Tavares, FL - June 24, 2011 - I went to a meeting recently where about 20 concerned local residents (not the Tea Party) were gathered to discuss why their area was not improving economically. Their businesses were slowly declining and nothing much was happening. There was a lot of griping about the lack of action by the local elected officials and the manager of their local area (not the County).
After lots of discussion, they came to the conclusion their elected officials were part of the problem by not pushing the manager to establish measurable economic development objectives and implement them.
It seems that one local high flying city does that, and their success is aggravating others without positive economic leadership.
As always, I threw in my suggestion that foreclosures were a big part of the problem. Since I have not been able (yet) to get the Lake County County Commissioners to set up an action plan, I suggested this group add it to their list. I think it got lost somewhere during the discussion about trees.
But, there were some heavy hitters from local bigger businesses, and the consensus resulted in the plan to do a survey and get feedback from local residents about their feelings on the local government "progress". Then, to take that survey (assumed to be nagative) to the local elected official's meeting and demand
So, maybe this will be a trend where local Lake County citizens, and elected officials start establishing PUBLIC measurable objectives and holding local government manager's feet to the fire.
Then, please, start to fix the foreclosure problem rather than coming up with ways to subsidize builders to build MORE houses while foreclosures till exist!!!!
Vance Jochim
www.FiscalRangers.com
