New Year's Wishes

If you can’t quite get used to writing “2010” on those checks yet, chances are you haven’t yet settled in for a new year.

Each turn of the calendar brings plenty of resolve, to make changes within and without.

Those resolutions are essentially wishes, wishes that new numbers on the dateline of a check will mean new direction on the landscape around them.

A few suggestions for the coming years, offered in the spirit of giving:

Decorum

Not to get all Rodney King or anything, but can’t elected officials get along?

Just calculate the amount of time county commissioners and those for the city of Port St. Joe spent in arguing with one another, parrying with each other during alternating meetings, to the point that a détente summit was required.

This time is taxpayer money, so just bring the cash register along and ring those dollars up as they evaporate in the air.

And that is just county and city.

Both bodies could also use a lesson in government etiquette for acting among themselves.

Oh, they can sail through meetings with nary a cross word or interjection, but when the going gets tough, commissioners seem to get going making it even tougher by simply with a lack of ability to debate as adults operating in a professional capacity.

There are sane voices trying to be heard, but too often they are drowned out by the noise of inappropriate conduct or words.

Pull out the calculator during those meetings and count the tax dollars being wasted.

Spending Priorities

All taxing authorities can make the case that they held the line as best they could in spending tax dollars this year – provided the listener was hooked up to laughing gas.

As the tax revenue was blown away what was revealed is that spending aims and goals are a far more pernicious form of waste than higher millage rates.

Combine the two, as the county did until several years ago when commissioners finally chipped away at property taxes and you slay the golden goose.

But this year, spending priorities seemed particularly out of whack.

The county spends thousands of dollars on a lawsuit it has no business in had it only enforced its own ordinances and comprehensive plan.

As our loyal reader Tom Knoche notes on the next page, county commissioners also have wasted thousands on needless advertising in an out of town newspaper when local, local, local is the mantra.

The “discretion” for such wasteful spending is laid off an employee.

And if consolidation ever ends up a break-even proposition for the county – yes, some jobs were shed but the proof that transportation costs, construction costs and the cost of time wasted traveling to a central site won’t drown those savings is thin – commissioners will have silenced a county full of doubters.

The county is hardly alone, however.

The city of Port St. Joe has spent countless hours and taxpayer money crafting a sign ordinance that a year later seems out-dated or in need of an overhaul and diverted needless time and resources to an attempt to push the city manager out.

And best to leave aside the nearly-completed ransom list for annexing WindMark Beach. Later generations will determine whether the time, aggravation and tax dollars spent on completing that list will in the end balance on the city’s ledger, or will have provided the city anything from the county other than annexing undeveloped land.

The school board has yet to enact much in the way of any of the recommendations suggested by a citizens committee formed during the campaign for the additional mill levy.

While some are not legally possible and some not viable, to continue to ignore doable suggestions does not serve the voters who supported the referendum.

Thick Skin

Said before in this space and in letters from readers on the next page is a simple fact of life when anybody puts their name on a ballot – grow a thicker skin.

Dissent is not just part of the landscape; it is a necessity if we are to truly call our country a representative democracy.

People are not just charged with engagement, they are required, responsible to challenge their government and its decisions. This is one of the freedoms for which 5,000 have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not every decision is going to be met with popular support. In fact, governing is not a popularity contest, despite some of the polished talking heads on television.

Governing is about upholding the Constitution of Florida and the United States.

Right there at the top of both documents is the freedom of speech, to peaceably assemble and most important of all, to seek redress from government.

Doing so should not be a caged death match, which too often it is when it comes to the Board of County Commissioners.