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Prince of Tides

Jack Kennedy is quoted as saying “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” It’s a quote, but it has the ring of a saying like ‘Buy low – sell high.”. It is at once obvious as an inherent truth, and elusive in it’s application. I thought of Kennedy’s words as I was reading The Lonely Prince in the Daily Post last week.

Mayor Aragon has accomplished much, but one must attribute a great deal of that success to a period of economic boom - the sun was shining brightly. I might also add that the mayor surrounded himself with really good staff people, like Jay Harrington. As a team, they were able to drive home the nails for bricks-and-mortar projects that will serve this community for generations.

The article speaks to the Town’s annexation of outlying commercial properties that substantially increased sales tax revenue derived for the benefit of the Town. In-turn, the Town was able to muster revenue for grant matches and loan payments that resulted in project accomplishments. As the saying goes; ‘A high tide raises all ships.’ While the Town was building good revenue streams, the County was letting it’s infrastructure degrade, while using any increase in revenue generated by growth-related fees and other revenue to expand services, increase the number of personnel and otherwise spending on current operations to the detriment of the long-term economic welfare of the community.

Counties and municipalities are like parties to a lawsuit, they advocate for their respective interests; the merits of their arguments ultimately ruled on by the voters in the form of the candidates they elect, the bond issues they pass, and support they give to prioritizing comprehensive and strategic planning efforts. In short, the Town had strong consistent leadership that provided excellent results, while the County lacked good leadership, failed to develop good and consistent staffing support, and made mistake after mistake.

Because the county failed to advocate for a three mile plan mandated by the State, the Town was not only able to annex in revenue-generating commercial properties, they left the maintenance costs for the roadways that serve those areas to the County. Property owners petitioned for annexation because the Town represented a known and reliable foundation for their businesses, while the County represented erratic, dysfunctional, element they could not rely on to sustain their businesses. Unfortunately, the tide has gone out, the boom is over, and a new generation of staff support for the Town is not hammering home the nails to keep the roof on. The Town has joined the County, and the community is so much worse for it.

They are trying to drive nails on a slippery rain-soaked roof, and it is not working. The Town has abandoned the comprehensive and strategic planning that got it to this point, it has joined the County in a case of the blind leading the blind. They have no community-based foundation to work from; only behind-the-scenes efforts by certain interest groups to feather their respective nests.

Firing the planning commission by the County, and the hiring of an urban public relations guy as Town Manager signaled the people of this community would no longer have input into decisions. Rather, they now have top-down systems, which strip away good process and procedure in favor of give-ways, selective incentives, and the most arbitrary directives. Having failed to fix the roof properly when the time was right, our elected officials are now failing to even deploy buckets to prevent damage to the structure itself. Unless steps are taking immediately to right the ship, this community will be unable to take advantage of the next incoming economic tide.

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