50 degrees this morning, no walk today.
While I wasn’t in the area here during the time a major community leader was the driving force behind many of the major (and I mean majorI) improvements, his death yesterday made me think of how a community develops.
His death (at a relatively young age of 56) shook this community, and even the state.
It demonstrates what one person can do, especially if that person can galvanize other people into working in one direction or at least on major projects.
Years ago, when I first started in City Management, someone made the point at a meeting that, in most cities, there are short periods when true progress is made, based on either one, or many, visionary community leaders who truly believe in improving the community.
The point was that you have to be ready when these leaders show up (and they are all types and personalities) because the window of opportunity is short.
This city was fortunate that this leader was the architect and visionary for a wide variety or projects, at a time when the city (and area) was ready for him.
Of course, then I think of the other side. A city that, in a windy area, still uses recycling “bins” that are open to the wind. The bins even blew away!
A city that recycled so few things, it almost wasn’t worth recycling.
Of course, as I have mentioned, a city that has no protection for residents from the enrichment of commercial development and the “profit at all costs” developers and builders who literally destroy the value of residential property with ill-advised commercial development.
Anyway, we don’t live i that city anymore, although we moved only about three miles.
While not perfect, we feel a lot better about the residential protections provided by this city although it is much smaller that the other city.
It basically is what Lakeland was aiming at, but will now never be, due to the incompetence, greed, and ignorance of the “leaders” elected several years ago.
Somehow this city has remained on track in it’s residential protections and I intend on becoming involved as necessary to make sure it stays that way!
Have to mention a dream I had yesterday morning.
3-2-16 Wednesday, dream
Dreamed was in a fairly large hotel type facility, but it was only on one level. It was by the ocean or a least a large lake.
I kept walking around with a portfolio of papers that I kept misplacing.
One person was a man who keep coming and going, something about how to pay bills for something or some other task. He was supposed to advise me of the procedure but he kept coming and going and then I would misplace the papers again.
ON the other hand, I was visiting with my family, kind of a family reunion. People would come in and out of the dream.
My family kept encouraging me to sit and visit but I was concerned I would miss the person I had been consulting with, so I kept getting up and walking around.
No real ending except I woke up.
A really strange and varied dream.
That’s it for now, Thursday, March 3, 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment