as they try, the one thing that no one can hide is that dark cloud that hangs over the place, serving as a constant reminder that it’s impossible to move forward when bad decisions keep you rooted to the past.

The idea to launch this website came from the theory that bad practices tend to repeat themselves when they aren’t publicly corrected. This concern increased after the Florida legislature dismantled our Growth Management laws last year. An article in the Orlando Sentinel explained what we lost: Since 1985, the state “…required cities and counties to create long-range ‘comprehensive’ growth plans to fight sprawl and environmental destruction, including requiring developers to help pay for roads and schools that would be needed to serve their projects.” (Aaron Deslatte, Records show how developers got to gut growth rules, Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 4, 2011 at A1.)

Without this state oversight, community development decisions will now be left in the hands of local government, except where there are state resources involved.

The irony that many will see too late, is that the more you pool power at the local level the further away you get from the uniform protections found in the U.S. Constitution. That’s because the closer power reaches down into our communities, the easier it is to corrupt the process as people tend to rely on relationships to make decisions, rather than treat everyone’s interests equally.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait to see how this experiment will end because here in Florida there are cities which have already toyed with the concept of sovereign rights. That’s what makes this site a resource for those who wish to see how local government will evolve in this new environment. Or de-evolve, depending on your view.

The long-term hope is that this site will give Floridians an understanding of how good ideas walk into City Hall only to come out as a plan that not only falls short of its mark, but steals our trust in our government. For that purpose, this website is dedicated to providing insights to how local government operates when it thinks no one is watching—and how it covers its trail when they know somebody will.

Note: If you feel this post warrants a recommendation, I would appreciate it if you would go to the one I posted in General Discussion, to hopefully get it to the next level of attention. Thank you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002359746