Being a "leader" instead of a "caretaker"

The Town Council held a workshop Tuesday afternoon to discuss ways that the Town and County could merge Planning and Building services. Also discussed by some was why it could never really happen. With a total of five members of the Town Council and the Mayor, there appeared to be an even three to three split over the idea of doing some kind of merged planning versus doing very little to nothing to change what we have got.

From my seat in the audience of a packed house, here is what I saw. No I won’t pretend any personal objectivity or neutrality on this topic at all.

The County’s spokesperson Rick Bellis appeared to be offering everything that the County possibly could to entice the Town into combining staff.

What I saw was some people attempting to form a more unified and more streamlined way of managing future development. I saw some other people so afraid of the details and the possibility that “something might go wrong” that they were completely unable to see the bigger picture here.

Imagine that large aliens from outer space came with a huge vacuum cleaner and sucked away both the Town Hall and the County Hall of Justice. Imagine that we were then left to replace the government of our community with a new structure.

Given a clean slate, would we build two separate governments to manage our small community or would it be logical to only install one government for our unified community of less than 10,000 residents?

Would it make any sense at all to install two building departments and two planning departments for a small community organized around a single seven mile strip of commercial development?

It can only make sense with the statement “well, but that’s just the way it has always been done”.

The heart of what I want to write about here is the difference between being a “caretaker” and being a “leader”. Most of the time, it is adequate for elected officials to be caretakers. Once in a while -- at critical junctures in our history -- true leadership is necessary.

Sometimes that leadership comes from elected leaders. Often times it must come from somewhere else.

General George Washington and his ragtag band of rebels almost starved to death in Valley Forge in 1778 because the vast majority of the citizens were too afraid to “change the system” and couldn’t be bothered to dig into their personal pockets to finance the rebel army. It was only a handful of men and women who led the vast populace of the American colonies towards forming a more perfect union.

After a bitter debate, only 7 out of the 13 colonies voted to approve the new constitution in 1787 which formed the unified republic. This result was the achievement of a small handful of leaders.

On its face, as an outside observer, obviously one planning and building department to manage our one small community makes more sense than having two departments do the same work. It’s obvious from the outside.

The real estate and building community has articulated clearly why a “one stop shop” is better than two separate departments. One thing is for sure. The current system of two planning and building departments does not work to grow our community as envisioned in the Comprehensive Plan.

For myself, it was a little painful to sit in those Town Council chambers and watch some random remarks about how a merged Town and County Planning and Building staff would be less efficient than two separate departments. It was a little painful to watch some make claims that the best interests of Town residents were served by continuing with a divided administration of our single little community.

So to those few adamant voices who argue against merging redundant Town and County services, I ask you this. What is your vision for the future of the community? I have heard your fears. I have heard your rejection of the logic of the merger proposal based upon small details that have yet to be worked out. I heard what might go wrong.

But, I don’t believe that I heard any vision for the future. I don’t believe that I heard any guiding plans or principles. Where are you leading us to?

Fear is not a future.

This disfunctionalities of the past do not inform a positive road map for tomorrow.

In life you always end up with one of two things: What works or the reasons why not.